Testimony of Living

At the Awakening, we are going to start a new series on Tuesday looking at the four stages of a young adults relationships and glean a response from the book of Ruth.  The book of Ruth is an intensely intimate story about redemption and relationships.  Almost aligned by chapter, Ruth experiences each stage: Singleness, Dating, Courting/Engagement, and Marriage.

As I am building this series, one thing is coming up a lot.  Our most God honoring and healthy relationships happen when we are not focused on ourselves but on the other person.  Think about it, when we enter a dating relationship thinking, "What can I get out of this?" or "What needs can she/he meet?" we are focused selfishly on ourselves.  When are marriage is simply an exchange of "If you do this, I'll do that" then we are focused selfishly on ourselves.

Boaz and Ruth both exhibit selflessness as they enter into their relationship.  I'm looking forward to our teaching team developing this further and the discussions happening during our gatherings on Tuesday night.

For those of you reading, tell me what you think.  What stage of relationship are you in (of the four) and how have you seen this concept of self focus at work?  


BTW, for long time readers, you may remember me writing about the Leverage of Boaz in three parts a while back.  Some of this is going to come into play in the message about Dating.