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.

ISAIAH:
Isaiah was written by Isaiah, son of Amoz. His name means ‘The Lord is salvation’ and was written between 740BC and 680. Isaiah lived during the period marking the expansion of the Assyrian Empire and the decline of Israel. The king at the time was pressured into making some decisions and Isaiah warned Judah that he sin would bring captivity at the hands of Babylon. The visit of Babylonian kings enjoys the Hezekiah set the stage for this prediction. Now Isaiah did also predict that God would redeem and restore his people from Babylonia and although during this book we see Gods judgement and salvation, we also see a side of God of him never leaving us. After a quick stop tour of the theology of Isaiah you might be thinking ‘What has this got to do with me?’



This blog is about rejection and this can be a sensitive area, an area that sometimes can bring up hurt and pain from the past. Rejection is something that everyone at some point in their life faces. Rejection in life can come at us from a variety of different ways. From being chosen last at school, to have a relationship break down or even not being in the right friendship circle, rejection happens in one form or another for every single person on Earth. For you it might have been you asked someone out and they said no, or we were chosen last in sports at school or even for someone of us it could have been that our mum or dad haven’t been around and that is where we feel rejected. It might have been none of these, but I am sure that we can all think of one time in our lives were rejection has hit us and we feel alone. Rejection is apart of our life here on Earth, but when rejection comes we have to ask a question. How do we react? Do we now embrace or live in fear of rejection?


Isaiah 41:10
“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand”

For your generation we can see how much fear of rejection grips us. To do this all you have do it take a look at social media. We are all on some form of social media. Whether that be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat or Tumblr, most of us will be on something. Social Media is now no longer just a place online for us to share content and connect with others around the world. A lot of people now use Social Media as an affirmation device. When we upload a selfie to Instagram, we ask ourselves a question. That question being ‘Am I Liked?’ or ‘’Am I Accepted?’. We want people to like our funny status, we want to get love on our new selfie on Instagram. We know this because we become fixated on the number of ‘likes’ or ‘thumbs up’ we get for something and I am all sure you have done that thing, where you upload a photo to Instagram and you realise you only get 3 likes and so when you think no one is looking you give it a little deleted. You see we delete it because we feel like we haven’t got the acceptance or affirmation that we wanted from our following or friends. Although this specific example is about social media, at some point in our lives we face rejection in some form or another. When rejection hits it is easy for us to develop a fear of further rejection. This fear of rejection stops us from taking risks and it stops us from trying again. When we get our affirmation from Instagram and then our photo doesn’t get the likes, so we delete it, we then reject ourselves and think we can’t do it, which then stops us from telling our friends about Jesus. All of a sudden we start thinking “What if I tell my friends about Jesus and what if it goes wrong. What if they no longer want to be my friend?”. Fear of rejection can have such a stronghold on us and this is something that each and every one of us need to keep an eye on to make sure this doesn’t grip our lives. When this fear has ahold of our lives we become limited to what God has called us to do and holds us back from all that God has for us.

We can spend our whole life trying to get people to like us and accept us. Whether that be right now at school or at college or at university or when you start your job or when you retire, there will always be times where we want people to accept us and give us the ‘like’ that we want. The good news is if you are a Christian in this room, then you have already received the one ‘Like’ that truly matters, that one like that truly makes a difference in your life. Did you know that when Jesus died on the cross, he didn’t say, ‘When you are good enough I will accept you’ or ‘when you attend church for 10 weeks in a row then I will accept you’. No he says during our sin he accepts us.

Romans 5:8
8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

The bible says that while we were still sinners, Chris died for us. If anyone has the right to reject us, it is Jesus, since he knows out every thought, works and action, past, present and future! Yet he still chose to accept us. We will always have moments of rejection by man, but we have been and always will, accepted by our Maker. So lets all that revelation of love and acceptance to enable us to overcome the fear of rejection.


Isaiah 41:10
“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand”

When we do have a fear of rejection, why not believe this truth. Take the first part of the sentence. So do not fear! Who hear believes that this is the word of God? Who believes that God doesn’t lie. So if you believe that God doesn't lie and that he is for us and that this is the word of God, breathed through God and the Holy Spirit then we need to believe this truth. To be #Fearless we need to believe this in our heart. Do not fear. We don’t need to have fear, why? Because of the next part of the sentence. For I am with you! When we are going through rejection, when we have had that no, or chosen last, or whatever it might be we know that God is with us. God is with us, through the good times, the times where we are on fire for God, on fire with trusting God where it is easy to believe yes my God is with me, but when we have hit that rejection, when we have hit the loneliness that can follow rejection, we need to hold onto the truth that my God is with me right now. Through the high times and through the low times my heavenly father is with me. In fact you might be experience rejection right now, you might have a father who has rejected you and you might be struggling to believe that our heavenly father won’t reject you, why not pray and say God I don’t know if I can believe that you won’t reject me or believe that you are always there for me, but God please show me you are there, show me you won’t reject me, show me you are there, show me you won’t leave me.

