Ladies and Gentlemen, I�d like to share with you an amazing concept about marriage and the process of choosing your marriage partner. It�s amazing to me that � of marriages are ending in divorce, for whatever reason, and we could debate it all day long and still come up frustrated. The reality is that marriage is under attack and someone has to search out an answer. Here is the reality; many people don�t allow God to pick out their mates, and we have a major epidemic of improper dating and courting. It�s amazing to me how careless some are when it comes to the selection of their mate. Friends, who you marry does matter and it�s the second greatest decision of your entire life. There isn�t a decision that is more important to you except your decision to serve God. Life has enough challenges and pressures that you don�t want to add to by marrying the person you were never meant to marry. I�ve heard it said, and I agree 110%, that it�s much better to stay single than to marry the wrong person. I�d really like to let loose and express my views about dating, courtship, marriage, and divorce. However, I�ll stay with the focus of this blog today and that is for you to take a deep breath and let God choose your mate for you. I realize that the extremely practical people will say, �Come on Matt, you can�t expect God to do it all for you.� In fact, I used to be the one that said, �Yeah, but the Bible says, �He that finds a wife, finds a good thing.� You have to find who you are supposed to marry and spend your life with. While that may be true and accurate, we can�t ignore the fact that God put Adam to sleep and created his wife for him. What was Adam doing at that time in his life? Adam was busy doing what God wanted him to do with his life.
What can we learn from Adam and Eve? Well, God does care about your loneliness and has somebody for you. However, you have to learn to be content where you are and rely on God�s perfect timing. What did Adam do to get Eve? Nothing at all; God put him to sleep, he woke up, and his soul mate was lying right next to him. While that isn�t going to happen exactly like that for us, God will make sure that your path crosses with the person you are suppose to marry.
God knows what He is doing and will prepare your mate for you. You can�t allow yourself to have such low self esteem that causes you to believe that you will never find anybody. There is somebody for everyone. God has a purpose and plan for your life. God wants you to be happy and have a blissfully, abundant, joyful, sensational, exhilarating, passionate, and blessed marriage. God wants you to enjoy your spouse and have the love of a lifetime. God wants you to have a relationship with the opposite sex and enjoy the beauty of a man and woman coming together.
We need some serious help if we believe that homosexuality and lesbianism is normal. God never intended for men to fall in love with other men or ladies to fall in love with other ladies. It�s simply not the will of God, nor is it normal. God fully intended for a man to enjoy a lady and for a lady to enjoy her man. If you are struggling with crazy thoughts of falling in love with a lady and you are a lady, then you need to go on a 21 day fast until God renews your mind. The same will apply if you are man struggling with your sexual identity. Is it alright for me to get on the loud speaker today and say, �Men and women coming together is normal, healthy, and right.�? There are only a select few who are destined to be single; however, most people are designed to be in a marriage relationship. It was God who said, �It is not good for a man to be alone, I will create a helpmate for him.� God does have a helpmate for you and will bring them into your life when the time is right and you are ready.
Your responsibility is to enjoy your singlehood and prepare yourself to be the best husband or wife you can be. Your responsibility is not to find the right person, rather to go become the right person. You should be enjoying your singlehood and using that time to discover your purpose, passion, calling, and dreams. You should use your single time as a blessing to work hard, save money, and prepare yourself for an amazing future. You should focus on becoming the best person that you can be, working out, establishing healthy habits, and focusing on looking the very best you can look for your own self worth�s sake. I�m concerned about all these people who are not prepared as they go into a marriage. It�s going to only create problems for you in the future if you don�t wait on God and prepare yourself. Every single person should be reading books about relationships and marriage. As a pastor, my question that I ask every couple seeking marriage is, �Have you read the book His Needs, Her Needs?� If not, you are not even close to being ready for marriage. I am convinced that every single young man and single young lady should have read at least 12-15 books about marriage before they even think about saying, �I do.� The healthiest marriages only happen with people who are whole and prepared for what lies ahead.
