Choosing a Mate
The Five Most Important Decisions of Life:
1) Your relationship with God.
2) Vocational choice.
3) Where you go to school.
4) Where you will live.
5) Who you will marry.
Decision #1 is the most important decision by far. The other four decisions may vary in their order depending on the individual and their circumstances.
I believe those five decisions will affect your happiness in life more than any other decisions you will ever make. Today, I want to talk to you about choosing a mate.
I hope that this message will be a tool for parents whose children are still unmarried. But this isn’t a message just for parents and it is not just for singles.
I hope it is a message that all of us can use, as God gives us opportunity, to be able to positively influence not only our children, but our grandchildren, our friends, and others who are single as they make the important choice of a lifelong marriage partner.
What I want to share with you today are general principles. There are exceptions to everything and I’m sure you will think of exceptions to some of the things I will say. But I hope you will try to focus on the principle, not on the exception.
When it comes to the question of how to choose a mate, I tell everyone that will be fine if they choose a mate just like my wife, Laurie. Marrying her was a great choice.
As I look back, there are three yeses that have dramatically affected my life.
1) Saying yes to Jesus Christ as my personal Savior.
2) Saying yes to God’s call into the ministry.
3) Saying yes to Laurie when she asked me to marry her.
Those three yeses have changed my life forever!
Today we are going to talk about entering the most basic relationship we have on planet earth; the relationship between a husband and wife.
I am sure there will be some who will feel like you did not choose well in the past. Please understand that this morning’s message is not meant to brow-beat anyone or cause you to feel inferior or embarrassed in any way. I’m certainly not here to criticize or condemn anyone for past decisions. Hopefully you will see that this message is forward thinking and it is about decisions that will be made in the future.
First, I want to speak a word to 1. Parents: Parents have specific responsibilities when it comes to your child’s choice of a mate.
In Genesis 24, we see how Abraham, a parent, took specific responsibility for the choice of a wife for his son, Isaac. He asks his servant to go and find a wife for his son.
Genesis 24:1-4 (NLT)
1 Abraham was now a very old man, and the LORD had blessed him in every way.
2 One day Abraham said to the man in charge of his household, who was his oldest servant,
3 "Swear by the LORD, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not let my son marry one of these local Canaanite women.
4 Go instead to my homeland, to my relatives, and find a wife there for my son Isaac."
Abraham wanted Isaac to marry within the family. This was a common and acceptable practice at this point in history. There was the added advantage of avoiding intermarriage with some of Abraham’s pagan neighbors.
I have to be honest, I never wanted my parents to select a wife for me.
But now that I have three children, who are all still single, and as I am getting older and wiser, I think that the parent choosing their child’s mate is very likely the biblical, godly process. So, this morning, I just want to encourage us to get back to the Bible. We need to start picking mates for our children. KIDDING!
Let’s take a little poll. How many parents would like to pick the mate for your children? How many would like your parents NOT to pick your mate?
Parents, even though you can’t choose a mate for your child, you do have several specific responsibilities when it comes to guiding the process of choosing a mate. Four areas of responsibility for parents:
a. Example
When a young couple becomes husband and wife, this new couple has learned all about life from their family of origin. Their tendency will be to interact, problem solve, parent, handle money, etc., like they have seen modeled in their own home growing up.
The first thing we need to do for our kids is model what we want them to experience in a healthy Christian marriage. Be a worthy example for your children to follow. I’m convinced that they learn more about marriage from our example than they do from our words.
b. Environment
Place your kids in the right environment. I know you can’t put your kids in a bubble. Some of you have tried. But you can choose, to a certain extent, who they hang out with, where they spend their time and where they go to school.
The odds are high that our children, especially those who marry when they are younger, will choose someone to marry from the environment in which they live. As parents, we have a responsibility to do our best to place our kids in the right environment.
c. Expectation
I think it is good to point out both good and bad marriage models to your children. Not in a negative way to hurt or criticize others. But help your kids see the difference between good and bad marriages. This can be done in real life scenarios every day.
