How can we tell when we found the right one? I wish I knew a better answer than this: we choose ‘the One’. Choose wisely! THAT is the right one.
We cannot presume that God will intervene and force us to make a good choice. We regularly see Christians make poor choices in dating and marriage.
When I think about poor marriage choices, I think about Solomon, whose marriages to unbelievers brought about his spiritual downfall, his family to shambles, and undermined the society he was leading. We can make either good choices or poor choices in dating/courtship and marriage.
There is no checklist in the Bible for evaluating a spouse, but there are many verses that give us guidance on the type of person we should be seeking. A while back, I wrote this list to help me as I pondered what I hoped for in a wife:
Does she want to be a stay at home wife?
Is she ready for marriage?
Is she virtuous?
Does she have a temper?
Is she kind?
Is she interested and active in spiritual things?
Is she modest?
Does she want children?
Does she want courtship?
Would she wait until marriage for the first kiss?
What does she think about abortion?
(One can replace the SHE with HE and make a similar list.)
Those questions are not perfect, but an attempt to help me understand what I should be seeking. Lists like this help because they are spiritual standards and they challenge us to think about what really matters versus what was in our hearts.
We can have very superficial standards based on beauty, lust, money, and social standing. I suspect many of us have in our minds dismissed someone on superficial reasons, only to look back at that opportunity, and see spiritual beauty and faith that we overlooked. We blew it!
We can miss opportunities. In our prayers, we ask for God’s help, but sometimes what we are looking for is not what we should be looking for. Earlier we established that God can providentially provide a spouse for
someone. Some examples: Isaac and Rebecca, Boaz and Ruth, Adam and Eve are providential couples. Does that mean that God will always work that way? Poof, there’s your spouse! Not necessarily. I think for many of us God
gives us a number of choices to choose from, some are better and some are worse.
And in fact, that was even true of Isaac and Rebecca, Isaac had the freewill to make a bad choice, he could have married a pagan girl, instead he waited for a better choice and God blessed him. And Rebekah had a choice
too, she was asked if she was willing to leave her family and all that she knew to marry Isaac, she acted on faith (Genesis 24:58). That is true of Ruth too; she had the freewill to make a bad choice, to choose beauty instead of virtue.
Boaz was an older man, from a worldly point of view, not the best choice (Ruth 3:10). Ruth choose to wait and honor God, and was blessed.
The choice of who to court is something most of us struggle with. We might have of a number of people whom we could potentially court, but or various reasons, we feel they are not the best spiritual choice. In some cases, people just can’t seem to relate well. I think sometimes we have personal preferences too: education, personality, cultural differences, age, height, and
race.
On occasion, these preferences are superficial and perhaps should be forgotten, sometimes they are an important preference.
As mentioned before, there is no biblically right way to do this as long as you are pure. I think you can quickly get to know someone well in the things that matter. I say this because most people in past ages didn't have the same
choices, yet somehow made marriage successful and had godly children. In many cases, the father or family would ask good questions of young men and their families, and would help lead a woman to man they approved of. The families didn't always make a good choice, I am sure that some families chose lemons, but that is also true our modern dating today too.
We should ask good questions today too (similar to my list above): Is the person is a faithful Christian, kind, merciful, slow to anger, honest, works hard, has an honorable job, is prepared for courtship, is someone who you consider a friend, and someone you are attracted to? They might be a good match.
Careful planning and preparation can’t guarantee 100% success in anything, but in general, that is how any effort is going to be most successful. Why not seek what will help you succeed?
While seeking a good choice is wise, it is important that we don't demand perfection. We are all works in progress. As we grow in Christ, we change and improve. Someone who was once immature and not ready, can in time be a good choice. We should not hold unrealistic standards of perfection for seeking a spouse. Each of us has areas of our life that we need to improve and areas of growth as well as areas of maturity and strength.
The lists I made above were to help me have godly standards in seeking a wife. Make your own list, and then prayerfully consider what you are seeking. cc seun lalasticlacla tosyn2much |
abi nah only the topic you look at b4 u proceeded to comment