Concerning Unmarried Life

I want to start today with a list of questions asked of kids about love and marriage.

The first one is — “What do most people do on a date?”

Martin, age 10, said:

“On the first date, they just tell each other lies. And that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.”

Martin has apparently dated a fair amount in his 10 years.

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Another question, the great debate — “Is it better to be single or to be married?”

Anita, age 9 said:

“It’s better for girls to be single, but not for boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them.”

Will, age 7 said:

“It gives me a headache to think about that stuff. I’m just a kid. I don’t need that kind of trouble.”

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Another question — “How do people in love typically behave?”

Wendy, age 8 said:

“When a person gets kissed for the first time, they fall down and don’t get up for at least an hour.”

Wendy has very high expectations. I’m concerned for her husband.

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Another question — “How do you make love endure?”

Erin, age 8 said:

“Don’t forget your wife’s name. That will mess up love.”

David, age 8 said:

“Be a good kisser. That might make your wife forget you never take out the trash.”

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Here’s a great question. It’s about the role of beauty and physical attraction in love. —- “What should you look for?”

Christine, age 9 said:

“Beauty is only skin deep, but how rich you are can last a long time.”

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Last question — “What are some sure-fire ways to make someone fall in love with you?”

Dell, age 6, said:

“Tell them you own a whole bunch of candy stores.”

And lastly there’s Camille, age 9. She said:

“Shake your hips and hope for the best.”

I’m concerned for Camille. I’m glad I’m not her dad.

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Well, today I have a huge question, one of the biggest questions of all. How do you choose a spouse wisely?

Marriage is the most important commitment to a human being that you can make. I think outside of your choice to follow God, it’s the most significant life-altering decision that you will ever make.

But the single most significant thing you can do to enhance your marriage is something you do before the wedding — and that is, make very sure you marry the right person.

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Personnel selection is crucial in a lot of fields.

In the 1984 NBA draft, the Houston Rockets had the number one pick.

They picked Hakeem Olajuwon who was a great player in the NBA.

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The Portland Trailblazers had the number two pick.

They chose a guy named Sam Bowie, a center who was over seven feet tall.

Sam Bowie turned out to be injury prone.
Things didn’t work out too well.
He had a fairly marginal, quite short career in the NBA.

When he retired from basketball, ESPN named him the worst draft pick in the history of professional sports.

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It’s because the third pick that year belonged to the Chicago Bulls.

Do you know who they drafted?

Michael Jordan.

And the rest is history.

After being named rookie of the year…

Jordan racked up 6 championships
10 scoring titles
11 MVP awards
He made 14 all star teams
And averaged more points than any player ever

He was recognized as the greatest North American athlete of the twentieth century by ESPN.

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Now, imagine being the guy who pulled the trigger on the draft for Portland.

You could have had Michael Jordan.

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Teams are not casual about personnel selection when they draft.

They watch countless hours of film.
They do exhaustive background checks and personality inventories.
They expend an enormous amount of energy to do everything they can to ensure they’re making the right choice.

Because they know choosing the right player is the single most important variable in making a great team.

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Now, once you’ve chosen a player, you can do things to try to enhance the team and so on, but personnel selection is key.

And that’s no less true when it comes to marriage.

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One psychologist put it like this: “Your choice of whom to marry is more crucial than everything else combined you will ever do to make your marriage succeed.”

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So, the big question is how do you choose a spouse wisely?
How do you separate the marital Michael Jordan’s from all the Sam Bowies out there?
How do you keep from wasting your one and only draft pick on a lifetime partner?

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I want to give the best wisdom I can from my understanding of Scripture and my experience counseling couples who are dating as well as couples who are married.

I’ll give you eight things. Eight variables if you’re taking notes.

And I believe if you get these wrong, your odds of choosing the wrong partner will increase dramatically.

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I want to take some time to walk us through:

8 don’ts of selecting a spouse

And then hopefully by contrast it will be real clear what to do.

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And if you’re married, please take notes for your single friends. Or for your children who may one day seek advice from you about this.

