Wanting To Do What’s Right
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Dear Wanting:
I admire you for wanting to do what’s right. While praying together is a wonderful idea, it does tend to promote intimacy very quickly. I encourage you not to spend long amounts of time praying together as a couple until you’re about to be engaged to one another.

But by saying this, I’m not encouraging you to forget prayer! Prayer is an essential ingredient in any Christian couple’s relationship. So I hope you and your boyfriend are praying before meals and perhaps praying before or after each date. But there’s a huge difference in offering a quick prayer of thanks for a great date and a long prayer that includes holding hands or arms around each other as you’re praying about intimate things.

Back to your question about keeping your boyfriend accountable. I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to feel the responsibility to hold him accountable. Pray for him to find another male to take on that position. And hopefully, you have a female who’s holding you accountable.

When you’re married, a husband and wife will hold each other accountable and pray together consistently. But even then, men still need other men and women still need other females to hold each other accountable.

Dear Susie:
I attend a Christian group meeting on my campus. We recently had a discussion on whether hell actually exists. I found out that our leader doesn’t believe in hell. Is this something that’s even debatable? Personally, I do believe in hell, but I’m wondering if one can be a Christian and choose not to believe in hell.

Wondering
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Dear Wondering:
I don’t think this is debatable, simply because God goes to such great lengths in the Bible to warn us about hell. I choose to believe the Bible — and all of the Bible — is absolute truth. God is extremely clear that those who don’t accept His forgiveness for sins and fail to recognize Him as Lord will be eternally separated from Him in hell.

Grab any concordance and you’ll find several verses to back this up throughout the entire Bible — the Old Testament as well as the New Testament.

Can a person be a Christian and not believe in the existence of hell? Well, can someone pick and choose what he or she wants to believe from the Bible and still serve God in total obedience?

Dear Susie:
Did God really create the world in seven days? Most evidence seems to say He didn’t. And if that much isn’t true, how am I supposed to know I can trust the rest of the Bible?

Confused
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Dear Confused:
Some Christians believe that God created the world in six 24-hour days. Other Christians choose to believe that God’s timing isn’t our understanding of time, and six days to Him could be 6,000 years to us.

Here’s what I suggest: Grab a copy of Darwin’s Demise by Joe White and Dr. Nicholas Comninellis. This book will not only answer your question, but it’ll also cover the argument on evolution vs. creation. It’s an excellent resource!

Joe says that when Genesis 1:5 mentions the six days of creation, the Hebrew word yom is used. Yom always refers to a 24-hour day, and there are more than 200 examples of this throughout Scripture.

He goes on to say that the Hebrew word yamim (plural for yom) appears more than 700 times in the Old Testament, and when it’s used in an historical context (as in Genesis 1), it always refers to literal 24-hour days.

Obviously, this question warrants much more response than I can give in this space, so please get the book. It’ll offer you much more than I can in this column.