Before romance became an ally for me, it was a terrorist, because it had become a god.

It was a subtle god, of course. But subtle gods — money, sports, career success, relationships — often wield more functional authority than the gods of organized religion. You may find more devotion in sports arenas, movie theaters, board meetings, and social media threads than in many pews. And the worshipers of those gods gather seven days a week. Through my teens and twenties, I read my Bible regularly and rarely missed church, but if you watched really closely, you might have assumed that marriage, not God, was the only pleasure great enough to fill my restless soul.

I dated too young, and too often, and took those relationships too far, emotionally and physically. Through those failures, I discovered just how desperately I needed forgiveness and redemption. And I learned that dating (and marriage, and sex, and family) would never satisfy all I desired. Because romance had become a god, I betrayed God — the one true and living God — to serve my golden calf. Relationship after relationship, I was burning down the gold he had given me to fashion something that might more immediately meet my longings.

By God’s grace, like Saul along the road to Damascus, romance was dramatically converted in my story from murderous terrorist to servant of Christ. So if you, like me, have bowed at the altars of romantic affection and intimacy, I hope to open your eyes to a greater Love (and a greater, more fulfilling vision for earthly love). I hope you’ll begin to see how romantic love is simultaneously at the core of what’s right and beautiful about this world (hence why dating and marriage can be so thrilling and satisfying), and yet also at the core of what can be so wrong (why the two can be so destructive and devastating).

Your Good Desires for Love

My desire for romantic love, even as a naive, impulsive teenager, wasn’t totally dysfunctional. I was experiencing something that God had created in me. After all, he himself says, “He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord” (Proverbs 18:22). That means he who wants a wife wants a good thing, and wants favor from God.

“Healthy and happy marriages find their health and happiness in that future marriage.”

We see the goodness of romance in the very first paragraphs of Scripture. Notice how the first six days of God’s masterpiece come to a climax: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness . . .’” (Genesis 1:26). He’s lit the stage, hung the moon, carved the seashores, formed the mountains, planted the flowers, unleashed the birds, and uncaged the bears. Now he’ll put something of himself on that wild and wondrous stage — he’ll pick up handfuls of dust and mold the kind of creature his Son will one day be.

So God created man in his own image,in the image of God he created him . . .

But that’s not all he said. And that he says more gets to why I innately had such high, even unrealistic expectations of romance.

So God created man in his own image,in the image of God he created him;male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26–27)

Not just male, but male and female. And a few verses later, they were no longer separately male and female, but one flesh. When God sculpted his image into creation, he didn’t just make a man — he made a man and a woman, together. He made a marriage. Marital love, at its best, tells the story the universe was made to tell, about the love within God himself (Father, Son, and Spirit), and the love of that Son for his bride, the church.

Our desires for romantic love (again, at their best, when they’re burning as God himself kindled them to burn) draw us into the love that formed the earth and every other planet, the Milky Way and every other galaxy. Marriage is a wondrous gift, given by a generous Father, to help lead his sons and daughters to their greatest possible joy.

Your Bad Desires for Love

It didn’t take long, though, for that one-flesh sculpture to crumble. The honeymoon was devastatingly short (at least in the story we’ve been given). Almost as soon as we find the two together, naked and blissfully unashamed, Satan slithers between them and turns them against each other.

When we read Genesis 1–2, we can hardly imagine what a relationship like that might be like, a love without fear or suspicion, without secrets or grudges, without sin or pain. Neither ever needing to say sorry. Then the serpent raided their home, overturned the marriage bed, and started a fire in the living room. It’s stunning, isn’t it, just how quickly sin turns this love story into a horror film.

Now, for the first time, they’re hiding (Genesis 3:8). They’re suddenly afraid of the God who had been their safety (verse 10). Within a few sentences, the husband’s pointing fingers (verse 12). They’re having their first fight as a couple (verse 15), the wife wrestling her groom for the steering wheel. They meet pain (verse 16), which shows up at their front door and never leaves. And their work grows hard, and not just hard, but frustrating and ineffective (verses 17–18). Worst of all, they’re evicted from Paradise, leaving them wandering without God (verses 23–24). His presence had been their address, their foundation, their first and only home. And when it comes time to have children, they give birth to anger, rivalry, and death (Genesis 4:1–8).