Help them learn to evaluate relationships. Share your expectations and help them develop their own expectations for marriage. Ask them questions like, “What qualities do you see in this marriage that are worth pursuing in your own relationship? What about that marriage do you want to avoid?”
Our kids desperately need some positive, healthy, Christian marriage models so that they can say, “I want to have a marriage like that.” Help your kids develop high expectations.
d. Examination
Ultimately, we can’t choose who our children will date or marry. I understand that. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t help them out in the process of making this decision. Parents should get to know the people their kids are dating. Find out a little about their family. Who are they? Where are they from?
If I had a brand new Lamborghini, I would not let just any yahoo come along and take it for a spin. Your children are far more valuable than any material thing.
Especially when my daughter was at home, no young man was going to pull up and honk and expect her to come out and get in the car and leave with him. (Perhaps not quite as critical with sons, but still important).
2. Preparation
We want to help hurting marriages. That’s all well and good. But I also want to be proactive. And we need to realize that future marital happiness does not begin after you get married. It all begins with the choice of who you will marry.
That’s not to diminish the importance of working on the relationship after you are married. Please, don’t give up on your marriage feeling like you made a bad choice in the beginning. But I want to make sure that those who are single see that the decision of who to marry is a major decision of epic proportions.
On the wedding day the music is beautiful. Everyone has smiles on their faces. Everybody looks so nice as the couple is pronounced husband and wife. But I have to tell you, that a thirty minute wedding ceremony has absolutely nothing to do with the failure or success of that marriage down the road.
That’s why premarital preparation is such a priority around here. We’re not trying to predict success or failure of a relationship. We are trying to help couples prepare for a lifelong commitment by putting a strong foundation in place. There are habits and practices that we can all learn to help us prepare for a happy, healthy marriage that goes the distance. In that process we sometimes have to unlearn unhealthy habits.
3. Priorities
Abraham said some interesting things in our text.
In verse 6, Abraham says, “Make sure that you do not take my son back there."
He says the same thing again in verse 8 - “Do not take my son back there."
It was a priority for Abraham to keep his son out of that heathen environment. Abraham knew that if Isaac went back there to choose a mate, the odds were great that he would not choose well. There were too many dangerous temptations.
Even before you start dating, before you are emotionally involved, you need to develop a list of priorities. I would write it down. What are you looking for in a husband or wife? I wish every parent would sit down and do this with your teenager this week or today.
If you don’t establish those priorities on the front end, it is too easy to lower our standards to accommodate the person standing right in front of you later on.
I used to go into the public school and teach a class on abstinence for five days each semester. This was when my kids were in the 6th-8th grade. They loved it!
I told them this would help build their character. There’s nothing like having your preacher-father coming to the public school and talk to the kids in your 6-7-8th grade class about not having sex before they are married.
One of the lessons I taught those students was about drawing their line of affection. We talked about five steps of affection. 1) Holding hands, 2) Hug, 3) Kiss, 4) Underwear Zone, 5) Sexual intercourse.
Whenever I taught that lesson, I always challenged the students to make a decision about where they would draw their line of affection, right there in the classroom.
It is easier to make a wise choice sitting there in the well lit, non-hormonally charged classroom, rather than to wait to determine where you will set your line of affection some Friday night in the back seat of the car.
First, you set your priorities and make your commitments and then you live them out.
Know your priorities. Set some goals. Give this matter the thoughtful and prayerful consideration it deserves. And don’t settle. Don’t lower your standards.
We seem to think we can take a single guy or gal, bring them before a wedding altar, get a wedding band on their finger, say a few vows, walk out of the church and throw a little rice or birdseed on them and suddenly, somewhere in that process, there has been some magical transformation that has taken place and they are the man or woman of our dreams and we will leave the church and live happily ever after.
Some people seem to think that everything that was wrong before the wedding is magically right and will never be an issue again after the wedding.
BEEEP!!! Wrong answer! In fact, the absolute opposite is true. Whatever little, insignificant thing was wrong before the wedding, that little quirk, habit, whatever, it is multiplied 100 fold. Can I get a witness from those of you who are married?
Negative does not become positive after the wedding. Negative only becomes more negative. It is magnified. That ceremony does not change anyone.