I WILL STRENGTHEN YOU
When we work out, we get muscle, we become strong. We use weights to gain physical muscle on our body and when we get muscle this means we can carry and hold more things and more weight. Now if you are to imagine that spiritually. How do we become spiritually strong, through spending time with God, building on a relationship with Jesus. Without the weights we can’t get strong, and without Jesus we can get spiritually strong. The more spiritually strong we are. When fear of rejection hits us, we are strong enough to be able to combat it, take the weight through Christ and keep pushing forward.


I WILL HELP YOU
OK, so we spiritually work out, we pray, we worship, we are filled with the holy spirit, but I still feel like I can’t go on, I dont know if I can do it. Well we have the good news the the God that put every single star in space in all the universe is there to help you, you sitting in the Hastings Centre on that seat wants to help you. You never have to do anything on your own and you can trust him. When you get rejected and you feel on your own and you feel like you can’t keep going forward you know you have God with you and in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

A lot can change in 24 hours. Maybe you go from having no money to winning the lottery or you go from having a fully working car to a car that is in the garage, well for me 24 hours ended up with me in hospital. Let me break it down:

Saturday
A chilled day and all of a sudden the worst back ache of all time. I thought it might have one of those weird aches you get when you sleep in a bizarre position. As the day went on the pain got worse.

Sunday
The pain in the morning was awful, but I had the privilege of doing a talk for our people on Soul On Sunday. I was talking on God as Father and I didn't want to let people down, so I went to do the talk and it was the toughest talk I have ever done; standing up was becoming more and more of an issue. Most Sunday's after church I will go round my girlfriend, Maddi's house where we will chill out, but all of a sudden I became extremely tired and just needed a nap. When I woke up, things got worse, I woke freezing cold. It felt like I was in the North Pole with only my swimming trunks on, however my actual body temperature was very different, I was really hot and sweaty. The problem was I couldn't get out from under the duvet because I was feeling cold, but my body temperature was so high that I needed to get out of the duvet. As time went on I start to get really bad stomach pains to go with the back pain. Eventually Maddi and her Dad took me to hospital where I was seen by a bunch of doctors; even though I was in so much pain I still managed to invited someone to church. Although I wasn't thinking straight, I was on the verge of passing out, having panic attacks and being delusional I knew that this doctor needed to be invited to church. We arrived at the hospital about 6:30pm where I was seen by an Out Of Hours doctor who admitted into A&E. I was on a bed, in A&E from about 8:15pm till1:00am when they moved me to a ward, to be monitored, and told me that I would be staying overnight and having scans in the morning.

Monday
The doctors thought it might have been appendicitis or suspected kidney stones, so they scanned for that, but instead they found something was wrong with my lung. In fact it wasn't anything to do with my appendix or my kidneys it was a bad lung infection. It was about 4:00pm and I hadn't eaten for about 30 hours and I was being sick, but had nothing in my stomach to be sick with so it hurt so much every single time. I was just in constant pain all the time.

Wednesday
About 7:00pm I was released from hospital with antibiotics and pain relief. I was able to sleep in a comfortable bed where I was monitored by my girlfriend and her family and I got to catch up with I'm A Celebrity and Secret Life Of A Four Year Old.

Friday - Sunday
For those who know me and know by my commitment to things, know I don't like missing out on things, especially when it's to do with Conferences or events. Just in case revival breaks out, I want to be there. New Ground hosted the Connect Conference and looking back on it, I probably shouldn't have gone with my health being what I was, but I knew I wasn't going to miss out on so much. Friday evenings meeting was a struggle. I thought I would be OK, but the pain was bad. On Saturday I left a service early, the pain had become to much and as I went into the foyer I had to try and breath, calm down and not have another panic attack. Someone who was at the conference came and saw I was in a bit of discomfort and once I explained offered to pray for me. He prayed for me 4 times. Colossians 4:2 says;

"Be persistent in prayer, and keep alert as you pray, giving thanks to God."

Even time we prayed the pain in my stomach and lung area became less and less and eventually completely went. The next day when I woke up the pain was still gone and I was able to enjoy the Sunday morning service pain free. At the end of the service a good friend of mine came up and prayed for me as I was still having some back pain, as he prayed the pain in my back went and I was pain free again. I wasn't healed by these guys, but by Jesus Christ. These guys have authority to command pain to go, but essentially its God who takes the pain away. These guys were just obedient to the word. It's now a week since I have been prayed and the pain is still gone.

I am so thankful for the doctors who looked after me over the four days I was in hospital. I am so thankful for God who gave them the knowledge and medicines for them to help. I am even thankful for those doctors who woke me up at 4:00am when I had been asleep for 20 minutes to take my blood levels and blood samples. I am thankful for my family who drove up from Brighton and stayed until 3:00am even though they had work at 9:00am. I am thankful for my girlfriend's family for looking after me and caring for me. I am thankful for my friends for coming to visit me and praying with me. And I am thankful for everyone who sent me text messages, Facebook messages or just prayed for me during this time. Thank you.

 

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.