Dating God and Other Bad Ideas

By Nancy Schreyer and Kris Vallotton

Dating God and Other Bad Ideas is not just a book; it is the love story of Jesus and His bride told from the budding romance, through struggles and difficulties, into the wonderful fullness of covenant and fruitfulness. It is not a book of religious advice--it is raw and real, told with transparency and passion. This book will forever change how

• Language: English
• Publisher: Corbin Publications LLC
• Release date: Dec 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9798987216217

Nancy Schreyer

NANCY SCHREYER has a deep passion for seeing the body of Christ mature and come into her fullness: male and female, young and old, each living to his or her full potential as the unique and wonderful gift they were created to be. She loves to teach and release people all over the world into God's supernatural gifts. She and her husband Shannon are honored to serve as the Senior Leaders of God's Place in Ogden, Utah and are blessed with four amazing children, a daughter-in-love, son-in-love, and seven perfect grandchildren!

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Me, a prostitute? An adulterer? Surely not! Perhaps not in the physical, yet throughout the Bible we see numerous examples of human relationships being representative of our spiritual relationship with God. There are examples of a father to his child, a mother to her baby, a king to his subjects, a master to his servants, and even those of a prostitute and an adulterous wife. Dating God is an exploration into the different relationships that can occur between a man and woman and how, many times, our relationship with God may mirror those same situations—good or bad. From a blind date and a budding romance, to the pit falls of dating around or even treating God as a sugar daddy, we’ll discover Jesus’ heart for us and His desire to be in a passionate, fulfilling marriage with His bride.

In the Song of Songs we see a bride and groom deeply in love and longing for each other. In the fifth chapter of Ephesians Paul talks to the church about the balance in a healthy marriage, but he also explains that truly he is speaking about the mystery of the relationship between Christ and His body. Both of these examples speak not only about the corporate body of Christ but also us as individuals in an intimate, spiritual marriage to Jesus. Repeatedly we are shown Jesus’ incredible love for us and His deep desire to be one with us, as a man and wife are one. God meant for marriage to be an earthly example, a reflection, of our relationship with Him.

My prayer is that you will open your heart and take an honest evaluation of your relationship with God—good or bad. Each situation may not apply to all of your life. It may just be one or two areas of your life that you have held back and not com- mitted to marriage. There will be times of laughing, crying, and even blushing and groaning with embarrassment at the realization of how we are truly treating the Lord. But change can’t come without revelation, repentance, and a new mindset, so take a deep breath and let’s dive in. Your soul mate awaits!

Nancy

Section 1:

The Romance

Ah, romance! Nothing captures a woman’s heart, at any age, like a love story. We are known for dragging the men in our lives to chick flicks. It’s a love test. They must pretend to enjoy and relate to even the most predictable, unrealistic story lines, while we sigh, clap, and wipe tears of both sorrow and joy from our mascara-stained faces. We are, by our God given nature, romantics. We believe in the fairy tale. We long for the fairy tale. Some of us spend our entire lives searching for the fairy tale. We dream of being swept off our feet, of our handsome prince fearlessly defending us no matter the foe. We imagine his words, sweet as honey, boldly and passionately declaring his undying love for us, a love that declares our beauty to only deepen with every wrinkle and stretch mark.

Yeah. . . seems ridiculous, I know. But guess what? God is a romantic. We get all that fairy tale stuff from Him. Jesus is Prince Charming---white horse and all! God loves a good love story, and He’s written the very best one, because it really is based in perfect love. His is a love that is always faithful, passionate, and never-ending, that always sees us as beautiful, and never changes no matter how we fail. For so many of us that is almost impossible to believe. So we take our broken views of love and we impose them on our relationship with God. We then try to navigate a healthy relationship with Him based on lies our culture has told us.

But there’s good news. God is out to romance you. In Old English, He is wooing you! Woowoo! He is deeply in love with you and it probably doesn’t look like what you think it does. Jesus is after a bride. He has His eye on you to become His beautiful princess. You are about to begin the fairy tale….and it has an amazing ending.

Once upon time, in a place closer than you think, The Prince longed for His bride……

Jesus is not like any other man, and you will not be like any other woman after you encounter Him.