James Dobson suggests that a courting couple should communicate at least 1,000 hours before engagement, and I�ll have to whole heartedly agree with Mr. Dobson. It�s wise to take the time to really get to know someone before you get physical. Ouch, did I just say that? Is it really important to go as long as you can without getting physical? Absolutely, your first kiss should mean something, and the longer you can wait the more intimate your relationship will be. Too many relationships are only built off lust and physical connection. How many marriages have you seen where just by a look in the eye or a facial expression, the other spouse knew what the other was thinking or feeling? Why? It�s because there is an emotional and spiritual connection. Couples that only are connected physically will have major problems in the early years of their marriage. You should take the time to really get to know someone before you kiss them or get physical; your relationship will be so much healthier. While we may have all blown it here and gotten more physical than we should have, I�d like to encourage you to slam on the brakes, put your car in reverse, turn around, and get on the right road. God is merciful and does allow U turns. It�s important that you turn around, starting right now, and reserve your physical passion for marriage.
If you will relax and let God prepare you and your future spouse, then you will not have to worry about marrying the wrong person or the right person at the wrong time. You would be very wise to stop worrying about who you are going to marry and just start living life to the fullest right now. Let God heal you and make you the best husband or wife in the world. In a perfect world there would be no sexual abuse, mistakes, rejection, cheating, divorce, or sexual scars. However, the world that I live in and the people that live in this world have been scarred by sexual immorality, past or sadly a divorce. It�s vitally important that you become healed and whole from whatever scar or bad relationship you had in the past. People that are continually jumping from one relationship to another are simply not wise. It�s dangerous to enter another relationship if you are not healed from your past or previous broken relationships.
As you can tell, there is a lot to cover when you start talking about relationships and marriage. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. God is bigger than your past. While you may have scars and consequences of your past, it doesn�t have to dictate your future happiness. God is a good God and will give mercy to His people. You have a bright future and God is going to send your lifetime companion to you when the time is right. Just go to sleep and let God pick your mate out for you.
If we trust in the Lord with all our heart,mind and soul, as we are supposed to, we will be rewarded. As I say, if we are faithful to the Lord, the Lord will be faithful to us. God wants everything good for us. The Lord's plan is perfect. All we have to do is dedicate our lives to doing his will and be obedient. Perfect love casts out all fear and perfect love comes from the Lord and is eternal and all powerful. Love is the life of the soul and it creates in us an eternal spring, which only comes from God if it is real, and only real love is eternal because it comes from God.
Travis, that is an excellent article that you've reposted.
I agree with most of the points, except for reading 12-15 books on marriage before sayind "I do".
Though reading a book on marriage could be helpful in understanding how God plans for marriage to be, there is also a good amount of scripture that deals with marriage, whether directly, or by example of successful marriages in times past. All books on marriage should point to, and derive their advice from, the Bible. If a book helps us to better understand the scriptures, then (and only then) it's a book worth reading.
Vaughn, you've just echoed what I've believed in my heart for so long, but have never heard anyone else state. What an awesome God we serve! He is all-knowing and all-loving. His plans for us are good only and never bad. We may sometimes feel as if He doesn't know what He's doing, but if we are obedient to His commandments, in spite of the fact that we may not understand them, we will see a little further down the line that He knew EXACTLY what He was doing!
I like having read your article and I wish it be visible for many people, on the internet.
I think it's the 1st time I see it this way: Marriage is a gift! We are undeserved, no need to be granted, but it is a God-given gift.
I think you could have told more about this: "However, the world that I live in and the people that live in this world have been scarred by sexual immorality, past or sadly a divorce. It�s vitally important that you become healed and whole from whatever scar or bad relationship you had in the past. People that are continually jumping from one relationship to another are simply not wise. It�s dangerous to enter another relationship if you are not healed from your past or previous broken relationships."
No one who is emotionally (or physically) engaged with her/his past is really open to start again that type of relationship, but your ideas came deeep in me, particularly when -sometimes- I might have blame God for my faults, hindrances or limitations to get the one I wanted: I was not ready (I'm not ready) for that gift (which is NOT too important, at my age).
