When my kids were much younger, we’d sometimes take them bowling. Usually, the bowling alley would see the little tots and do us a solid by putting up the “bumpers.” If you aren’t familiar with bowling, these bumpers are guard rails that keep the ball from going into the gutter. They can make a kid go from bowling a 4 to a 64 pretty quickly. (Not that I’m saying 64 is a stellar score—I can throw a solid triple digit score even without bumpers).
On one occasion, the bowling alley didn’t have the bumpers up. I went to ask them to pull them up, but my son, probably about 7 at the time, told me that he’d like to give it a go without them. It didn’t go so well. Almost all of his balls went into the gutter. He simply wasn’t ready yet to bowl without those things.
Now, you could take this analogy in many unhealthy ways. Even reality messes up my analogy a little. My son actually picked up bowling without the bumpers by about the 8th or 9th frame. I think the bumpers were hurting him a little. That reality absolutely kills my analogy—but hang with me here. In the real world, guardrails are necessary and helpful.
I think you could also fall off the edge here and think that when you’re married, you won’t need any guardrails and that a ring or a certificate will mean that you have these relationship standards nailed down. The reality is that they’ll always be helpful in this side of glory.
As I give these biblical relationship standards, I picture a couple of believers (strong or weak) who have decided to enter into a relationship with each other. It might be a new relationship, or it might be pretty serious. Either way, you want to know how you can honor God in this relationship as you try to discern if marriage might be a possibility. This isn’t all that could be said about relationships, but these are a few guardrails that I think will help you to thrive in your relationship with one another.
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