I was recently at a concert. To be more specific a Niall Horan concert in Brighton! Apart from not knowing any of the songs, it was a great night, however there was something that just didn't sit right with me. How many times have you heard a singer or a vlogger or a celebrity say 'I Love You'. The words are very easy to say. The warm up act for Niall Horan's show said I love you, but she didn't just say it once or twice, but infact said it over and over again. Usually at a concert, you are singing along, but I guess due to not knowing the lyrics I had more thinking time. More time to question 'What Is Love?'.

I believe we live in a culture where words don't mean as much as they once did. We live in a society where promises can easily be broken and lies often become what many see as the truth. So what does I love you mean? No I don't think the warm up act singer meant any harm and infact she probably means those words to an extent, but what does I love you mean?

The Bible has a great deal to say about love. In fact, the Bible says that “love is of God” and “God is love” (1 John 4:7–8); in other words, love is a fundamental characteristic of who God is. Everything God does is impelled and influenced by His love.


Now don't get me wrong love isn't always a romantic love and parental love, you can love friends. I love many of my friends and would say I am very lucky to be able to call certain people my friends however what makes me love them, it's a relationship, a friendship and me knowing them. As a culture have we lost the meaning of love? Did that warm up act, actually mean the words 'I love you' or did she simply mean 'Thank You'. Thank you for coming to the concert, thank you for supporting my music.

I decided to head over to Urban Dictionary (I doubt many Christian blogs would ever use Urban Dictionary as reference, but it's great! If you haven't ever been on it, be careful, you have been warned!) This is what someone wrote for what they think love means:

'I love you” means that I accept you for the person that you are, and that I do not wish to change you into someone else. It means that I will love you and stand by you even through the worst of times. It means loving you even when you’re in a bad mood, or too tired to do the things I want to do. It means loving you when you’re down, not just when you’re fun to be with. “I love you” means that I know your deepest secrets and do not judge you for them, asking in return that you do not judge me for mine. It means that I care enough to fight for what we have and that I love you enough not to let go. It means thinking of you, dreaming of you, wanting and needing you constantly, and hoping you feel the same way for me.'

This is what love is. This is what the fathers love for us is like. Knowing those deepest secrets that you wish no one knew, yet the person who does know, doesn't judge you or look down on you, they love you where you are at. Do celebrities 'love you' or are they grateful for your support. The fathers love for us even when we don't want to talk to God, he is still there for us. We can so hope that our favourite vlogger will tweet us back and when they do, they must love us, but do they? Culture says that famous people must love that person if they reply in less than 280 characters, but as Christians we should be different. We are called to love!

One of my favourite verses is Matthew 10:8. 'Freely you have received so freely give'. What this post isn't saying is to be stingey on telling the people that you love that you love them. Lets be generous, but also be careful that these words stop meaning anything.

One of the most common questions that comes up when we talk about relationships is, "how do I know that he / she is the ‘one’?" I think we’ve all asked the question of whether someone is our ‘one’ at some point, so today we’re going to be looking at what the Bible says about this, and how to choose your bae wisely!

Asking the question of whether you are dating the ‘one’ actually comes out of a place of fear; fear of failure that you won’t be able to make your relationship work. So if that comes from a place of fear we need to take it a step back to a place of fearless and ask ourselves a question ‘how does God see me?’ In the Bible it tells us that if you are a Christian here that God sees you as a son or a daughter adopted into his family. A friend of mine Dan Blythe said something that in a preach once that I love about this subject. He said “We have been adopted into the ultimate royal family, as princes and princesses of the King of Kings. Now, when it comes to relationships, royalty don’t settle for anything other than royalty. So why would we, as members of God’s royal family, settle for anyone who’s not also in God’s royal family? Just remember, ‘bae ain’t bae if bae don’t pray’!

What Is Dating?
When we are dating we are seeing whether him or her are compatible to yourself and vice-versa. The thing we want to discover more about when dating is the persons character, to see if they have been born again (John3:3-8). Does this person share the same desire to more like Christ (Phillipians2:5). Does this person want a relationship where Jesus is bang slap in the middle of it? Does this person push you closer to Jesus or does this person push you away from him?

Have you ever heard someone say my boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife, they are everything to me! Are they your everything? One thing we want to make sure when you are dating is that your boyfriend or girlfriend love Jesus more than they love you. That might sound crazy! But lets look at what the Bible says.


In Matthew 10:37 it says:
37 “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."


Now this bible verse is talking about a mother, father, son or daughter, but lets take that verse and put it to relationships.
“Anyone who loves their boyfriend or girlfriend more than me is not worthy of me.”




Another question that we can often ask is ‘How Young Is Too Young?’
Now this can vary from person to person. Maybe a 17 year old is mature enough to start dating before a 25 year old.




Are you mature enough?
There will be people in this room who will say yes and some who say no, but you need to be honest about it to yourself. Maybe pray about it and ask God for wisdom


James 1:5
“If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him”


Why not ask your Discipler. If you haven’t got one let me encourage you to find someone, find someone who is slightly further down the line with their Christian walk, someone who has more life experience. Maybe that is a youth leader or someone who you are already close to at church, but why should you get advice from other Christians? What does the Bible say?


In Proverbs 12:15 it says;
“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, But a wise man is he who listens to counsel.”

