Quick Thoughts

I guess this is going to be one of the realist posts I am going to post...maybe...we'll see

Lately God has just been speaking me. Literally has been putting people in my life to speak His word. It is coming to a point where I am going to have to sit down and really listen to what He is trying to say in my life and not ignore it. ESPECIALLY when it comes to my singleness.

I am not going to lie as much as I preach on being single I still long to be with someone and at times there have been female friends that a part of me really wants to pursue. But that is not the only issue

But during this time of singleness, your mind tends to wander. And as much as you don't want it to, it does. It sometimes wanders to places that it shouldn't which I am fully admitting to. Places like looking at married woman and looking at them with lustful eyes. Thinking in the back of your mind what would happen if they came on to you? Literally coveting my friend's relationships thinking "I'm a better Christian than them, how come you blessed them with a relationship and not me?"

And God answered my question and even as I am typing this I feel so ashamed that these thoughts are/were in my mind.

A friend who I have spoken to in literally a year calls me out of no where and me and him begin a 3 hour conversation. We talked about everything under the sun and the topic of relationships came up. Something that he said was

"You have to remember that God is not only your Father, He is her Father too, and just like how an Earthly father will defend his daughter from questionable boys, so will their Heavenly Father"

Granted my friend wasn't saying that I was a questionable person, because he was talking in generalities, the Holy Spirit was speaking through him VERY clearly and BOLDLY. God knew all about the nasty gunk that was in my heart and just like how He is my Father and He wants the best for me, He also wants the best for His daughter's as well. And if God who created me and knows me better than I know myself and knows that right now I am not ready and needs to protect His daughters from me at this moment than let His will be done.

Which leads me to my second situation when God spoke to me which is when a female friend called me randomly when she was driving home

So she was a girl I had a long history with both friendship wise and romantic wise. Our relationship had its ups and downs and a lot of it I will admit was due to my immaturity of my feelings and my selfish ambitions which I fully admit and take responsibility for and our friendship at times suffered greatly because of it.

She called me and we are now on pretty good terms and we were catching up in our life and talking about school and the question of women came up and she asked me if I was dating because to her I had the reputation of always talking to a girl (which for quite sometime it was true) and I told her about the last girls that I had talked to and my struggles and she laid it on me THICK like she was brutally honest about me and my flip floppiness regarding my interest in girls, which she had every right too because she had suffered at my craziness.

She told me straight up and there was no lying to this girl because she knows so much about me that I could not deny or fight whatever she told me because what she told me was true. I would string girls along then drop them when I couldn't handle it. That in the end of the day I didn't know what I wanted and even though all our friends wanted me to date I had to spend time to really not date.

"You can not lie to me Xavier, and all though you have changed in many other areas in your life and you've grown, the one area that you haven't was how you handle your love life"

Which was absolutely true.

I had grown and matured in so many ways but when it came to love and relationships I was still a boy trying to figure out how to deal with my emotions. Her words I felt like was God's way of telling me

"Listen you have grown and have done and accomplished a lot, but when it comes to love, I need you to be honest with yourself and know that there is still a lot of stuff you need to work on"

The last words of wisdom God bestowed upon me was when I was listening to a sermon online.

The pastor was preaching on the word of Mark and out of no where the pastor says

"Stop praying for the wife you want to marry, start praying to be come the husband she wants to marry"

This whole time that I was single, I was walking around making comments like

- "God I want a wife like her",
- "God it would be amazing if my wife looked that good",
- "God, I hope my wife can be (X, Y, and Z)"

and it dawned on me at that point that I was praying to God for the wife that I wanted rather than asking:

"God am I the husband my wife would want to marry?"

And the answer that question honestly it would have to be a resounding

"No"

I am not ready plain and simple. There is no hiding it, or denying it. There is so much that I need to work on and as much as to other people I am a great catch, I can not measure what the world views of me but rather what does God see me in me. Am I measuring my worth and what I deserve based on what the world thinks or what God thinks?

I urge those reading this to think the same. During this season of singleness, are there areas that you need to work in, that you are not being honest with yourself?

I pray you find that answer and that God guides your path to emotional, mental, and spiritual growth!

- God Bless.

Blog post entitled: "What Not To Tell Single Girls (And some things you should do)."

An interesting post written by a woman named Chelsea on what people should and shouldn't say to Christian women who are currently single.

Article here

One of my fave quotes is:

"Now sometimes this statement is altered slightly to be directed towards the spouse in hiding: 'The Lord is just preparing him for you.' Or maybe even they will be bold enough to say right out that the Lord is preparing you..."

Visit her website at: http://thechelseawinepress.weebly.com/

Relevant Article: Three Things I wish I Knew When I Was Single

First I would like to apologize for the gap of the blog posts. I was going through some minor personal issues that was delaying the blog.

OK now that, that is out of the way here

The Relevant article is here

Debra K Fileta is my favorite writers in Relevant Magazine because she does a good job writing on the topic of singleness, dating, and marriage. Here is her book (I might have to check it out one of these days)

 She brings a great point in the article that being single has to do more about who you are than who you are with. We need to take time to true and figure ourselves out and what we are about.

"So many times, our years of singleness are spent focusing on who we’re going to be with, rather than who we are. Countless hours and limitless energy are poured into getting to know the person standing before us, many times, at the neglect of ourselves. We can spend so much time trying to find the right person, that we actually lose ourselves in the process."

On this road of singleness there are A LOT of things that I was able to realize about myself. One being that I have an issue of being vulnerable

I placed myself in countless situations, rushed into them and getting myself hurt, and also I have so much going on between, school, church, and work that to be honest with myself I don't know if I even have time for a girlfriend.

For many of us we have issues with sexual impurity, vanity, greed, or envy, and although no one is perfect and engaging in a Godly relationship is not between two Godly Christians but rather two broken people, these are things that we should work on while single. Many people think

"When I'm in a relationship it'll be easier to deal with my (sexual impurity, vanity, greed, envy..etc)"

When if anything it makes it HARDER.

Lust especially is tougher when you're with someone else, but what I always prided myself on was on the fact that I am a virgin who was going to wait for marriage and my friends would always throw the "What If" scenarios and I would say with pride "Nope I can say 'No'" fast-forward to laying on the couch with my then girlfriend, just us two, and we've been making out for about two hours and I allow my hands to creep up her shirt and under her bra.

I would love to say that was only once but...NOPE...every single time afterwards I felt my hands to the same over and over again. Thank God she was a stronger Christian than me and never allowed things to progressively get worse  but it opened my eyes that I am not as strong as I thought I was. It should not just be the woman's role in the relationship to have self control but the man if anything should be stronger in that area and set the boundaries.

Sometimes it's not even what we are doing that we need to correct but what we are NOT doing (Reading the Bible, serving, praying, fasting)

Many of us are so desperate for a girlfriend or boyfriend that we cram them into a world that they do not fit into yet. Everything has a time and a place, and when we invited Christ into our life, we gave Him authority over every aspect of ourselves including our love life.

In the end of it all it's more about who are than who you are with

"It’s hard not to be single-minded when you’re on the search for love (no pun intended). It’s easy to focus in on your desires in the here and now. But the truth is, finding a relationship is just part of God’s bigger story for your life. I think the most foundational truth that I’ve learned now that I’m a married woman is that my life has far more to do with finding my purpose than it ever did with finding someone to marry."