well a better question you should ask yourself first why is that guy filling your mind? Is he filling your mind because of lust thoughts or is he filling your mind because you like him and you think he might be a future husband of yours? Than depending on that you would kow which path to follow after. Hope that helped a bit
hey... just to add to youst718's question... or comment on it say this guy u like is in school or church, or wherever.. and u dont really have lustful thoughts for him, or her... but u just like them because they seem like a nice person that, possibly, in the future u'd consider as a potential suitor... i was faced with this dilemma a few days ago when a friend that was a bit older asked me that... and i didnt know what to answer i mean ur allowed to like guys/grls... its almost expected... but then they fill ur thoughts, like a crush does... so what do we do?
I dunno, sometimes that bothers me too, but I just try participating even more in Church, but what id it has total control of ur mind, even if in a dream or something, is it a sin??
ok let me try to go through those questions one at a time first for SMS's post: i would think if you have a crush on a person and you think that that person could be a possible partner for you in the future and both of you share the same feelings, i would do this i would go talk to my father of confession and tell him the story (you don't have to mention the other partner's name) and see what he would say because he knows you better than anyone, he knows what you went through, what kind of things make you trumble and what doesn't and just keep him updated. That what i would do and acutally done that, and my father of confession was a lot of help more than i expected Now to defender's post, i don't think you can control you dreams well you kinda of do but not intentionally, so i won't think thinking about it in your dream is a sin, but thinking about it during the day while you are full awake that is a different story.
i gotta agree with you :D most of us have this fearful impression of our father of confessions... but when i talk to him and tell h im my worst thoughts... he's all calm and everything... its amazing good point and thanx for bringing it up
I just have a question, sometimes I feel pressured and I'm always afraid to tell my FoC the whole story...sometimes I just feel embaressed esp. because he is a new Priest. I don't know what to do...
well the only thing you can do is go full blast with the priest and tell him everything and if he thinks of you as a bad person than that is his judgment yes it might hurt you but he committed a sin of judging others and hey every person have his sins and downfalls nobody perfect hopefully tht helps a bit
Probably what I will do is talk to my FoC and tell him that I am embarressed of telling him eeverything and that even in the past sessions, I didn't say everything!! Or maybe I will continue with my yearly Confession with either H.G. Anba Antonious Morcos or H.G. Anba Moussa! Which one should I go with??
OOOOOOOH YA WE DID if you go to the main general discussion area there are like 15 pages on it, but i will be happy to start this again if you guys want to.
Coptic Soldier was joking. Every1 has a tough time knowing when CS is joking. lol. Jees. I dont think any1 could have pointed out and elaborated on every single view on dating as we have (or I should say you all, I wisely chose to stay out of the discussion) in that Forum. Please, let us move on now. ;D
i think all of your replies have been very good and make much sense.. however i do have to say that ive heard all this alreayd.. this is what eVERY typical copt says and i want the views of normal teenagers on this.. you all sound so old.. i feel like im tlakin ot a sunday school teacher....if i can get any views or opinions on experiences anyone has had that would be great.. id liek more to hear about past experiences rather on what youve been told or taught i appreciate your comments/ideas.. thnak you al so much
Well, I'm ur age and what I do is that I just try going to Church more, open tasbeha while working to listen toit so that my mind wouldn't start going the wrong way, at school I try thining about God as much as I can and even get CDs with prayers and Liturgy to listen to on the bus and in my free time I hang out with my friends and try making our convos as much as possible not about gurls. So, the best way, in my opinion is getting closer to God and thinking about Him all the time. And when I go to sleep, sometimes bad thoughts develop in dreams so my Father of Confession advised me to hold a Cross and put a book or a picture of Jesus Christ the King of Glory, or angels or saints.
hey Youst718 look, i know exactly what u mean when u say they starts to occupy your mind so much that their the only thing you can think of? i'll talk to u from personal experiences, and i've gone through that a few times. and i'm sorry to tell u this, but it only happens when u let it happen. Its like, the devil makes things seem soooo pure, just to get the thought into ur head, and at the same time plant a seed in ur heart. That seed grows and grows, until it becomes a tree. i no i sound like a sunday school servant, but just hear me out, cus i've been having this same problem lately. and i'm only 2 years older than u, and you need to learn how to deal with them now because ur gonna face these problems a lot. The devil is always around us, and he is always looking for a chance to get into ur head, and ONLY you can give him that chance. once he plants that seed in there, it grows and grows and becomes a big tree. you begin to feel like its normal. [that seed would be that first thought that u began to have about that person.] That tree begins to get out fruits, and thats when u feel like its..too much. and you want to get rid of liking this person and of all your feelings, and you know how to, but at the same time, you don't want to, because u feel that your gonna lose something. so you try to just pull some of those fruits off, by doing that, ur only killing some of the feelings. but the fruits grow back, just like those feelings. the only way to take out the whole tree is from the root. and its really hard to do this because deep in your heart you really don't want it, but at the same time u enjoy it a lot and don't wanna lose it. The first thing that u have to do, is pray to God...a lot, and ask him for new eyes [as Saint Paul says], and ask him to fill your heart.
