All the Single Ladies: No Short-Cuts

      If you were going to train for a tri-athalon you would probably have a pretty intense workout schedule to follow. Conditioning, running, swimming, biking, and resting would all be incorporated into the plan. You couldn't cut corners or slack off in one area otherwise your performance might suffer. Your race would be subpar because you didn't have the stamina to finish well because of the short cuts you took. How about if you were going into surgery and you knew your doctor wanted to take short cuts. Maybe he wanted to save money so he wasn't going to use the best tools or he wasn't prepared because he was really busy that week or he was very tired and was trying to hurry so he could get to dinner so he cut corners in stitching you up. What if your child's teacher wanted to take short cuts with their learning?
     If we don't want to take short cuts in most areas in our lives why do we think it's okay to take them in relationships? We start dating and instead of taking our time to get to know each other we rush into "love". We don't do the training, deal with our issues, listen to wisdom, have accountability, rest in God, and prepare for marriage. We start taking short cuts. "No, we don't need to date more than six months we are in LOVE. It's okay to be sexually active because we are going to marry eventually. We don't need to work on our issues we will do it together after we get married. We don't need counseling we know each other inside and out. What would they tell us anyway?"
      So many times we see couples not doing the pre-work in their relationships. They take short cuts around the hard stuff. They skip over the obedience to God's will and his idea for what a Godly couple should look like. They want to do everything their way without any accountability  They put more planning into the weeding day then they do for planning for a lifetime of marriage.
    Two months, six months, one year, 5 years, 7, 10 years into the marriage, they look around and say, "What happened? Why are we so unhappy? What went wrong? This is not what I expected!"
     Right....but did you do the work before hand? Did you actually prepare for God's idea of marriage? Did you deal with problems as they came up or push off until after the wedding? Did you figure out how to communicate without using your body? Did you try to figure out what you needed to do to become the wife or husband God wants you to? How many short cuts did you take? It is not a dash to the finish line...it's a choice to not take short cuts, do the work, keep going, and finish well.

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, 

but fools despise wisdom and instruction." Proverbs 1:7