Unsure which direction to take

[Delightful soul 0]

Hi everyone,

Hope you guys are having a great week.

I just wanted to stop by and say how much I appreciate this site. It has been some time that I have been on here but I always seem to find amazing stuff on here and fellowship from very mature Christians on here.

Anyhow, I have been getting counselling on and off for the past few years and it has been abysmal in that I have found it hard to get a Christian perspective in many ways.

So I guess I am writing here as a final attempt at wanting some clarity.

My dilemma is that I have had guy trouble for many years. I have dated so much since 2008, but have found myself in all sorts of trouble.

Mostly it is that many of these dates, the guys said they were Christian but were not and wanted to sleep with me. Many of them were met online since I Live in a rural area where it is hard to find single men.

IN my town, it is even harder to find Christian ones in my area. Mostly the guys at church are married and the only single ones seems to be either ones with a disability (no offense) or ones who are in the drug rehab centre which is backed by the church and well even though they look, they are not allow to date and to be honest, I'm not up for a troublesome guy or one who is on his way to recovery.

So in my searching, it has been one bad experience after another, so much so it has made me feel as if my old pastor who I am still friends with is right about saying I have a gift of singleness, cause in all honesty, it just doesn't seem to be happening.

But there is this one guy whom I am communicating with. He is a couple of states away from me (I'm Australian) and he is new to the country. I have been getting along well with him and yet I have tried to call things off with him several times. There are many reasons. He is African and many of my friends have said that he may just be wanting to get into the country. Another, is while he says he is a Christian, I am not so sure of his maturity or approach to God.

I am unsure about the whole thing. Yet on the other hand I am wondering why it feels like I am pushing him away cause I am more worried about what my friends would think of me going out with him and if they are right than what I feel when I am skyping or talking with him. He really seems so mature and kind and sensible.

However, there is always that voice in the back of my head saying "am I just past relationship and does God actually want me all to Himself?"

I just have no idea.

I am also very lonely cause a lot of my friends have married and moved on. To be honest, all my friends married really bad guys and so I am also worried that I am being tempted to do the same thing.

THe last time I broke up with this guy was last week and to be honest, I felt so much peace when I thought it was over. There was just me and my cat to worry about. Then he got back in contact with me and said he couldn't stop thinking about me and we basically started talking again. I have so much affection for him, but to be honest, my parents, my pastor, people very close to me, have not really encouraged me to seek a man in my life. My mum used to say all men were bastards and would warn me even as a young girl never to get married and my pastor who is a female and in her 60s and reckons she has the gift of singleness, pretty much thinks the same thing, It is like all the people that are important to me would rather I be single than married.

My pastor said I have a gift of singleness and yet all I have wanted is to be married. Yet at times, I feel that maybe she knows better than me about all this and that the reason I am having such problems with men is that I am meant to be single and that I must die to self or something?

In all honesty, I just feel so out of my depth when it comes to men, I really want to have a man, but whenever, I am in a relationship or semi relationship, I go through this tug of war constantly thinking God doesn't want me to have a man and I end up thinking he sabotaging my dating experiences in order that I remain single.

THis is so huge, but my question is, could someone shed some light on my confusion? Cause this is really exhausting.

[Cholette 0]

Ohhhh, my favorite subject...relationships!

First of all my friend, you do NOT have the gift of singleness. If you did, you would be the first person who knows. You would know based on your lack of desire for marriage and/or if God has spoken to you about being single. Your mother is seems to have her own issues with men and marriage and is trying to put that on you and your Pastor, since she feels she's called to singleness, is using your inability to find a good match for yourself to say that you have "the gift".

I would put off the relationship that you are building with the young man...not because he may have twisted motives or anything, but because I believe this is a season for you to really connect with God. The fact that you are feeling lonely is an indication that you are not experiencing the fulfillment of God. Spend time developing intimacy with Him. It's amazing what God will do within you and allow Him to be your Matchmaker...He's the best at it because he actually created your future husband.