I fell into these same problems that ur in. and its very hard to get ur focus off that person. you feel like u have put that person in the center of ur life and ur whole world revolves around him. yet at the same time he makes mistakes that hurt u a lot, and then u feel like you wanna get this whole feeling out of ur head. you need to redirect all of ur power and energy and TIME to God. Because you can love Him and talk to Him about everything and count on Him for anything, and He will NEVER make a mistake. He'll never do anything wrong so He can hurt u. thats the only way to get ur focus off of this person u have feelings for.
Remember, the first commandment is "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength."
Don't put anybody above God, and don't let anybody take God's glory. pray to God and ask him for help, because no matter what you do, if u don't pray, NOTHING will change, so just pray a lot, and i will pray for you too.
I know this sounds like another sunday school lesson, but this is just some of the things that i've learned from my past experiences that i really REALLY regret now. Don't let the Devil in. Pray for me.
Well Youst718 i am 19 yrs old. I went through what you mean several times but they had several different outcomes. Here is what i mean My first year of high school here in the states (jr yr of high school) i liked a girl and i thought i liked her to the point that i was ok i am going to go ask her out, but before i do that i knew my parents would be mad at me so i went to my chemistry teacher because he was a close friend and he told me do you know if she likes you back or not? and i told him i don't know. so i went and asked her do you like me? just plainly like that, i know that sounds stupid but that what i did and the answer was i only like you as a friend. so i went and told my teacher that than went home and told my parents everything i did, and they go ok see you are still young and that is why got prevented you from going out right now Second year of high school: A girl started liking me and i started liking her back, and we used to talk on IM for i don't know how many hours and it was all good like no talk about sex or kissing or anything like that we just talked as friends. I knew she had a boyfriend in mexcio but she told me that she broke up with him than i later she told me that she didn't really break up with him. Of course that hurt a bit and eventally we stopped talking. Last situation just few month ago: i was getting really close friends with this egyptian girl from church that goes to the same university as me and work also in the place. So after maybe a YEAR AND HALF of being friend one night i asked her if she really likes me more than a friend at first we both lied and said no we just friends than we started talking and ended up talking honestly and knew that we really like each other. so depending on that we started talking with our feelings in the middle of our conversations and decided not to tell our parents or our friends because they will say you guys are young and shouldn't be doing this and just destroy everything and never let us talk to each other again, but we decided we don't want to go through this without any light, so we sent an e-mail to a priest out of our state and a few days later he told us to go talk to our FOC, while that e-mail was coming a lot happened in the middle. After 2 days of talking openly about our feelings she didn't feel as happy as i was and she was scared of her parents and was just troubled so we decided to stop talking about feelings but we will still be friends. Of course it was very hard to open your feelings than kill them again in just few days. So i was a very hurt bird and during that period sunday rolled around so i went to the priest of the church and told him i like an egyptian girl but we are scared from our parents and we don't like that because we don't want them to be mad at us. Really surprising he answered me: Abouna: How old is she? I: 19 Abouna: How many years until you finish college I:3-4 years Abouna: ok, my son this is not Egypt where you have to build up yourself for like many years after you finish college, so go talk to that girl you tell her a good word with feelings she tells you a good word with feeling as long as you bodies are away from each do all you want as long as you body is away and after college you guys can get engaged if you want to. I: :o :o that is excatly how i reacted so after abouna told me that, i told that what he said. But she said that issue is dead to her, so i didn't want to pressure her to something she doesn't want to do and until today we are still friends
ok what do i mean by all those stories that happened to me and why have i been typing for the past 25 minutes ok here is what i felt after looking back at those situations: the first two were really quick they happened over the course of 2 years and didn't successed at all. I went through with them but God saw that it won't work for me so He stopped them. The third situation i took my decision after a year and a half of knowing that person i took all that time for several reasons: 1) i knew this is an egyptian girl and that i will see her everywhere i go even if we go out and it doesn't wrk out good i have to still deal with her 2) i had to ask myself is this is the person that i wanted to engage than marry?? but see how the last outcome was different from the first 2, because i knew i was serious about this girl and i thought i was old enough to know if my feelings were right or not. Ok to make this short (ironic after all this typing) I myself go in any way in front of me as long as i know or see that no danger comes out of it or that i will hurt God in it. Than i pray please God hold my hand going down that road and help me
Hopefully that helps, i know it might not but i tried plz don't go around the website or anywhere else saying oh come look at this guy who went out with x amount of girls, i was writing this and sharing it with my friends and i hope my friends won't go judge me behind my back becasue we all make mistakes
No it wasn't, i was in the Altar deacon for that Sunday and during the readings, i just stepped to him and sat next to him and talked. (i guess u can call that confession) but we asked him the same question during a church retreat and he gave the same answer back
Learn submission, that'll fix your problemo right up!