Now, that doesn’t mean there won’t be changes in the person or in the marriage because there will. When you get married the person you marry today will be different 10 years from now. So will you. We all change.
The good news is, if you married well, if you stayed true to your priorities, if you are intellectually and philosophically compatible, 10 years from now you will find that you have grown together. If you are not intellectually and philosophically compatible, ten years from now you will find that you have grown apart. Set your priorities now! Establish your priorities before you ever go out on that first date.
There isn’t anything that I can say to you if you are not married today that is more important than this: If you are a believer, make sure you only date and marry a believer.
“Well Pastor, I’m just dating. It’s not like I am going to marry him.”
When it comes to choosing a mate, shop only in a store you can buy from. Date only those who meet your standards. Otherwise you will get emotionally involved and wind up trying to justify something that you could regret for the rest of your life.
If you are a believer, one clear priority scripturally, would be that you marry a Christian.
2 Corinthians 6:14 (NIV)
14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?
What would a person who truly loves God with all of his heart, mind, soul and strength have in common with somebody that does not love God that way?
I wouldn’t have wanted to date someone who hated my parents. That wouldn’t work because I love my parents. I want a relationship with them. Why would I marry someone with a totally different set of core values? And if that won’t work with my biological family, why should I think it will work from a spiritual standpoint?
If God is #1 in your life and #27 in theirs how will that work? It doesn’t make sense. There is no harmony. There is no unity. And if the Lord really is number one in my life, why would I want to violate such a clear principle from His Word anyway? And yet, I have had professing Christians, sit in my office and try to convince me that they were in the will of God when they were marrying someone who had no faith in God at all.
We can choose to honor God’s Word and live by His principles and our lives will be blessed. Or, we can choose to violate God’s principles and do our own thing. If that is your choice, just be prepared to live with the consequences. God tells us things for our good. He wants to help us. He wants the best for us. I wholeheartedly believe that.
It is the same principle that applies to parenting. Kids can save themselves a lot of heartache, if they will just learn to listen to their parents. Does anybody here believe that? That’s was every parents chance to say amen.
Parents don’t tell you things to make your life miserable. They have been down the road and they know about the pitfalls. You might learn something from them if you will listen.
If that is true in parenting, think about how much more truth there is in listening to what God has to say to us through His Word. These principles are for our good. Live by them and be blessed. Reject them or neglect them and suffer the consequences.
So, write out your goals for a marriage partner BEFORE you get emotionally involved. And then evaluate those goals before you ever go out on that first date.
Now, I understand that dating is the process of getting to know the other person. And you may find that that they are a deeper Christian than you thought and you may find that they are not as committed as you had hoped. Either way, as I said, we are talking about general principles, and generally speaking, you can make some of these determinations before the first date and certainly before you get emotionally involved.
I have said it hundreds of times – The closer two people get to Christ, the closer they are to one another. Two committed Christ-followers have an incredible advantage over two unbelievers or a believer and unbeliever who come together in wedlock. That’s because they have a solid foundation to build a life and a marriage upon.
I know that marrying a Christian is no guarantee of success in marriage. But obeying the Word of God could save you a lot of heartache later. And in regard to priorities, if you believe that it is important that you marry a Christian, then you will date only Christians. That just makes sense.
4. Pray
Seek God’s direction. Pray for His will. Ask Him to reveal the right mate for you.
Psalms 32:8 (NIV)
8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you.
That’s a promise for you! It applies to all of life and I believe it applies to the choice of a marriage partner. But remember, don’t try to force God onto your timeframe. If you are going to trust Him to lead you in this process, you will need to learn to trust His timing.
Earlier in his life we can learn a lesson from Abraham about how we can get in trouble trying to help God out by trying to rush the process.
Pray for God’s clear direction. That’s what happened in verse 12. The servant prayed and God revealed the right mate for Isaac.
Genesis 24:12 (NIV)
12 Then he prayed, "O LORD, God of my master Abraham, give me success today, and show kindness to my master Abraham.
There is a Russian proverb that says, “Before going to war, pray once. Before going to sea, pray twice. Before getting married, pray three times. That is the bare minimum!
