Yesterday I wrote about
the ten things i have learnt and today I want to talk about
how to prepare for that marriage.
We are swayed by the fact that
we are in Love. Hey! At every point in time there are signs that shows if we
are heading the right direction or not.
· “He told me he’d look for full-time work after we got back from
the honeymoon, but it’s six months and he’s still not doing anything!”
· “He told me he’d quit porn, but I caught him yesterday.”
· “Before we were married he was so romantic, but now he never wants
to do anything with me at all.”
Marriage will always be, at least in part, a leap of faith. There will
be surprises. You’ll never avoid them all. But I think, if you follow these
steps, you can avoid the most difficult ones.
The most important thing when
you’re marrying is character.
If
someone is of good character and loves God, you can work through pretty much
anything. They’ll be able to hear from God, they’ll want to please God, and
even if you have a big roadblock, they’ll likely try to solve it well. ’’If someone has a weak character, though, no matter how much you
love them, you’re going to run into some major problems’’.
Preparing for marriage, then, is
largely about two things: making sure his/her character is good, and making
sure you work together in the day-to-day.
Here are some suggestions on how
to do that:
WAYS TO KNOW HE’S THE RIGHT GUY
DO LIFE TOGETHER
Don’t do “dating” things. Do
“life” things.
Here’s the difference. Dating
says, “Let’s get together every Tuesday and Saturday and go out to a movie and
dinner, or catch a concert in a park, or go for ice cream.”
It’s all very lovely, but it
tells you virtually nothing about how you will actually work on a day-to-day
basis once you’re married. Knowing how your fiance acts when you’re out to
dinner, then, really doesn’t tell you how they’ll act normally.
Once you’re starting to get
serious about someone, then, stop making “romantic” things the basis of your
relationship, and start just living life. Go grocery shopping together. Cook
dinner together. If you’re in school, hang out together for a few hours and
just study together. Go to church together. Go to Bible study together. Do
errands together.
Spend as much time as possible
together that is unplanned. This lets you see what your boyfriend/fiance does
when they have nothing particular planned. Since most of your life when you’re
married will be like that, you want to see what it’s like now.
Red Flags:
· Playing video games all the time
· Not wanting to spend “hang out” time with you, because he only
wants to “hang out” with the guys
· Downtime being the equivalent of “let’s get drunk” time. If he
needs alcohol every time he’s relaxing, that’s a bad sign.
· Never having a hobby he wants to do with you. If you can’t take a
dance class together, or exercise together, or collect something together, then
chances are you’ll have nothing to do together once you’re married, either.
· Never doing “normal” things. If, in all the time you spend
together, he never has the initiative to fix a leaky faucet, to clean a
bathroom, to repaint a peeling deck, then it’s unlikely he’s going to want to devote
his Saturdays to that once he’s married, either. If he likes you hanging out so
that you can clean his place while he relaxes, that’s likely what your weekends
will look like, too.
PURSUE GOD TOGETHER
God needs to be the centre of
your marriage. All of us run into issues when we’re married, and if someone is
a Christian, then you have a common basis so that you can solve it. You can
talk about what God wants. You can talk about what’s wrong and what’s right.
You can pray together and get other people to pray with you.
The saddest emails I get are
from ladies whose fiance are involved in something really bad–like gambling or
pornography–but their fiance aren’t really Christians. The women think its
wrong, but the Fiance say it’s no big deal. When you don’t have a common
faith, you can’t deal with these things.
‘’And when you don’t have a
common strong faith, it’s very, very hard to pass on that faith to your
children’’.
So while you’re getting to know
each other, don’t just go to church together. Go to a small group Bible study
together, whether it’s through church, through a campus ministry, or whatever.
Pray together. Read a chapter of the Bible every time you’re together. You
don’t have to do an in-depth study, but if you bring God into your life now,
then it shows that your fiance actually wants God there.
I talk to so many ladies who
say, “I thought he was a Christian because he went to my church, but he never
prays and I never see him reading the Bible, and I feel so distant from him.”
Don’t take church-going as a sign about whether or not he’s close to God. Look
for more.
And pray with him! Many people
don’t like praying out loud, but even if it’s just sentence prayers, show that you need it to
be part of your relationship. If you can’t do it now, you won’t do it when
you’re married.
Red Flags:
· He never talks about God outside of church
· If you bring up God, he doesn’t really have an opinion
· You never see him reading his Bible
· He has no interest in prayer
ARE YOU READY FOR MARRIAGE
SINGLE SERIES: COURTSHIP What you need to know
SINGLE SERIES: COURTSHIP II
IS PRAYING AN OPTION?
PREPARING FOR MARRIAGE, HOW CAPABLE ARE YOU?
FRIENDSHIP: SO INVALUABLE
THE SECRET FOR WALKING IN LOVE WITH THE UNLOVABLE
ATTRACTION: NEEDLESS OR NEEDFUL
THE HIGH COST OF HIDING YOURSELF
MY RESOLVE! YOUR RESOLVE!!
BEING A PERFECT GUEST AT A WEDDING
HOW TO STAY HEALTHY I
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