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 aware of bowling, these bumpers are guard rails that keep the ball from going into the gutter. They could make a child go from bowling a 4 to a 64 pretty quickly. (Not that I’m saying 64 is a stellar rating—I can throw a solid triple digit rating even without bumpers).
On one occasion, the bowling alley didn’t have the bumpers up. I went to ask them to tug them up, but my son, probably about 7 on the time, told me that he’d like to provide 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 may take this analogy in lots of unhealthy ways. Even reality messes up my analogy a little bit. My son actually picked up bowling without the bumpers by concerning the 8th or 9th frame. I believe the bumpers were hurting him a little bit. That reality absolutely kills my analogy—but hang with me here. In the true world, guardrails are needed and helpful.
I believe you may also fall off the sting here and think that once you’re married, you won’t need any guardrails and that a hoop or a certificate will mean that you could have these relationship standards nailed down. The reality is that they’ll at all times be helpful on this side of glory.
As I give these biblical relationship standards, I picture a few believers (strong or weak) who’ve decided to enter right into a relationship with one another. It is likely to be a recent relationship, or it is likely to be pretty serious. Either way, you wish to understand how you’ll be able to honor God on this relationship as you are attempting to discern if marriage is likely to be a possibility. This isn’t all that might be said about relationships, but these are a number of guardrails that I believe will allow you to to thrive in your relationship with each other.
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