Dating According to the Bible?: They Lived Happily Ever After

“Happily Ever After” is a fiction that sells movies and destroys relationships! Our culture teaches young men and women to seek out that perfect guy or that perfect girl. It encourages us to find love-at-first-sight, or that eternally blissful relationship. They are told to find that someone who will “fulfill you,” “satisfy your every need,” etc. It’s a nice idea, but in a world full of sin and where your only options are sinners it’s not realistic. And so, sadly, most men and women spend their young adult years searching for a prince charming or goddess who doesn’t exist. Ultimately, their failure is in trying to find a relationship that will do for them what only God can do.

The Bible tells us that God is the one will satisfy and fulfill us. Psalm 16:2 and 11 reveal to us the source of all good things and of true lasting joy. We read:

  ² I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.” (Psalm 16:2)

¹¹ You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.    (Psalm 16:11)

It is only in God that we find “pleasures forevermore.” No relationship can fill that desire. More Psalms describe God’s proclivity towards satisfying us, and our rightful crying out to him for such satisfaction (see Psalm 81:10; 90:14; 103:5; 145:16).

In Isaiah 55:2 God even expressly asks why it is that his people keep trying to satisfy themselves on things that are not from him? In the beginning of the chapter we read:

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.  ² Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.  ³ Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. (Isaiah 55:1-3)

God is telling his people to stop chasing after every other thing to fill themselves with and turn, instead to him. He will satisfy them.

The truth is, when we try to make relationships satisfy us we are actually setting them up to disappoint us. A finite thing cannot fulfill an infinite longing. In his book True Spirituality, Francis Schaeffer wrote:

We are finite, and therefore do not expect to find final sufficiency in any human relationship, including marriage. The final sufficiency is to be found only in a relationship to God. (True Spirituality, 161)

In fact not only will those relationships disappoint us we will ultimately destroy them because of our unrealistic expectations. Again Schaeffer writes:

If we try to find everything in human relationships or if we forget that neither we nor they are perfect, we destroy them. The simple fact is that the bridge is not strong enough. To try to run on to the bridge of human relationships that which it cannot bear is to destroy both the relationship and ourselves. But for the Christian, who does not need to have everything in human relationships, human relationships can be beautiful. (True Spirituality, 161-162).

Human relationships cannot take the place of God, and asking them too puts unbelievable pressure on them and ultimately destroys them.

Putting two sinners together can never equal one perfect relationships. I would not want young men and women to “settle,” I expect them to have some important standards for who they date. But we must all be realistic. No relationship will perfectly satisfy us, fulfill us, or make us eternally happy. That is God’s job. If you begin to view your relationship as your salvation not only will you be disappointed, not only will your relationship be unable to bear the weight, but on top of that you will have committed idolatry. So think carefully about your relationship expectations. “Happily Ever After” does come true, but only with Jesus.