Your relationship with God is the deepest, most profound and most important part of your soul. Therefore, even as you choose to settle down with someone, you must be able to agree on the issues of spirituality early enough. You must put in mind this principle: you partner should not make you cold or lukewarm in your faith and neither should you. For any relationship to thrive, the parties in it must be willing to work out their own faith even as they grow each other’s faith in the relationship. The apostle Paul actually tells us so.

Philippians 2:12, KJV: “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” … Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear.”

The issue of faith must therefore be a personal issue in the relationship before it becomes corporate. There are several questions that you must address in the effort to keep growing in faith. They are:

• Is this the person God meant for me?

I have intentionally used the word mean tin the place of created because I believe God did not create a specific spouse for you and I. As crazy as it may sound, God only gives “advice and counsel” on the choice of your mate. Out of a population of 9 billion people, anyone could be your mate. Therefore, the question you should ask is, “Does God approve of this relationship?” And we must be careful here because who we think is the best choice for us may not necessarily be the best.

Here’s the secret; good is not necessarily God’s best. And just because s/he is good doesn’t mean s/he was meant for you. Discern!

• Are we spiritually compatible?

You must be able to ask yourself, can we exist together in our faith. Will the issue of faith bring conflict and problems? Here, you address the issues of denominations if you are from different denominations and the issues of the belief system. We serve the same God as Christians, I agree, but the issues of methodology and practicality is different. Are we able to harmonize such? If not then you must make a conscious choice to stay or leave.

• How do I “bring” God into the relationship the “right” way?

Note the words in quotes. I used them that way because I believe it is not about you bringing God into the picture but more of you taking the relationship to God. So how are you able to apply faith the right way without going out of God’s bracket? There are things that may seem right in this period when we are blind in love but are they an enough cause for you to divorce God and marry this potential mate? How is God’s supreme power exercise in your relationship?

• How do we relate spiritually?

This points us back to the issue of being lukewarm or alive in the spirit. You must be able to ask yourself this, “Is my mate able to challenge me to become a better person in my faith or are they the cause for my spiritual downfall?” Your mate must challenge you to be better.

My personal motto for relationships is “growmance before romance.” We must be able to grow all-round even as we anticipate taking our relationship to the next level.

• What if we disagree spiritually?

You must always be prepared for anything. You may have loved this lady or gent but you find that you can never agree on spiritual matters. The hard question must be asked. What do you do? My conclusion as Bp Mwangi is that you must not continue any further into the relationship until this is resolved. Never comprise on faith.

• Am I in denial about the spiritual conflicts?

One of the worst things you can do is to assume whatever you are seeing in the relationship. If there are conflicts, address them and depending on what you agree or disagree on, you can either quit or continue. Don’t assume you can change people’s faith if they are not willing to change themselves. Only the Holy Spirit can change people.

Therefore, the first thing you must deal with is an appropriate stance on dating and your spiritual life. Why? This will help you solve many problems and questions from the onset of the relationship.

Remember, the issue is not how to fit our spiritual life into our dating life, rather it how to fit our dating life into our spiritual life. Trying to interpret God in the context of dating is an upside down way to look at reality.

Love and life are God’s gifts to us and therefore we must bring dating before God and ask for His guidance. Her is a truth we must grasp: The more our lives are surrendered to God, the more He’s able to fashion our lives as we were meant to be.

Acts 17:28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’

As we wind up on this post we must also ask ourselves this question: “What is the fruit of the dating relationship in regards to our spiritual lives?”

Here are several questions we should ask ourselves to find out the fruit of our relationships.

1. Are you drawn to God through that person?
2. Do you have an alliance with the other person in your spiritual walk?
3. Do you experience spiritual growth from interacting with the person?
4. Does the other person challenge you spiritually, rather than you being the impetus?
5. Is the spiritual connection based on reality and authenticity?
6. Is the relationship a place of mutual vulnerability about sin and weakness?

And we also must differentiate between dating a religious person and a Christian. All religious people are not Christians.

Now this is dating right side up!