Some folks in my life have brought up some questions lately regarding marriage and dating and I had the opportunity to speak with them about The Love that Lasts!  As I reflected on the thoughts I shared, I thought I would share some of them here.  As Christians, we like to talk about being equally yoked, but what does that really mean?  In addition, most of our country claims to be Christian, but the daily news would seem to indicate that most Americans are not walking with God, so how can we be sure about the person we are about to hitch our wagon to?  Finally, what are my expectations and goals of marriage?  Not just to be happy or have a home or raise kids, but specifically what do you hope will be the result of your marriage at the end of time?

As I think about the foundation of a blessed, God honoring marriage, I have to consider who God is and more specifically who God is to me and who God is to my intended?  Hebrews 13:8 is a verse you should know:

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever”

The reason this is important is that God will be the only steady, predictable, reliable part of your marriage for the duration of your life, and that will only benefit you if you are both committed to walking with God, individually and together.  You are about to marry a sinner and over time you will change, your spouse will change and your feelings will change.  That is not to say that change is good or bad, but it is to say that knowing change will come should affirm your commitment to making sure the foundation of your marriage is unchanging.  This is important because you are about to become completely transparent with another person and they will see parts of you that no one has ever seen.  Furthermore, you are going to face trials and hardships that you have never faced before, in fact, I believe that God has specific lessons for you that can only be learned in marriage.  During these times, both of you will need to rely on the firm Foundation for your marriage to survive.  Your partner may waiver at times and you will need to get on your face and pray for your partner and for God to save your marriage.

If you are engaged to someone who does not already pray daily and pray for you daily, someone who does not spend time with God and in His word on a daily basis, who is not active in church staying accountable to other believers, you should put your wedding plans on hold.  I would encourage you to read some thoughts I shared on Guidelines for Courting here!  That may sound dramatic, but it is that important!  If you think what I just wrote is a little too much, then you are not fit to be married because you don’t know that you are going into battle!  Your battle is not against flesh and blood, but you are engaged in a spiritual warfare and your marriage is a target!  If God has sanctified the institution of marriage, created marriage before sin entered the world, and declared that what He has joined together, let no one rip apart, do you really think that the powers of darkness are going to allow your little fairy tale to play out like a Disney movie???

In America, we tend to focus on the “pursuit of happiness”, but marriage should be about the “pursuit of holiness.”  I am not convinced that God wants you to be happy!  I know that He wants you to be holy, I know that He wants you to be joyful, I know that He wants you to have His Peace that surpasses all understanding, I know He wants you to love one another, but I am not sure that He wants you to be happy.  Why?  Think about the things that make you happy – going to a nice restaurant, a new car, a clean house, a new hairstyle, losing weight, going on vacation, making money, etc, you get the point.  Some are innocuous, some are fleshly desires, some are good things, but the things that make you happy are all temporary, they all do not have lasting value, generally speaking!  People often get married thinking it will make them happy, and it does for a while, then life happens.  The law of diminishing returns in marriage takes effect and suddenly things are not that cute!  Things that were fun are now annoying, things you enjoyed doing together are now boring, and this is just a sample of daily life before any of life’s storms come your way.  Can you focus on God daily and practice spiritual disciplines as a couple in order to be firmly rooted in the Vine (John 15) when the trials of life happen?  How will you respond when you lose your job, or a family member get terminally ill, or a pet dies, or God forbid, your spouse gives into sexual temptation?  These are all real things that happen everyday to millions of couples and the divorce rate in the church is about the same as the world, largely because of misplaced hope in the temporary.

When we talk about being equally yoked, we are referring to being married to someone of our same Christian faith.  As I consider what that means, I am firm in my conviction that we not only need to test ourselves to see if we are in the faith, but we need to test those we are courting.  I am not saying that you need to be with someone who has the same level of spiritual maturity, but rather someone who is actually saved, not lukewarm, and has the desire to know Jesus and make Him known.  I would go so far as to say that your Intended needs to love God more than you in order to get through the hardest parts of life that await you.  Don’t get me wrong, romance is fun, exciting, even thrilling!  It’s fun to send flowers for no reason or surprise her with a gift or write her a song or a hundred other things that make her think you were created by God just for her!  That is all good stuff and we all want the fair tale, but the fairy tale is never what we think it is.  The truth is that the real fairy tale is knowing that person will still say yes when she sees all of your sin; when you lose your job; when your home goes into foreclosure; when your child is suddenly taken from you; when you can’t conceive; when life’s hardest storms beat you up, nothing makes sense and all you can do is fall on your face before God, she will still say yes!  That’s it! That’s the fairy tale, the resolve to go the distance and it can only happen with God as the foundation of both your lives! 

(Additional reading: Matthew 7:24-28; Ephesians 5:22-33; Ephesians 6:10-24; Proverbs 31:10-31; 1Chronicles 29:10-20; John 15; 2Corinthians 13:5-6; Philippians 4)