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Alright, number one is this:

1. Don’t get married too quickly.

Don’t get married in a hurry.

If there’s one single indicator that’s a red flag for me, it’s when a couple tells me after a few weeks or months of dating, they know they’ve found the person God wants them to spend the rest of their lives with.

Sometimes I want to shake them and say, “Do you have any idea what ‘til death do us part’ means?”

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It means dirty dishes and financial difficulties and conflict.
It means career struggles and time pressures and mortgage payments.
It means sickness sometimes.
It means fighting over whether you’re going to watch sports or a Disease of the Week movie.
It means watching his hairline recede and his waistline advance.
It means watching the skin under her arms get loose and flabby the way it does with women over time.
It means navigating family issues and emotional problems and aging and challenges you can’t even imagine right now.

And you’re telling me you’re ready to make this permanent lifetime commitment after a few days or weeks or months?

Inevitably, they’ll tell me a story of some couple who got married after knowing each other two weeks, and how they’re still in love 50 years later.

Well, that happens. But people go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survive sometimes.

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That doesn’t mean it’s a good choice for a means of transportation.

The odds are not good.

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Researchers at Kansas State University found a direct correlation between the length of time a couple spends dating and the level of marital satisfaction they achieved.

They found that long-term courtships were directly related to a higher level of marital joy.

And they found that shorter term courtships were correlated directly to a higher level of marital heartbreak.

I want to tell you… if you don’t honor the commitment of marriage highly enough to give adequate time to come to know each other fully and deeply, you’re not ready to get married, period. You’re not.

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If you have any doubts on this one still, I encourage you to do a private survey. Ask people that are married or have been married how many of them have real serious regrets that they took too long in the courtship process, that they took too long to get to know each other well.

And then ask how many have real serious regrets because they got married too quickly, because they spent too little time getting to know each other.

You find out which side has the most people in it.

This is a no-brainer. If you err on the side of taking too much time, the worst-case scenario is you’ve lost a little time that you would have been married.

If you err on the other side of getting married too fast you can wreck your life and wreck someone else’s life. And if there are children involved, you can damage them as well.

Don’t get married in a hurry!

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Alright, the second “don’t” of choosing a spouse is:

2. Don’t get married too young.

This is an amazing statistic — the divorce rate for those who are married at the age of 21 is twice as high as the divorce rate for those who are married at the age of 25.

Think about this: By waiting for that later age you double the odds of a successful marriage.

I mean, what would you not give to be able to double the odds of having a successful marriage?

And, of course, for people that get married earlier than age 21, the odds are even worse.

This is just wisdom — you can’t select a spouse well if you don’t know yourself well.

You can’t select a spouse well if you haven’t clearly identified your own values and your own goals. At earlier ages you’re still in the process of being formed as a person. You’re still forming spiritual commitments and so on.

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One author writes, “Adolescence in our society often lasts until the mid-20s…

Although males generally will reach a higher level of emotional maturity significantly earlier than females.”

Okay, I just made that last part up. That’s not true.

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I don’t know how else to say this, and some of you may be offended by this but that’s not my intent.

If you’re in your early 20’s… you’re not at a good age to make a decision about who you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. You’re just not.

Did you know, divorce rates are lowest for those who get married at the age of 28 or later because people have given themselves time to be more fully formed, to be able to make a more mature decision.

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Alright, the third “don’t” of choosing a spouse is:

3. Don’t get married out of desperation.

Don’t get married if there’s a kind of desperation in you to get married. This is dangerous.

Sometimes it happens because someone was hurt by a past breakup, and because they’re in pain they plunge into another relationship as a way of relieving their pain. It’s a kind of emotional anesthesia.

It’s a way of short-circuiting the lessons they need to learn, and the healing that needs to take place.

So they just get desperate to get into another relationship, and they rush into marriage, and more often than not it leads to disaster.

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Sometimes this happens because someone’s afraid. They think something like this, “If I don’t do something, if I don’t meet someone soon, I’ll always be alone. And I couldn’t stand that. Anything is better than being alone.”

