“Girls had been my main priority. That was something I needed to surrender – thinking about girls. I’m not out there to impress anybody or start anything while I’m supposed to be pursuing God.”
Ryan McGaha at our Fresno State Chapter just finished a dating fast! His experience with it was encouraging, so we decided to highlight it!
He explained the intensity of the fast as, “No flirting. If it came to mind, toss it to the side and don’t worry about it. That’s what I felt I should do – don’t even think about them.”
Why would somebody do a 6-month dating fast? “I knew that I needed to focus on my relationship with God. Girls were in the back of my head when I knew they shouldn’t be. Kevin “Teucer” Freeman, one of my mentors, said he’d done a dating fast and ended up meeting his wife that way. January 1 I started it because I knew I needed to focus on my relationship with God – no distractions.”
“No one ever taught me how to be a boyfriend or how to be the man in the relationship. I knew what courtship was – your intent for dating is marriage. But nobody really taught me HOW. But then I learned how to do that from a Biblical perspective and it totally changed who I want to pursue and how I’m supposed to be pursuing.”
“It was good for setting up standards for the type of person I want to end up with, somebody who wants to serve in ministry as well. Before, I was just looking for a pretty face, honestly. And then I got to know these people that I thought were pretty at first. But their outside didn’t match their heart. I need somebody that loves to serve in ministry, just loves God more than anything – somebody that’ll love God more than me.
“I feel like I’ve grown so much and learned so much what it’s like to be not only a man of God but a man of God in a relationship. If I hadn’t gone on this fast I wouldn’t be pursuing ministry as much.”
When asked what the hardest part of his 6-month dating fast was, Ryan said, “Trusting that God would bless me in the end. God was just saying, ‘Now is not the time.'”