[exo152 0]

I agree with Cholette, mostly because of what you said..."to be honest I felt so much peace when I thought it was over...." I think that is a very clear clue that this isn't the man for you. If he was the right one, the "God" one, you would have no peace at ending the relationship. But the Father loves you and wants to give you your heart's desire. Just because this man isn't the one, doesn't mean the right man for you isn't out there. I think as you seek the Father, and focus on Him, he will be able to bring the right one into your life, at the right time, without any help from you. Even is He has to move him to where you are.
And don't let anyone tell you what "gifts" you do or do not have. If God has given you a gift, you will know it!

[Delightful soul 0]

Thankyou both to Cholette and to Exo. I really needed help in this. I guess for me it has been so hard. But what you said Cholette about feeling lonely is so true, but the funny thing is when I broke up with this guy and cut all contact to the men I had been chatting to, I felt peace and as though it was perfectly ok to be alone.

I have been trying to work on my health and to gain some kind of newness to my life and for some reason I feel that this season of my life is about ME. God told me this several years ago now and it has been so very hard as the moment he told me this it was as if all my friends started to drop off like flies. I even had to confront several of my friends who were in bad relationships and so they punished me by withdrawing themselves from me. I really felt as though God wanted me to confront them and there were some really bad decisions they had been making, all of these women chose to compromise and marry second best and I really mean it. One of these women married a guy who was into some serious sexual immorality and the Lord told me to confront her before they even got engaged. She is now separated from him last I heard. Even though I told all these women the truth, they did not want to hear it and now it seems I am being tempted by the same demons and my own flesh to cave to impatience and try and make a relationship happen. I guess I have to take my own advice.

So I now have only 3 friends, two of whom live so far away from me and the one who lives close is moving away soon. lol

I have to laugh cause I just know it is an end to some seasons. The thing is I changed my name two years ago and as I did, the Lord has been cutting off the old me and birthing me into the new me. Part of this has been to end the toxic relationships I was involved with mostly with women. I have all my life attracted needy and problematic women. Most of these women have had eating disorders and sexual abuse problems, all of them very damaged in some way, not that this is a reason to not love them or be in their lives, but I felt the Lord challenge me as to why I always attracted these troubled people into my life. It was as if I needed to be needed and that I actually was in relationships only to rescue and be a sound board. It was very draining and taxing on my life. I felt none of these women ever wanted to have 'fun', all they wanted to do was complain about their lives and go in circles. Pretty much what God has shown me I was doing in a way. They say insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

So now God has wiped my slate clean so to speak and everything is all new. I feel like a new woman and now that I am free of all these entanglements, it is as if I have no idea how to have fun myself and yet I am so hungry for it.

I felt as though God was saying that now was the time to get fit and healthy and to begin to do things that made me happy.

I haven't even gone to church for months cause I found that church was so boring and religious and full of people with problems. I mean I couldn't even walk into a church without some person with mental issues sitting next to me and dumping all their problems onto me. So I thought to myself, 'does God even want me here". I know some of you reading this may think I'm not doing the right thing but for the first time in my life I decided to opt out of pew sitting and just hold Jesus hand and enter into the day to day relationship with him.

I'm now often reading chapters of scripture and am more close to HIm than ever and I have been delivered of the need to please people.

A woman I went to church with even stopped calling me once I left their church and we had been so close but I am sure now she has avoided me as she sees me as 'straying from the flock'.

This is so judgemental and typical of a lot of church culture as they are taught to fear and I honestly believe God is doing something amazing in my life right now. I feel as though I am hidden in His cave and that it is just me and Him. I honestly feel so close.

The only thing I felt I was rebelling in was in venturing out to find a man. I felt that I was sinning.

I never thought I would feel like I was sinning in going to church, but I do. It just feels like I am going around the same stupid mountain.