Well, you know what, no it’s not.

Being married to the wrong person is much worse than being alone. It’s much harder with much more pain.

If you doubt that, ask someone who married the wrong person.

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Sometimes a person gets desperate to get married because they’re in a relationship where they feel insecure about the other person.

They’re afraid the other person might change his or her mind, so they try to pressure things to get a commitment, to get married.

I don’t understand why this happens. Think about the logic of this for a moment.

Here’s what’s going on in that person’s mind — “I’m afraid that perhaps deep down you don’t really love me and might want out of this relationship. So I better marry you real quick so I can be in a permanent, binding, unconditional, forever relationship with someone who does not know if he loves me and thinks he might want out of the relationship.”

Why would you put yourself in that position?
Why would anyone set themselves up for pain by pressuring for a commitment, trying to enter into a binding, permanent relationship with someone who’s not even sure if they want to be in a relationship with you?

Don’t do that to yourself.

A desperate kind of frenzied spirit about getting married is matrimonial homicide. It’s a clear indicator that you better step back and slow down.

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Alright, a fourth “don’t” of choosing a spouse:

4. Don’t get married to please someone.

Don’t get married to please your mom or dad.
Don’t get married to please your friends.
Don’t get married because people your age are starting to get married, and you feel like you have to get married too.

The writers of Scripture are quite clear on this. The writer of Genesis says, “A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave” – or be united to – “his wife, and the two shall become one.”

There’s a kind of double action here. First you must leave, and then you cleave.

And you understand “leaving” doesn’t simply mean getting out of the house.

It’s not a geographical leaving. It involves becoming your own separate person with your own firmly established identity and values.

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Now, I’m a father of three children, and the older they get the more I like the idea of arranged marriages.

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But here’s the deal — when you get married, you’re not doing it to please your father or your mother or anyone else.

You don’t want to choose the spouse that your parents want you to choose because they’re not going to have to live with that spouse. You are.

So with a great deal of freedom, you need to make the best decision from the core of your being.

You need to pray a lot about it and exercise great judgment.

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I want to say a word to parents at this point.

Parents, you need very much to help your children become great decision-makers. That’s your job.

Your job is not to select your child’s spouse.

Your job is to help your children become great decision-makers so they can choose the best spouse for themselves when they’re adults.

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Let me give you a piece of advice.

Children very often ask this question of parents. If you’re a parent, you’ll get hit with this question sooner or later.

Someday your kid will come up to you and say something like this:

Mom, Dad, how will I know when I fall in love?
How will I know that I’ve met the right person?
How will I know that this is the person for me to spend the rest of my life with?
How will I know?”

There’s a standard romantic answer to this question. It’s quite a short response. A lot of you know what it is. The standard romantic response is:

“You just know.”

And the person gets kind of a vacant, far-away look in their eyes and smiles and kind of nods their head: “You just know. I get it, it just happens to you like chicken pox or indigestion.”

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This is not the best answer.

Let me give you a better answer.

This is what you need to say to your kids when they ask you that question.

“You must learn to listen to yourself very carefully. You must become the world’s leading expert at being fully aware of your values, and your thoughts, and your desires, and your emotions. You must get a very clear picture in your mind of the kind of person you want to spend the rest of your life with…

What kind of temperament are you drawn to?
What kind of values?
What kind of character are you looking for?
What kind of roles do you expect to play?
What level of ambition do you want in a spouse?
What level of spiritual commitment do you expect of that person?

“You’ve got to get a real clear picture of this.

“You must walk very closely with God so that God can form your heart, form your character, form your judgment.

“And you must become a champion decision-maker.

“You must become a champion decision-maker in a million little decisions so you’re prepared for that great big decision.”

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I hope, parents, when that question comes to you — and it will — you answer real wisely. I hope you do a lot better than, “You just know.”

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Alright, the fifth “don’t” of choosing a spouse:

5. Don’t get married when you don’t know each other well.

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Relationships pass through certain stages, and each stage has a goal.

