5 Ways to Steer Your Teen's Dating Life Without Dictating It

1. Be a Good Listener

Ruth is a great example of a young widow who listened! She was simply following the instruction her mother-in-law gave her when God set her right in front of her future husband. Ruth continued to listen to her mother-in-law, Naomi, throughout the story and God worked provision, care, and a beautiful love story through Ruth's faith and obedience.

There are many examples in Scripture where listening and obedience open our lives to God's guidance and blessing. Like those men and women in the pages of Scripture, we need to be able to listen to the loving people in our lives as practice for listening to God, who can be harder to hear with the ears of our heart.

The skill of being able to take advice from those more seasoned than us can be developed well before the dating years. Having this tool in your teen's skillset will help with marriage happiness later on. Listening is a skill we start teaching our children when they are tiny, and it is a basic life skill that cannot be underestimated in value. Somehow, when we think of dating, we often overlook its usefulness. Tuck the notion of encouraging your teen to listen to seasoned, loving advice from people and the Holy Spirit into your dating discussions.

2. Be Patient

The defining list of love's qualities starts with patience:

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails…1 Corinthians 13:4-8

While it might not be all that flashy or romantic, God tells us patience is foundational to our love lives! As parents, we can talk about this simple truth and model it for our kids. We can show them love expressed through patience as a family norm so that when they approach dating, they know patience and love are like inhaling and exhaling - they simply go together.

My husband and I waited a long time for each other. Once we made it to the altar, I figured we could put a big check mark next to this patience thing and move on to "love is kind" or something else. In reality though, love is expressed through patience always. Everyday. There is no love without patience.

It might be that your teen's dating journey requires patience before the right person comes along. It might be they need patience to wait for marriage but God set their future mate in their life now, the timing for marriage just needs more patience. Jacob is a biblical example of someone who waited a really long time to be able to marry the love of his life (Genesis 29:18), while Isaac waited for God to bring His wife to him until he was nearly 40 years old (Genesis 24). Sometimes we wait while we know who we are waiting for and other times we wait without knowing. But love is always grown and fed on patience.

Just like listening, patience is a quality that will deepen your teen's future marital joy and success. It is a skill that blesses every facet of life, and its value cannot be underestimated. There's no formula for how God will ask us to grow in this quality, but we can know that a true love story, a biblical kind of romance, will include patience in some way.

Photo credit: ©Unsplash/Tim Mossholder

3. Pray

My husband likes to use the passage about the courtship of Isaac and Rebekah (Waiting for God's Match) as an example of a biblical template for pre-marriage relationship qualities to develop while you are waiting for God to write your love story. In Isaac and Rebekah's story, they meet when God brought Rebekah through Abraham's servant to Isaac. But from Isaac's perspective, all this happens while praying in a field. I'm sure he knew his dad had sent the family's trusted servant to bring a potential wife for Isaac, so I'm sure he had a lot to pray about! Would he like this girl? Would she like him? How would all this work out? But the beautiful thing in all this is that we find Isaac praying. The passage doesn't make it sound like this was out of the ordinary for Isaac. It seems as though he had long cultivated his prayer life. So, the passage describing Isaac's love story finds him lifting up his heart to his Lord. And amid the praying, God already has sent the answer on her way.

Teaching our kids to lift their heart's desires to their Lord in the matters of romance is so important! We can teach our teens that God has a plan and provision for their heart's desires. We can share with them how God wants us to talk about those desires, needs, dreams with Him - that none of those wants surprise Him, that He has a plan and purpose for this particular facet of their life.

It seems especially valuable in a time when intimacy has been so misunderstood, misused, and trampled by our culture to diligently and directly teach our children that they are meant to share the felt needs of their hearts with their Maker. It can be hard to discuss these needs and feelings with our kids, and it can be hard for them to discuss them with their parents. But God made us to share our hearts with Him, and this particular part of our lives runs smoother, sweeter, and more pure when we develop the kind of prayer life where we pour out these feelings and desires to our Lord. It's when feelings are stuffed or denied that they sort of ferment into something problematic. But when those feelings and needs are poured out before God, they come into His light, they get out of the corners of our hearts, and we aren't run by them the same way as when we don't get them off our chest.

Practically speaking, you can model this for your teens by praying about their current/future relationships and their heart with them/in front of them. Our family, ends up so busy that sometimes those moments of prayer can be really hard to find and they can be awkward when they aren't part of a regular routine/expectation.

