Dating is hard enough as it is. Dating as a Christian can sometimes seem to be even harder. You’ve got a smaller pool of people to choose from and a lot of important issues that you may differ on where you stand. Just finding someone that checks off all the deal breaker boxes can be tough, let alone finding someone that you’re also attracted to.

In this guide, we want to walk you through some basics of Christian dating and how you can get started. Ideally, we want you to set yourself up for success and find that special Christian guy or girl that God has planned for you. We’ll start by talking about where you should be looking, the importance of Christian dating issues, God’s role in the whole puzzle, and a warning to keep you on the right path.

Choose a Reputable Site with Proven Success

Most of you here have probably already exhausted the dating pool at your church or church groups you’re part of. You might come from a small church, or you just might not be having any luck finding anyone at the church or in the church’s single’s ministry (if they even have one). If your Christian morals weren’t important to you, you could go find people the same way everyone else does. But, as a Christian, it’s hard to tell if the people you’re meeting are on the same faith journey as you without making things a little awkward.

So, what do you do instead? Well, technology is the friend of the Christian dater looking for love. Online Christian dating sites give you the ability to find a ton of Christian singles that you would have never known about in your city. Additionally, high quality Christian dating sites do an incredible job of helping you find compatible matches without making things awkward.

If you’re ready to see what else is out there in a safe and controlled Christian environment, we highly recommend you check out these Christian dating sites we’ve recommended. To make things easier, the links below will automatically set you up with a free trial to each site so that you can search through the matches and see if it’s something you’re even going to be interested in.

Know Where You Stand on Key Christian Issues

Knowing where to look for quality Christian singles is only part of the battle. Before you even think about getting out there, you need to make sure that you know where you stand on important Christian issues. Why? Well, for a few reasons. First, it’s impossible to find what you’re looking for if you don’t know what that is. If your faith is important to you, then you’re going to want to align yourself with a mate who agrees with you and has the same belief system.

Additionally, online dating sites give you the ability to search based on a lot of different parameters including where people stand on important faith issues. This means that you can quickly see your viable matches without having to ask someone a million questions that you may or may not be comfortable talking about.

Lastly, knowing where you stand on important faith-based issues will protect you from compromising your belief system just to get results. We’re going to cover this in detail at the close of this guide because it’s extremely important and warrants its own dedicated section.

Pray About It

The best piece of Christian dating advice that we can give you is to trust God. God asks us to come to him with our concerns and this is certainly something that makes the list of important things. Now, there are a few pieces of advice that we want to include here. First, remember that God does not operate on your timeline. You might want to find love right away, but that might not be what he has in store for you. God answers every prayer, but it’s not always with a yes. Sometimes it’s not right now. But, if you truly believe in the power of God, you know that he hears you and is working to help answer your prayers even if it’s not as quickly as you’d like for him to.

Second, prayer requires an active component out of you. It is not a say, leave it, and forget it type of thing. You should pray and trust God to do his part, but you still need to take an active role in the process. You can’t just pray to God to find you a mate, and then run hide in your closet and hope for them to knock on your door magically. God requires you to take an active role in his plan.

So, what does that mean in regards to Christian dating? Well, it means a few things to us that may apply to you as well. First, it means you need to actively be looking. You can’t hide in the closet and hope for the man or woman of your dreams to come knocking. The best way that we can see to get started is, of course, looking around your church but also taking advantage of Christian dating online.

You can also let people know that you’re single and ready to mingle, but be careful with this one. Sometimes your friends and fellow church members can be great at setting you up, and sometimes they are just awful at it. You can certainly let the word out if you want, but just be aware of what you may be getting yourself into. One perk of online dating is that you control who you talk to, who you meet up with, and who you potentially date and it all happens from the comfort of your own home.

The bottom line takeaway here is that you need to pray to God and let him know your concerns. He will answer your prayers, but be aware that it might not be in the fashion that you are hoping for. Sometimes he may have someone ready for you right away and sometimes you may have to be a little patient. Just have faith that God is in control, make sure you’re taking an active role, and put on your patience pants.

Don’t Compromise Your Faith for “Results”

The last thing that we want to talk about before we send you out is something we briefly touched on earlier. Whatever you do, don’t compromise your faith or who you are just to get more dates. This is the single biggest piece of Christian dating advice that we can give you. Know who you are, know what you stand for, know what you want, and know how to walk away from someone when they are not inline with that.

Just because someone is on a Christian dating site does not mean that they are going to instantly be a super Christian or anything like that. Just like at church, everyone is at different points in their walk and everyone has different struggles they’ve conquered and ones they are still battling with.

The best thing you can do is be open with the singles you talk to. When you meet them on a Christian dating site, it’s already implied that faith is going to play some sort of a role in your potential relationship. But, it’s going to be up to you to define what that is going to look like. It shouldn’t feel awkward bringing this stuff up because it’s important to you and the fact that you’re already on a faith-driven type platform. If you started telling the random person at the bar about where you stood on faith-based issues, they might look at you funny. But, with Christian online dating, that’s the open and accepting environment they are trying to create.

Here’s the bottom line. You are going to be tempted by people that are not right for you. Sometimes it harmless things that might just waste some of your time, and other times it might be things that will severely compromise your faith. Be strong in who you are and don’t be afraid to walk away from someone if they aren’t a good fit for you.

Take Action Now – Christian Dating

So, we’ve covered some of the basics that you need to know to succeed in Christian dating. The next step is now for you to take action! That special Christian man or Christian woman may be sitting there patiently waiting for you to come around. If you’re ready to get started, the time to take action is now. Here’s a recap of what we covered and the steps you can immediately take now.

1. Pray. Pray to God about being single and the fact that you want to find the person he’s specially made for you. Ask God to guide your search and help to lead you to take the right steps to find that person.
2. Figure out where you stand on key Christian issues. For a lot of you, you’re already going to know this. But, make sure that you are firm on what you need to be firm on. That way if you are tempted by someone or something that disagrees with that, you will have no problems walking away from the situation.
3. Check out the online dating sites we’ve recommended. If you need help getting started with your profile, check out our How to Write the Perfect Dating Profile guide.
4. Be patient and trust God. You WILL find that special someone. You just have to be willing to let God work on his time and realize that his timeline and yours might not be the same.