The first stage is what might be called the “awareness” stage. You see a stranger across a crowded room and somehow you know — you want to get to know this person.

And we’ll do all kinds of things to arrange for this in our culture.

If you’re in school, for example, you’ll find out what her class schedule is and you appear in the hall right when her class gets out as if by magic or by coincidence.

She seems to like it, which either means she likes you or she’s a little ditzy.

Either of which is enough to encourage the average American male.

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But you’re not satisfied with just knowing her, that’s just the first stage. That’s not enough. You want to pursue romance.

So the next stage is you ask her out on a date.

Now, dating has changed since the days when I dated. Kathy and I started dating 30 years ago.

We were 10.

A lot has changed since we were dating.

I did a little research with college students recently. Do you know how much the average college student spends on the first date these days? Over $100 for a first date. No kiss or anything – over $100.

Things have changed. I think the first time I took Kathy out I spent like 20 bucks.

So anyway, you want to date, to start the romance thing, but then it occurs to you that there are other people who could be dating this person also. So you realize you don’t just want the relationship to be romantic. You want it to be “exclusive”.

But then it will occur to you eventually that even though it’s exclusive and romantic, at some point in the future someone else might get romantic with her so you want it to be permanent and exclusive and romantic. So you get married.

Now you’re married.

Let me ask you a question: What’s the next goal?

Kids? Could be to get kids in the house.

Then the next goal would be? To get kids out of the house.

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No, when you get married the Bible says the goal is… oneness. “And the two shall become one.” We shall know oneness and unity, intimacy —

to love and be loved
to know and be known
to serve and be served
to cherish and be cherished

Now, if you’re committing to this, to a lifelong pursuit of oneness, you need to know that other person extremely well first.

Too often people come to engagement with a very limited understanding of one another.

Sometimes couples have real busy schedules and relatively little time together.
Sometimes they’re only together in certain settings. For instance, they’re always alone. They don’t even know how each other responds in groups or in social settings or how family dynamics work.
Sometimes couples are in such a heavy infatuation they don’t know how they’ll handle conflict, and they’re not prepared for that.
They need to broaden their experience base to see each other in a wide variety of settings.

I would say the best place to get to know someone… is on a mission trip. Take someone you’re interested on a mission trip to a developing part of the world. You’ll know after that trip whether or not you want to pursue a relationship.

On mission trips you’re out of your comfort zone.
There are language barriers to overcome.
There are cleanliness barriers to overcome.
There are food barriers to overcome.
You will see if that person has a heart of compassion.
You’ll see if they’re hard working or lazy.
If they sacrifice their comfort or get irritated easily.
If they serve selflessly or just want to have fun.
If they connect with people or are self-focused.

You get to see what’s underneath the mask when you go on mission trips with people… and sometimes it’s not good.

And it’s better to see it then, than to get married and see it a year into your marriage.

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So, don’t get married when you don’t know each other well.

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Alright, the sixth “don’t” in choosing a spouse:

6. Don’t get married when you have unrealistic expectations.

Unrealistic expectations are a killer in a marriage.

One author puts it like this:

“One of the problems in our culture which idolizes romantic love is that people often have the fantasy that if they marry well, they will never have to be lonely.

“Then when the inevitable friction occurs and they feel isolated from their spouse, they often wonder whether their message wasn’t a mistake, even though the reality is that friction and consequent loneliness are inevitable.”

When we approach our marriage with unrealistic expectations, it’s a set up very often for discontentment.

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Marriage is a wonderful thing. It can be a great gift.

But it will not solve all of your problems.
It will not make all of your difficulties go away.
It will actually introduce some new ones.
It will not take away your aloneness. You will still be you, and if you are not okay with who you are alone before God, then you’re probably not ready to get married.

Unrealistic expectations for a marriage are a disaster.

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Alright, number seven:

7. Don’t get married when one of you is unhealthy.

If there are qualities about your potential spouse that you don’t like…

like anger management issues
or jealousy problems
or a lack of integrity
or selfishness…

Then ask yourself this question: Can I live with these qualities the rest of my life if they never change?