I go there and people try and put me in a box or make me 'serve' and join their programs. I sit in the church and sing a few songs that they say is worship and they preach a palatable message and then the service finishes, everyone gets into their clicks and says a polite hello but they actually don't want to get close, then some disabled guy comes up to me and tries to crack onto me or some nutty lady starts talking to herself in some kind of schizophrenic psychosis and so I go home feeling like a bloomin wreck, exhausted and as though I achieve nothing. If I want to worship God I can do it in my own home. If I want to be treated like an outcast I can find better places to go and have more fun being abused.

I guess I am over it and in all of this the Lord is saying to me, "I never told you to go, you deserve to be treated with respect and honoured". It is as if I need to enter into what God is doing and all these men I have been chasing have just been stalling and wasting time.

I know I have said a lot here. I thankyou for your input.

I know that I need peace to be my umpire.

Thanks guys.

DS

[Godswill 0]

Hello DS, actually you've said pretty much of things here and in a nutshell let me advice you as thus: do not try to live your life by the dictates of any kind of human being no matter who the person may seem to be or let me say irrespective of what the social status of such person is etc.

Do not make any doctrine driven church your church rather than Christ's alone or else you will be done for, as you will be highly induced to believing them rather than the gracious lovely word of God himself. Merely judging from your write up context here; I can vividly perceive that your church has gradually become very much influenced by their active work of rehabilitation of those mentally unstable people in the church. And as a result, ofcourse over the time, has become so much acclimatised with that rehabilitating cultural mechanism of theirs and now however, they are not only trying to condition the mindset and psyche of the mentally challenged people alone but also seem to be imposing the same dogmatic philosophy on everybody within the church. This is a gradual process of introducing that demonic cultural system of theirs which is to generally recondition the mind of people all in the name of church of christ just for all to believe in their imposed idea or philosophical doctrine which is baselessly far from the gospel our Lord jesus christ but only from the pit of hell far from the gracious and lovely word of our good God, and that is what is now happening in several churches today by the anti christ. But you can only try to be yourself, read and meditate on the living word of God and do welcome the holy spirit of God to always teach you the real will of God.

Nevertheless, do not allow the negatively inculcated marital experience of your mother to even rule your mind; neither do you allow the negatively inherited marital experiences and cultures of your ex girl friends and your environs to rule your mind too. These are some of your major problems right now so to speak. I think you would undoubtedly require some psychological attention or counselling in that perspective so that your mindset can gradually be recoded in the direction of the light of God. Why this is important is because you've been deeply influenced both by your mother, pastor and friends to believe that marriage is dangerous, risky, bad, etc. So you must first of all have to disconnect yourself from such a paraded fallacy, since marriage is really a divine institution for our happiness and comfort and even our Lord Himself said that two are better than one and therefore a very good thing, most especially when such is divinely discerned by being directed by the holy ghost. Do fully disregard the senseless ideology of so called gift of singleness. So just free your mind and ask the spirit of God to guide your heart and soul as you get hooked up with someone of your dream and fullness of joy and gladness. The very first one to listen to is your inner man and that is your spirit man, as he is the very person to guide you and tell you that this is your guy by giving you this sign of: inexplicable joy and inner peace of mind as you find that special soulmate of yours. Don't manage love at all nor do I advice you to be desperate for that whether or not all your friends are all gotten married, yours is on the way and please don't be racial about it because god can send your man from anywhere whether black, red, white, or yellow, rich or physically poor etc. All men are not the same but all you need is your own rib. It's God's doing and not carnally motivated. So just follow God and your inner man and don't allow anybody to tell you that since he is a black African that means he just wanna take advantage of the relationship to come over there; as it might or might not be so. I myself is a very God fearing black African and love all language and people and am sure that I can marry anyone the Lord gives to me no matter where she comes from.

So please I want to conclude by telling you to disregard the deadly demonic lies to make you believe that your home sole fellowship with God is better than a christian corporate gathering of the saints but you can find a church that matches your taste and do not fail to recognise your own gift from the Lord and effectively develop and meekly utilise that for betterment of humanity according to the will of God as it is so rewarding. God bless you all.