CHAPTER 1:

The Blind Date

He can’t be all that.

There are many ways in which God relates to us: as our father, brother, savior, judge, healer, comforter, provider---the list is endless. But as we look at the whole picture of a relationship with God, I think the best picture is one of a divine romance. That facet is the most intimate, most precious, most empowering relationship we can have with Him. We spend a lifetime seeking our soul mate, the one with whom we can spend the rest of our lives in true love. (Although men may grunt, shrug, and deny it’s true, we ALL have that desire in us.) When we find that priceless treasure there is something that settles in our spirit, and then we have the wonderful adventure of spending the rest of our lives getting to know that treasure and fulfilling a greater purpose together than we could have had apart.

The desire to be in love begins at a very young age. The desire to be in love with God is created within us when God forms us in our mother’s womb. We were created to be with Him, to know Him intimately. It is as though we have this God-shaped vacuum inside us, a longing that continually draws us towards Him. We may try any number of things to fill that void and stop the vacuum, but nothing completes it except Him. We were created for relationships. The only thing God said wasn’t good about creation was man being alone. Many of us claim adamantly that we don’t need anyone. We are independent, self-sufficient, and relationships are a crutch. I believe if we were honest with ourselves, we would admit we deeply want a relationship but are more afraid of being hurt than we are of being alone. None of us was created to live life alone, and none of us was created to be spiritually single.

When it comes to being romanced by God most of us come from one of three backgrounds:

One: We may have no idea at all who God is. As incredible as this may seem to many of us , there are people all around us who know Jesus only as a name. They literally know nothing about Him. What a wonderful opportunity for Jesus to be able to introduce Himself and for us to get to know Him for who He really is, without looking through tinted lenses that may not be accurate.

Two: We may have some knowledge of God, but all of our information may not be accurate. We may have heard stories or had some experiences we felt were orchestrated by Him, but because we don’t really know Him or we have misinterpreted Him, or because others who talked about Him to us didn’t really know Him, they misrepresented Him to us. If we judge Him by our experiences with the humans around us we are bound to misunderstand Him, to think He has the same faults and weaknesses as others, or that His love is conditional like everyone else’s.

Let me give you an example of someone who thought she knew about God, but when she met Him face to face she found He was completely different and her life was radically changed.

John 4:4-29 NIV

⁴Now he had to go through Samaria. ⁵So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

⁷When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, Will you give me a drink? ⁸(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink? (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

¹⁰Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

¹¹Sir, the woman said, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹²Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?

¹³Jesus answered, Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

¹⁵The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.

¹⁶He told her, Go, call your husband and come back.

¹⁷I have no husband, she replied.

Jesus said to her, You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.

¹⁹Sir, the woman said, I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.

²¹Jesus declared, Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.²²You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.

²⁵The woman said, I know that Messiah (called Christ) is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.

²⁶Then Jesus declared, I who speak to you am he. The Disciples Rejoin Jesus

²⁷Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, What do you want? or Why are you talking with her?

²⁸Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ²⁹Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?

Wow! God didn’t look anything like she thought He would. Let’s look at some of her misconceptions:

She thought she could hide her life from Him.

She thought if He knew about her life He would condemn her.

She thought she could change the subject on Him.

She thought He was just concerned about the rules, not the truth.

She thought if He knew her He wouldn’t love her.

She thought He would treat her like every other man did.

She thought He could offer her only the same thing any other man did.

Jesus is not like any other man and you will never be like any other woman after you encounter Him. You were designed by Him as an exquisitely unique creation, but until you are fulfilled and secure in His immeasurable love, you will spend your life futilely trying to please others by being someone you were never intended to be.

Three: We may have actually known God at one time, but then became offended with Him because we misunderstood Him or disagreed with Him. So we broke our covenant with Him or divorced Him and walked away. This is a difficult heart to deal with, because it has believed a lie and then been injured because of that lie. In order for there to be a restoration there must be an unveiling of the lie, an admission of believing it, forgiveness (on both sides of the relationship), and a deep healing to restore love and trust. It’s a challenging process, but completely doable, and absolutely God’s desire for us.

So,