Two sisters, trying to make sense of it all...

Hello everyone! 

Ok, so you know those friends that just go back so far that you can have a conversation about how amazing mac and cheese is and then talk about the meaning of life all in the same breath? Well, just last night, I had a very similar conversation with a friend -a sister- about this: what does it mean to be "unequally yoked'? As Christians, we are so aware of this verse and the cautionary air it has, but what does it really mean? My sister was curious about my perspective, and shared with me story of a girl whose perspective confused her a bit. This girl (I believe she went to my sister's bible study) said how she and a boy liked each other, but because she was on a "different spiritual level" than him, she considered that to be unequal yoking and she wouldn't date him. I could totally understand how a) she could glean this perspective from the verse, but also b) how this confused my sister.  

I want to take a moment here to just give a little disclaimer: I am no expert, nor do I intend to come across as one. I do intend, however, to seek the heart of God in this matter, so you could call this an educated perspective, but by no means a perfect one. 

After chatting and reiterating and chatting some more, my sister and I boiled it down to this: If your foundations are the same (meaning you both love Jesus and believe that Jesus is the Son of God, he died and rose again to pay our price, salvation is free to those who accept Christ as Lord and Saviour, the Bible is the Word of God, and so on...), your goals are the same, and you see traits in the other person that could compliment your traits, enabling you two to be a good team, I don't think "spiritual level" is as big of an issue as we can paint it to be. I’ll explain: if the foundations are the same, that implies that there is a spiritual walk there. We all have different spiritual walks, but if we are intentional and genuinely seek wisdom and guidance from the Word and also from others who have gone before, then I think that relationship is possible. I think we still need to use wisdom and discretion before we enter into relationships, but as long as both members in a relationship are spurring each other on to greater things in Christ, that relationship can be beautiful.  

Half way through our conversation, I began to chuckle. My sister and I are both single and combined have less than 50 years of life experience. Yet we felt that we had resolved this issue that has been around for literal centuries. Boom. Check that of the list, right? Complete irony. I understand that I still have a lot to learn in this life, and that those goals for your significant other that I mentioned earlier could contain that your SO is a spiritual leader. And if that is something the God has laid on your heart then stay with that goal. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m not perfect, but my goal isn’t really perfection. My goal is to get you mussing about the inner workings of God’s heart, and to get you to think deeper and cultivate environments for deep discussion.  

I know that was probably a lot to process, so I’ll try to lighten it up next time.  

Love and blessings,  
Emily 

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