As soon as God was uprooted from the center of their union, and they from the safety of his garden, romance was no longer spiritually safe. Their nakedness was now a vulnerability. And two thousand years later, it’s really not any safer or easier out on the dating scene. Adam and Eve’s fall is a warning that, for as beautiful, even divine, as romance can be, it can also be dangerous, even deadly.

Rehearsing for the Real Thing

I wasn’t completely wrong about romance, even as a teenager. I was wrong because I expected from romance what I would find only in God, and then demanded that the true God deliver my god (and that he overnight it). And then I was surprised when I didn’t get what I wanted and ended up lonelier and more miserable than before.

Make no mistake, romance captures worship. Idolatry like mine explains why sexual sin runs rampant. It’s why the demonic empires of pornography make billions of dollars every year. It’s why we see so much divorce. It explains a lot of depression and suicide. Our desires for love, however, in their deepest, purest, most intense expressions, are desires for a Marriage beyond marriage. You won’t be freed from all the frustration, confusion, and heartbreak of romance worship until you see this.

One day, heaven will come to earth, Christ will return on the clouds, and we’ll have a wedding:

Let us rejoice and exult     and give him the glory,for the marriage of the Lamb has come,     and his Bride has made herself ready;it was granted her to clothe herself     with fine linen, bright and pure. (Revelation 19:7–8)

Then Jesus will sing the Groom’s anthem over us: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23). He came to pursue her, he died to redeem her, he rose to secure her, and he’s coming to bring her home. How will we remember these brief years of unwanted loneliness, or persistent conflict, even of paralyzing betrayal when we see the blazing fire in his eyes, when we hear the warm rumble in his voice, when we feel the passionate strength of his embrace?

Healthy and happy marriages find their health and happiness in that future marriage. They’re content because their contentment doesn’t rest finally in each other. They receive these years of matrimony, even decades together, as a blessed rehearsal for the real thing.

Romance of Orthodoxy

In this case, however, we don’t have to wait for the wedding to enjoy the pleasures of the romance. Through faith, Christ is already yours. Even though you are not yet the glorified you that you one day will be, you already have “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” in him (Ephesians 1:3). G.K. Chesterton famously writes,

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. (Orthodoxy, 143)

The apostle Paul, an unmarried man himself, had tasted that sweeter, fuller romance: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). And if he had married, he still would have said the same. He knew no wife could have possibly made him happier than Jesus could (and so he actually may have made a good husband).

Your desires for love are, at root, good. They’re innate, inescapable desires for Christ. And yet sin distorts our desires for love and leads them astray (sometimes far astray). That means romance can be a friend or a god, an ally or an enemy. So don’t run from your holy desires, and don’t idolize them. Make your earthly loves (or potential earthly loves) serve your first and greater love for God.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15285223/the-helmet-the-sword-and-the-seriousness-of-the-war

God created men to be strong and faithful leaders, especially in their families and churches. Becoming that kind of man does not simply happen, however; we need to train ourselves for godliness and Christlike leadership (1 Timothy 4:7–8).

To grow as men, we follow Jesus — the only sinless man, the God-man, who alone provides us righteousness and the perfect example of how to live. But we also follow the footsteps of those who followed or foreshadowed his (1 Corinthians 11:1). Joshua, though predating the incarnate Christ, can serve as one such example, especially for younger men.

Joshua teaches us that leading well starts with realizing that all you are, have, and accomplish depends on God’s gracious provision. Joshua knew this deeply, even in his younger years, as he served God and led the people into the promised land. I would like to highlight four traits from Joshua that men young and old need today: humble confidence, humble dependence, humble submission, and humble patience.

1. Humble Confidence

At key times in Israel’s history, even as a young man, Joshua stepped forward as a great example of humble confidence. One of the first times we meet Joshua, we see his faith in action, trusting God against the tide of popular opinion.

Joshua took part in a search party sent into Canaan to spy out the land God had promised. The spies returned with a dismal prediction about Israel’s ability to take on the “giants” in the land (Numbers 13–14). Joshua and Caleb were the only two (of twelve) who urged the people to take the land, because they believed God’s word (Numbers 14:7–10). They knew God’s track record and his power to keep his promises. Their confidence was not in themselves but in the God they served.