Its an important virtue because it defines how well you work together with God's help. It essentially helps you to ask God the right questions at the right times and helps you hear God's voice more clearly and understand how to respond to it. It is actually the first virtue that people should aquire and it is followed by patience. God allos for temptations like this to prompt us to understand our weakness, God allows us to fall again and again until we know how much we need Him, then when we turn to Him we can pick up His light yoke.
St. Anthony actually says that if a person is given grace but doesn't know what to do with it, it gets wasted so we all have to be aware of the importance of submission and as it is the first virtue, everyone here should be working towards it.
If we submit correctly then God will always help us and deliver us from all our problems.
i'm sorry CS, but can you please explain a little further the meaning of submission and how to be able to reach it. sorry for bugging you, it just caught my attention, but i need to hear a little more about it. my apologies
Comments
defender
Hope that helped a bit
defender
say this guy u like is in school or church, or wherever.. and u dont really have lustful thoughts for him, or her... but u just like them because they seem like a nice person that, possibly, in the future u'd consider as a potential suitor...
i was faced with this dilemma a few days ago when a friend that was a bit older asked me that... and i didnt know what to answer
i mean ur allowed to like guys/grls... its almost expected... but then they fill ur thoughts, like a crush does...
so what do we do?
defender
first for SMS's post: i would think if you have a crush on a person and you think that that person could be a possible partner for you in the future and both of you share the same feelings, i would do this i would go talk to my father of confession and tell him the story (you don't have to mention the other partner's name) and see what he would say because he knows you better than anyone, he knows what you went through, what kind of things make you trumble and what doesn't and just keep him updated. That what i would do and acutally done that, and my father of confession was a lot of help more than i expected
Now to defender's post, i don't think you can control you dreams well you kinda of do but not intentionally, so i won't think thinking about it in your dream is a sin, but thinking about it during the day while you are full awake that is a different story.
most of us have this fearful impression of our father of confessions... but when i talk to him and tell h im my worst thoughts... he's all calm and everything... its amazing
good point and thanx for bringing it up
Please help if u can!
defender
hopefully tht helps a bit
defender
CS
I told u we haven't covered everything....lol
defender
defender
So many miracles: He performed: I believe in His might: for He is the King of Glory.
- Chris
defender
Maybe that would help u too...
Pray 4 me
Defender
look, i know exactly what u mean when u say they starts to occupy your mind so much that their the only thing you can think of? i'll talk to u from personal experiences, and i've gone through that a few times. and i'm sorry to tell u this, but it only happens when u let it happen. Its like, the devil makes things seem soooo pure, just to get the thought into ur head, and at the same time plant a seed in ur heart. That seed grows and grows, until it becomes a tree. i no i sound like a sunday school servant, but just hear me out, cus i've been having this same problem lately. and i'm only 2 years older than u, and you need to learn how to deal with them now because ur gonna face these problems a lot. The devil is always around us, and he is always looking for a chance to get into ur head, and ONLY you can give him that chance. once he plants that seed in there, it grows and grows and becomes a big tree. you begin to feel like its normal. [that seed would be that first thought that u began to have about that person.] That tree begins to get out fruits, and thats when u feel like its..too much. and you want to get rid of liking this person and of all your feelings, and you know how to, but at the same time, you don't want to, because u feel that your gonna lose something. so you try to just pull some of those fruits off, by doing that, ur only killing some of the feelings. but the fruits grow back, just like those feelings. the only way to take out the whole tree is from the root. and its really hard to do this because deep in your heart you really don't want it, but at the same time u enjoy it a lot and don't wanna lose it. The first thing that u have to do, is pray to God...a lot, and ask him for new eyes [as Saint Paul says], and ask him to fill your heart.
I fell into these same problems that ur in. and its very hard to get ur focus off that person. you feel like u have put that person in the center of ur life and ur whole world revolves around him. yet at the same time he makes mistakes that hurt u a lot, and then u feel like you wanna get this whole feeling out of ur head. you need to redirect all of ur power and energy and TIME to God. Because you can love Him and talk to Him about everything and count on Him for anything, and He will NEVER make a mistake. He'll never do anything wrong so He can hurt u. thats the only way to get ur focus off of this person u have feelings for.
Remember, the first commandment is "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength."
Don't put anybody above God, and don't let anybody take God's glory. pray to God and ask him for help, because no matter what you do, if u don't pray, NOTHING will change, so just pray a lot, and i will pray for you too.
