Navigating Quiet Time with Your Significant Other
Amber Ginter
When my fiancé and I started dating almost five years ago, the thing that drew us to each other was our authentic and intimate relationship with our Creator. From the outside looking in, I knew that Ben was a real Christian. And by that, I mean a guy who didn’t just attend the same Christian college as me but was totally sold out on Jesus.
Prior to dating, I’d met a lot of guys. But just because they attended the same Christian college as I didn’t mean they were as serious about Jesus as I was. In fact, just the opposite was often true. There was a reason that I didn’t date a single soul until Ben, and another reason that only the Lord knows why I had to wait so long to ask where he’d been all my life.
I get the feeling that maybe you can relate.
Once Ben and I started dating, it quickly became apparent that he felt the same way about me that I did him. On one hot summer evening, he popped the question: Would you like to go on a date with me? At twenty-two years young, I was baffled. Between compliments that I was a “rare gem,” and he loved my “authentic heart for Jesus,” I was in awe. A relationship like this was what I prayed to receive.
Now five years later, I can honestly tell you relationships truly do shape our lives—romantic or not. Some may come, and some may go, but one thing that must remain a constant in singleness, dating, engagement, and marriage is your relationship with your Creator. Especially, your quiet time with Him.
So, what does this practically look like? And how should it look? While there are no hard and necessarily fast rules to abide by, here are three tips for intersecting romantic love and quiet time with your significant other.
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Maintain Your Own Quiet Time
Regardless of your marital status, I firmly believe that we must prioritize our quiet time with Jesus and just Jesus. While I do believe that reading Scripture together is also important and key (see tip two), we must remember to maintain our own quiet time.
I’ll be honest, when I first started dating Ben, all I could think about was Ben. Literally. Even when I tried to read my Bible, pray, and talk to God, I found myself wandering to my earthly relationship instead of my relationship with my Creator. Over time, those initial intoxications and obsessions with Ben died down and I was able to maintain my focus on Jesus because I stayed committed to Him.
Even when dating or married, it’s possible to create time for just you and Jesus. It may be a challenge, but I promise it is something you should give time and effort to. Jesus comes before everything. Even the ones He’s given us to love here on earth. And by focusing on Him in an intentional and undivided time, we’re able to love them more. -
Create Quiet Time with Your Significant Other
While the quiet time between you and God is of the utmost importance, I do not believe that your relationship with God should be in insolation from your spouse, fiancé, or significant other!
It’s clear from the Scriptures that God made us for relationships. This is why in Genesis, a man leaves his parents and cleaves to his wife. We were created for God and each other. So, it’s a given that we should also create a shared space for quiet time with God.
For Ben and I, we make sure to spend our own quiet time with God but to also integrate Him into our relationship with each other.Amber Ginter is a teacher, author, blogger, and mental health activist who resides in the beautiful mountains and cornfields of Ohio. She loves Jesus, granola, singing, reading, dancing, running, her fiance Ben, and participating in all things active. She is currently enrolled in the Author Conservatory Program and plans to pitch her book: Mental Health and the Modern Day Church for Young Adults soon." -
Know that Quiet Time May Look Different for Everyone
About 3 years into Ben and I dating, a friend asked me this question: “How do you bring up God in your relationship and make Him an active part of the said relationship?” It was a thoughtful question and got me thinking. But I truly believe that God should always be an active part of any relationship—even if that looks different for you and your spouse than it looks for Ben and me.
More than anything, I think it’s important for those in relationships to remember that it’s only by God’s grace, love, and mercy that we can partake in relationships with others—including those we romantically love. The best gift we can thus give back to Him, then, is ourselves and every part of our relationships.
Ben and I have individual and shared quiet time, but prayer, devotionals, and reading together, look different every season. And that is okay. God didn’t create us to get stuck in specific ways of spending time with Him. It was just a command to love Him with all of our heart, soul, and mind, and love others like ourselves. This frees us to use a variety of tools to seek Him. Some weeks, that means journaling, others it means listening to podcasts, spending time in worship songs, doing word studies, and the list goes on!
At the end of the day, spending quiet time with God should be a priority for us no matter our relationship status. For those of us in relationships and are tempted by the push and pull of romance to focus on other things, let us be encouraged that God gave us relationships to glorify and point others to Him. His relationship with us as the Church is the true edification and marriage of the Lamb. The Bride and the Son becoming one.
May our relationships be a mere imitation of the Love that will one day come for us. Let us look forward to a time when we will sing our praises in quiet time not only with the King of Kings but all those who worship Him.
Agape, Amber
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Amber Ginter is a teacher, author, blogger, and mental health activist who resides in the beautiful mountains and cornfields of Ohio. She loves Jesus, granola, singing, reading, dancing, running, her fiance Ben, and participating in all things active. She is currently enrolled in the Author Conservatory Program and plans to soon pitch her upcoming book: "Mental Health and the Modern Day Church for Young Adults". |