Here we see one quality that set Joshua and Caleb apart from the rest of the Israelites — they believed the promises of God. They were not intimidated by the size of the warriors or the strength of the cities. Rather, they knew their God and remembered how he had dealt with Egypt, then the most powerful nation on the earth. If God could take care of the mighty Egyptian army, he could certainly take care of the Canaanite tribes. God rewarded Joshua’s and Caleb’s faith by exempting them from the entire generation of Israelites who would perish in the wilderness (Numbers 14:29–30).

Humility and confidence might seem like opposites, but in Joshua and Caleb, we see they are two sides of the same heart. When we find our identity and security in God, we can rest in knowing that our frailty and sin no longer define us. We can walk in the strength that God supplies, even when we are rightly aware of how weak and sinful we are. In fact, God only chooses and empowers those who know how little we can do on our own.

2. Humble Dependence

Joshua could be considered one of the greatest military leaders in history. He led the armies of Israel to victory against far more powerful enemies. Without minimizing Joshua’s gifts and abilities, he knew that God is the one who ultimately vanquishes his people’s foes. He learned this early in his military career, as he led the people in battle against the Amalekites. Exodus 17 tells the story of God’s provision:

Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword. (Exodus 17:11–13)

The outcome of the battle depended on something entirely outside of Joshua’s control. Yes, he fought with great courage, but all the while, he realized that the battle belongs to the Lord. The same was true even when the victories were not as supernaturally obvious. God had promised to give the land of Canaan to his people, and Joshua’s trust in God’s power and faithfulness gave him the faith he needed to be the leader God called him to be.

Even when the challenges before us are not nearly as dramatic as Joshua’s, the basis of our confidence is still the same faith — faith not in ourselves or even in the gifts and talents God has given us, but faith in the God who is the Creator, sustainer, and provider for every breath, heartbeat, and victory in life. Joshua’s example reminds us that any skills, opportunities, accomplishments, or victories come as gifts from our gracious Creator. He deserves all the credit for any good in our lives.

We can regularly remind ourselves of this by asking the apostle Paul’s rhetorical question in 1 Corinthians 4:7: “What do you have that you did not receive?” Realizing that God is the source and end of all he gives us leads to humble confidence, and that confidence frees us to follow his will and be used as he sees fit.

3. Humble Submission

As a young man, Joshua learned to trust God’s word, and it guided his life. He knew God’s promises are trustworthy, so he followed his plan even when the challenges were great. God’s word became the core of his confidence, as we see in God’s exhortation to him before the people entered the land of Canaan:

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. (Joshua 1:8–9)

God calls Joshua to be strong and courageous based on his trust in God’s word. A godly man’s confidence, likewise, does not depend on his own abilities or the opinions of others to predict the outcome of circumstances; rather, it depends on what God says is true. When we submit to the authority of the word of God, we are trusting in the character of God. In our day, one’s desires in the moment have become the primary guide for many, but men of God buck that trend and live rooted in the unchanging teaching of the Bible.

4. Humble Patience

The best leaders are men who have learned to follow well. They faithfully contribute to the objectives of a team, even if they do not have a title or position. Joshua’s submission to God translated into his submission to the leader God placed over him.

Joshua served as Moses’s assistant when he was a young man (Exodus 17:8–16). After being chosen, he filled that role with patience for forty years. We are told that when Moses would go into the camp, Joshua “would not depart from the tent” (Exodus 33:11). It must have been deeply challenging at times to serve the people in Moses’s shadow, but we get no indication that Joshua was anything but a dutiful encouragement to Moses and an energetic partner in the mission. His commitment to patiently serve shaped him into the man who could lead God’s people into the promised land.

The lessons Joshua learned as a young man shaped him into an old man who could be trusted as a godly leader. And because of his leadership, “Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the Lord did for Israel” (Joshua 24:31).

Joshua’s trust in God and his word formed him into a man of humble character. His confidence, dependence, submission, and patience offer powerful glimpses of Jesus, who perfectly lived out these qualities as our substitute and example. May God give many young men in the coming generation the ability to trust their God and lead with Christlike character.