I know this sounds like another sunday school lesson, but this is just some of the things that i've learned from my past experiences that i really REALLY regret now. Don't let the Devil in. Pray for me.
sorry again for blabbing.
My first year of high school here in the states (jr yr of high school) i liked a girl and i thought i liked her to the point that i was ok i am going to go ask her out, but before i do that i knew my parents would be mad at me so i went to my chemistry teacher because he was a close friend and he told me do you know if she likes you back or not? and i told him i don't know. so i went and asked her do you like me? just plainly like that, i know that sounds stupid but that what i did and the answer was i only like you as a friend. so i went and told my teacher that than went home and told my parents everything i did, and they go ok see you are still young and that is why got prevented you from going out right now
Second year of high school: A girl started liking me and i started liking her back, and we used to talk on IM for i don't know how many hours and it was all good like no talk about sex or kissing or anything like that we just talked as friends. I knew she had a boyfriend in mexcio but she told me that she broke up with him than i later she told me that she didn't really break up with him. Of course that hurt a bit and eventally we stopped talking.
Last situation just few month ago: i was getting really close friends with this egyptian girl from church that goes to the same university as me and work also in the place. So after maybe a YEAR AND HALF of being friend one night i asked her if she really likes me more than a friend at first we both lied and said no we just friends than we started talking and ended up talking honestly and knew that we really like each other. so depending on that we started talking with our feelings in the middle of our conversations and decided not to tell our parents or our friends because they will say you guys are young and shouldn't be doing this and just destroy everything and never let us talk to each other again, but we decided we don't want to go through this without any light, so we sent an e-mail to a priest out of our state and a few days later he told us to go talk to our FOC, while that e-mail was coming a lot happened in the middle. After 2 days of talking openly about our feelings she didn't feel as happy as i was and she was scared of her parents and was just troubled so we decided to stop talking about feelings but we will still be friends. Of course it was very hard to open your feelings than kill them again in just few days. So i was a very hurt bird and during that period sunday rolled around so i went to the priest of the church and told him i like an egyptian girl but we are scared from our parents and we don't like that because we don't want them to be mad at us. Really surprising he answered me:
Abouna: How old is she?
I: 19
Abouna: How many years until you finish college
I:3-4 years
Abouna: ok, my son this is not Egypt where you have to build up yourself for like many years after you finish college, so go talk to that girl you tell her a good word with feelings she tells you a good word with feeling as long as you bodies are away from each do all you want as long as you body is away and after college you guys can get engaged if you want to.
I: :o :o
that is excatly how i reacted
so after abouna told me that, i told that what he said. But she said that issue is dead to her, so i didn't want to pressure her to something she doesn't want to do and until today we are still friends
ok what do i mean by all those stories that happened to me and why have i been typing for the past 25 minutes
ok here is what i felt after looking back at those situations: the first two were really quick they happened over the course of 2 years and didn't successed at all. I went through with them but God saw that it won't work for me so He stopped them.
The third situation i took my decision after a year and a half of knowing that person i took all that time for several reasons: 1) i knew this is an egyptian girl and that i will see her everywhere i go even if we go out and it doesn't wrk out good i have to still deal with her
2) i had to ask myself is this is the person that i wanted to engage than marry??
but see how the last outcome was different from the first 2, because i knew i was serious about this girl and i thought i was old enough to know if my feelings were right or not.
Ok to make this short (ironic after all this typing) I myself go in any way in front of me as long as i know or see that no danger comes out of it or that i will hurt God in it. Than i pray please God hold my hand going down that road and help me
Hopefully that helps, i know it might not but i tried
plz don't go around the website or anywhere else saying oh come look at this guy who went out with x amount of girls, i was writing this and sharing it with my friends and i hope my friends won't go judge me behind my back becasue we all make mistakes
Defender
Defender
please pray for him he just got out of an open heart surgery
Defender
Its an important virtue because it defines how well you work together with God's help. It essentially helps you to ask God the right questions at the right times and helps you hear God's voice more clearly and understand how to respond to it. It is actually the first virtue that people should aquire and it is followed by patience. God allos for temptations like this to prompt us to understand our weakness, God allows us to fall again and again until we know how much we need Him, then when we turn to Him we can pick up His light yoke.
St. Anthony actually says that if a person is given grace but doesn't know what to do with it, it gets wasted so we all have to be aware of the importance of submission and as it is the first virtue, everyone here should be working towards it.
If we submit correctly then God will always help us and deliver us from all our problems.
God bless you,
CS
http://www.coptichymns.net/index.php?name=PagEd&topictoview=38
It is soooooo important that people get away from the idea of being reactive to spiritual problems and this is a big part in that.
God bless,
CS