It might be hard to hear their advice, but let them speak into your life. Is it vulnerable…yes! But they are pushing you towards Jesus and are looking after your heart. Start thinking about the future as well, start thinking about University and if that is something you are interested in. Start thinking what is God calling me in life. If he is calling you to be a missionary in Africa and you were to date someone who is adamant that they are staying in Hastings then you need to rethink that, what is God calling you too?





In a relationships you are both very vulnerable to temptation. As emotions begin to develop, the attraction deepens and hormones kick in, the enemy uses this is a weapon. When we get to this point the enemy can use our vulnerability and temptation, mix it in with what the world says a relationship is all about and if we aren’t rooted in Christ and the foundations are secure then we are in for a rocky ride. In a time of life where we are learning more about what a relationship should be in the eyes of the world thanks to Instagram we become more vulnerable, we become more fearful and we feel more pressure of what a relationship should be like. How secure are you to Christ?
Like I said at the beginning dating is the beginning of seeing if a person is marriage material and if you aren’t even considering marriage then maybe you shouldn’t date. Why risk the temptation in the long haul when you could focus on your relationship with God now.

No matter when a person decides to start dating whether that be 15 years old or 50 years old, the timing should always be on a foundation of faith, knowing who they are in Christ and with the person finding out what God is calling them to do. We all know the verse in the middle and it gets used a lot with youth work, but I think this is key to relationships.


A quick practical point, before we end is we all have the ultimate partner. Maybe for you its blue eyes, brown hair, 5 foot 7 inches, interested in video games and sushi whilst loving make up and fashion, but not loving the winter and loving dogs and has muscles and knows every word of the bible in every translation and every language. We have a massive list and if they don’t hit every single thing I want the checklist can be unachievable. You wont find a ‘perfect’ person. You wont find the perfect boyfriend or girlfriend, but remember that if they love Jesus then that is the ultimate call of their life. Of course you need to be sexually attracted to them as well as having a deep emotional connection, but something to think about when looking for a boyfriend or girlfriend.




1 Timothy 4:12
12 Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.


Set the example to the church. Lets be the leaders of this church. Lets show the church that not all young people are sleeping around and doing whatever, but we are putting God bang slap in the middle of our relationships and number one in our lives.

 

Do you ever wonder why God put you where you are? Maybe you live in an area of the UK, or apart of the world where there is war and your town is broken and you call to God and say "God why am I here?!" "I don't understand God!?" "God please can I move elsewhere?!"

I recently moved to the lovely seaside town (totally didn't just Google to see if it was a town or city...what's the difference anyway?). After not living by the seaside for 4 years I have got to admit I am so glad to be back. Every morning when I wake up and open my blinds in my room I get the privilege of seeing God's amazing creation with the sea. What do you see when you look out the window? Maybe it's your garden where everything is orange because of the autumn breeze or maybe you see someone else's room from the flat's across the road, maybe you see a bus stop where you know at 8:36am every weekday, young people get on the bus because you can hear them chatting. Wherever you live, a town, city, countryside or in a boat find things to love about the place you live.

When I post a photo about Hastings on Instagram or Twitter I use the hashtag #LoveHastings. If you are a social media person, whether that be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat why not put #Love(InsertThePlaceYouLive). Find anything from the big to the small. It could be that you really don't like the place you live and you walk past a flower and something about it sticks out - take a photo, document it, enjoy God's creation. Maybe you love where you live - show it off.

I recently worked with a company called NCS, where I had the chance to work with a bunch of awesome young people and I spoke about #LoveHastings. When I asked them what do you love about Hastings, they all responded with nothing, to which I responded, well what don't you like about Hastings then? Oh my if I didn't stop them then I believe they might still be going on with what they don't like. The problem is, being the humans that we are, we can so often get caught up in the negative and not think about the positive of God's creation. But, we may just have to look harder for it and that is what I did with these young people. I got them to look harder for it and they spoke about the good things and it was like a domino effect. One by one they are talking about #LoveHastings.

Maybe you have gotten this far and you are like, OK I guess I can love where I live, but I still don't understand why God has put me here. Trust me when I say, I have been there too. I moved to a town called Whitehawk, in Brighton and when I moved there when I was 10 years old - I had heard bad things about Whitehawk. Basically what I heard was don't move to Whitehawk. But now 12 years later, I love Whitehawk and I am so glad God put me there, because it was there where this journey started and my faith started building. You see, I believe that where you currently live is all apart of God's AMAZING plan for your life! I 100% believe that! Jeremiah 29:11 says this;

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. "

Proverbs 3:5 says "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understandings". This can be so hard. To trust someone else can be such a challenge and everyday we have to take a deep breath and say God, today I want to say I trust you afresh again. God's plan for your life is amazing and isn't there to harm you. Remember God wouldn't put you somewhere if he knew you couldn't handle it. When you feel like you can't handle it, you can't take where you live anymore or the thought of living in New York sounds much more amazing than living in Bognor Regis, remember that you have the God that created the Universe living inside you and he believes in you and if you feel like you can't do it then you have a God who can do anything with you.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths" Proverbs 3:5-6

So love where you currently live, enjoy where you currently. You don't know when that season will end and a new chapter will open. Be thankful to God for what you have rather than what you currently don't have in your life. Love where you live.