The following 2-part guest series is contributed by Jake Waits. He has some great ideas for romancing your spouse and keeping your marriage alive throughout the demands and pressures of ministry. Oh, and you men, remember Valentines Day is a little over a week away!

Share your stories!

Okay, so I have been skewering the web and local Christian bookstores over the past few months for ANY creative and fun ideas for dates with my wife. It has been a lot of fun coming up with anything that I can do to surprise my wife on our random dates. If you are like me, you may have discovered that there may be a few dating ideas here and there on the web, but I got to thinking about how this concept could be a lot more effective if others posted ideas on a site. I found several sites that did this but they were not Christian sites and the ideas were a bit pricey! If you are like me, you are on a budget right now but you still want to impress your significant other when it comes to planning your dates. If we all pitched in ideas from time to time, this would help ALL of us as we are seeking out ideas for dates. This can be as effective as we allow it to be if everyone will chip in! Please submit some stories and favorite dates in the comments below. I am by no means an expert when it comes to planning the perfect date, but I do have several tips for you to check out.

How to successfully plan a date

• Plan the date around his/her schedule.
• Be sensitive to the fact that they have a life too and make sure that you don’t plan the date on the night or day of something that they might already have going on!
• Surprise your date! Don’t do the average date with them. Dinner and a movie is fine but add some flavor to your date. Randomly give her/him small gifts throughout the date. They can be relatively inexpensive. You can get a coffee mug with a hot chocolate packet in it, give her a small bottle of perfume, or give your man a small bottle of cologne! Just be creative.
• Plan the date around his/her interests. You definitely want to enjoy the date for yourself as well but make sure that you put your spouse or date before yourself when it comes to planning a date for them. What do they enjoy doing? What is their favorite kind of food or restaurant? Is it possible for you to participate in something that they enjoy doing? For instance, if you love going to the movies all the time on dates and your date is okay with it but doesn’t love it, shake things up!

Read Part 2 of this series!

————————————————————-
Jake Waits is the Student Pastor at East Philadelphia Baptist Church in Philadelphia, MS. He has a passion to actively disciple students, loves his wife (Dian) and baby (Emma Grace), and loves pizza more than any other youth minister he has ever met!

Posted on February 4, 2009