A few years back, we added the practice of Shabbat dinner to our week. In the dinner tradition, the head of the household prays a blessing over each person at the table. This simple act has become a profound and powerful thing for our family. Whether you add Shabbat dinner to your family table or you find another way to do it, adding a regular time of prayer and blessing over the members of your family is 100% worth it and very Biblical (family blessings are an entire study on their own - but God made family to be a conduit of blessing so sharing verbal, out loud, expressions of prayer and blessing will absolutely make your family life more fulfilling).

4. Guard Your Heart

This is a relationship skill our kids can practice before they embark on dating relationships. It's one of the "above all else" -s Scripture gives us. Verses that say "above all else do this particular thing," I pay extra attention to and have highlighted in my Bible.

Guarding our heart is one of those "above all else" verses. And it is really hard to guard our hearts when it is bursting out of our chest with the hope of finding connection, love and all the other dreams we have for romance. Yet we all know that guarding our heart in matters of romance allows us to have healthier and more fulfilling relationships in the present and future.

So what is a litmus test of guarding our hearts in regard to dating? This isn't an entirely Scriptural litmus test, but it is practical and rests on Biblical principles.

-Is the person your teen is interested in a follower of Christ? The Bible tells us not to be unequally yoked with someone who isn't a believer (2 Corinthians 6:14). That is the first test to see if your teen is actively guarding their heart with Biblical wisdom.

-Don't say "yes" if you can't say "no." If your teen can't say "no" in a relationship or end the relationship, they aren't capable of guarding their heart with that person. I've asked many teen girls before they jumped into a relationship if they could see themselves ending the relationship if it became necessary. Most girls are completely shocked at the question. I've also asked if they could see themselves saying "no" for a variety of reasons. Whether it's a "no, I don't want to see that movie" or a "no" on a physical boundary, our kids need to be comfortable setting and respecting boundaries. As parents, we can help them be comfortable with this word by using it and showing them the value of it in our day-to-day decisions. For example, when we say "no" to something, sometimes it means we can say "yes" to something else that is even better! We can also teach our kids to honor boundaries. Too often, the immaturity of youth ignores healthy boundaries, and a lot of unnecessary relationship pain comes from not understanding the value of someone else's (or their own) boundaries. "No" is a great word for all of us to be comfortable hearing and using - as parents, let's ensure we prepare our kids for the journey of dating by helping them with this valuable relationship ingredient!

-Remember J.O.Y. A mentor wisely shared this acronym to quickly test a situation's rightness. Does it honor Jesus (that's the J), others, and yourself? If an action, emotion, relationship or situation doesn't honor Jesus first then it isn't the right one for you! If it doesn't Biblically honor others, then it isn't the right one for you! And if it doesn't honor you as a blood bought child of the King, then it isn't the right one for you!

As a parent, you might also invest the time in reading/discussing a relationship book or doing your own relationship study with your teen. Got Teens by Pam Farrel and Jill Savage has a great relationship contract in it and shows how you and your teen can work through navigating romantic relationships biblically and healthily by communicating the guidelines and framework for relationships. Guiding your teen by setting up expectations in a clear manner will help them guard their hearts.

5. Guard Your Purity

Scripture tells us in Hebrews 13:4 Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.

We live in a day and age where all matters of boundary are viewed dimly. But God doesn't see boundaries the same way we often do. Helping our teens see God's way in truth will help them through their dating journey to have more joy and freedom. God's ways are meant to make life run smoothly, like paving a road. They are not meant to hinder but to help us into the fulfillment, joy, and purpose God intends for us. Talking to our teens about the principle of God's good ways regarding purity can bless them in countless ways.

Help your teen work out ideas to navigate the tension of God wired desire and God instructed purity. Think through activities they can do that are fun and inspire truly getting to know the other person without leaving them unnecessarily vulnerable to temptation. Work through communication skills that will help them guard their purity. And help them know you are there to help them.

Bless your teen by infusing a sense of grace in this part of their life as well. There is no part of the Christian experience that is not sanctified by God's grace. If His grace hasn't marinated a facet of our lives, then it isn't fully reconciled to Him. As your teen learns about this part of their lives, teach them about God's grace. Personally, I feel like I've seen too many bad decisions made simply because someone felt that one slip-up defined them and set them on a trajectory of pain. We don't want our kids to think God's grace is cheap or have an attitude of entitlement toward God's forgiveness or even toward sinful choices. But we also don't want them to ever think that their thoughts, feelings, or actions set them apart from God's grace. Our world says we are defined by our sexuality. And while it can feel like that is true (especially when you are young) I want my son to know the most defining aspect of who he is is not what he does, feels or thinks, but what God has done for Him and what God expresses about His heart toward Him through His word. At the end of the day, grace is a powerful guard because it stands between us and the enemy of our souls. Let's make sure our kids enter the dating world steeped strongly in the grace of God!

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