Too many times people become emotionally involved with someone and then they pray.
Set your goals (establish priorities for your future mate) before you ever start dating.
Life isn’t all that complicated. When you look at that person you are dating...if they don’t meet those standards, then back off.
“Back off! Back off? If I back off I may never get married.”
Now you’re getting the picture. Single loneliness is to be preferred to marital misery. It is better to be single and keep your goals high than to be married to the wrong person.
5. Patience
Genesis 24:21 (NIV)
21 Without saying a word, the man watched her closely to learn whether or not the LORD had made his journey successful.
Take your time in the process of choosing a mate.
Haven’t we all acted impulsively, only to regret that impulsive decision later on? Have you ever made a hasty decision that you later regret? It’s one thing to get caught up in the moment and buy a car that you shouldn’t have bought. But don’t jump the gun or be impatient when it comes to the choice of a mate.
If it is right today, it will be right tomorrow. Don’t rush the process. Once you are married, I hope you are married for the rest of your life. Take your time now to get to know each other. Another few months, or a year or more is a wise investment and could be time very well spent. Better to take time out today than get knocked out tomorrow.
There was a sign on the door where you get marriage licenses: “Out to lunch, think awhile longer. If it is love it will wait.”
Sometimes we get caught up in infatuation. We’re infatuated with the idea of being married or worse, we are infatuated with the person themselves. It can be difficult to distinguish between love and infatuation. It has been said that…
Infatuation is the initial, instant attraction and intense desire for a person of the opposite sex.
Love is a friendship that has caught fire. It takes root, develops and grows one day at a time. The process is slow.
Infatuation lacks confidence. When he/she is away you wonder if he/she is cheating you. Sometimes you check perhaps even discreetly.
Love means trust. You are calm, secure and unthreatened. Your beloved feels the same also and this makes both even more trustworthy.
Infatuation is marked by a feeling of insecurity. You are excited and eager, but not genuinely happy. There are nagging doubts, unanswered questions or some unclear actions about your beloved that you would not like to examine too closely. It might spoil the dream.
Love is quiet understanding and mature acceptance of imperfection. It is real. It gives you strength and grows beyond you to bolster your beloved. You are warmed by his/her presence even when he/she is away. Miles of distance do not separate you. You want him/her nearer, but near or far, you know he/she is yours and you can wait.
Infatuation has an element of sexual excitement. If you are honest, you can admit it is difficult to be in one another’s company, for the underlying fear that it will end in intimacy.
Love is the maturation of friendship. You are confident that you must be friends before you can be lovers.
Infatuation is usually temporary and eventually fades. It, however, might lead you to do things you will regret later, but love never will.
Love is an upper. It makes you look up. Love usually lasts longer and goes deeper than strong sexual Feelings. It makes you think up and makes you a better person.
Infatuation makes you feel anxious, nervous and jealous. You feel convinced that you can’t live without the other person. You are unable to see the person for who they really are because he/she is perfect in your eyes.
Love makes you feel excited. You are willing to respect the other person’s opinions and accept the good or bad qualities. You share similar values and beliefs and you see the person for who they really are.
Infatuation says, “We must get married right away! I can’t risk losing you!”
Love says, “Be patient. Do not panic. Plan your future with confidence. There are rewards in waiting.”
Is it love? Or is it infatuation? Does the person you are with make you a better person?
If not, be patient. God has a better plan.
6. Praise
If and when you select the right mate that marriage will bring continual praise to you.
Look what Abraham’s servant said…
Genesis 24:26-27 (NLT)
26 The man fell down to the ground and worshiped the LORD.
27 "Praise be to the LORD, the God of my master, Abraham," he said. "The LORD has been so kind and faithful to Abraham, for he has led me straight to my master’s relatives."
The best thing you could say after 10, 25, 50 years of marriage, “the Lord has led me.”
Happy is that person who has been led by the Lord, to choose a spouse to stand beside them, to bring out their strengths and to compliment their weaknesses.
Sad is that person who has rushed the process, or violated biblical principles, or who has not chosen well. Whatever they do in life, they will always wonder, what might have been.
Closing Prayer