If the answer is no, then for God’s sake, don’t get married.

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One of the greatest illusions is people think, “When we get married and I’m loving that other person with all of the tremendous healing power of love that I have in my being, then he or she will change.”

If you’re in a relationship with someone who has serious character defects
who has problems with drugs or drinking or substance abuse that have not been addressed
who has significant integrity problems
who is not able to maintain sexual purity…

Run!

Don’t walk… run to the nearest exit.

Do not get yourself into a permanent, binding commitment with someone that has significant character defects.

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Alright, last one:

8. Don’t get married when you’re too dissimilar.

Now, we have a saying, “Opposites attract,” and, of course, any two individuals will have some differences that can add spice to a relationship, but the research is quite clear — every similarity that a couple shares is like money in the bank.

common values
common interests
shared levels of energy
shared amounts of ambition
being united in an understanding of roles

These things are all very important. They all add to the odds of a successful marriage.

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And I just want to say a few words about the single most important dimension where there needs to be common ground, and that is your spiritual commitment.

Paul wrote to a church at Corinth, “Don’t be unequally yoked,” or spiritually mismatched is another way of talking about it.

The yoke metaphor means if you have two animals and they’re yoked, they’re going to be headed in the same direction.

You don’t yoke up one animal to go east and another one to go west.

If you’re yoked together, you’re committed to sharing a common direction.

This is not a casual thing. Paul says ultimately every individual chooses a trajectory for their life. Either it will be moving toward God and his desire for your life or moving away.

Paul says, “If you’ve chosen to move toward God, don’t yoke yourself up to someone that’s going to pull you in the opposite direction.”

And historically, the most important category this idea of being “yoked together” involves, as the church understands it, has been the discussion of marriage.

Don’t get into a marriage where you’ve made your commitment to God the most important commitment of your life, and the person you’re interested in marrying doesn’t share that commitment.

Don’t be unequally yoked.

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Now, I want to say at this point to those of you who are single that I recognize this may be a painful word for you.

Some of you are single, and you want very much to be married and that can be a very good desire.

But you find in our society it’s hard enough just to find someone who’s sane and healthy. I mean, just sane and healthy, just those two categories are difficult enough.

Then if you add narrowing the field down to finding a believer, it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

And you’re about ready to give up on this one.

I don’t know how to say it any stronger. Don’t give up! Don’t give up on this one because if you do you’ll pay a price that’s way too high.

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I get emails on a regular basis from people who are paying this price, and it’s too high a price to pay.

Don’t get yoked with someone who will lead you away from what matters most in your life.

Hold out for someone who shares the greatest commitment that you have made so that you can walk through life together in this most important dimension.

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Well, those are the eight don’ts of choosing a spouse, and I know there’s a question some of you have right now.

Some of you are asking, how many of these eight can we violate without putting our marriage at risk?

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Anyone want to guess?

None.

You cannot violate one of these because each one you violate ups the risk factor to your marriage.

So I want to encourage you real strongly to commit now — say:

“I will not be casual about the most important commitment I can make to a human being.

“I want to take the wisdom of God, the wisdom of Scripture real seriously, and I’m going to honor the process of making the wisest choice I can.

“I will not be impulsive on this one.”

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Let me make two quick comments to two different sets of people and then we’ll be done.

I know some of you are here right now, and you’re thinking, “I wish I had heard this message a long time ago because I’m already married. When the draft came, I picked Sam Bowie. I had a bad draft.”

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I know for some there’s a significant level of pain about this.

And in many cases, people think the problem is they picked the wrong person when that’s not really the problem at all. The problem is they don’t have a clear vision of what their marriage could be.

Or they don’t realize that they’re going to have to change in order to make it happen, and that can be done.

Or they don’t realize God is there waiting for couples to ask for help.

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If your marriage could use some help, we have resources that can help you.

We have an online library called Right Now Media with marriage enrichment classes you can go through with your spouse. Or you can get together with another couple and work through something together.

These are very practical tools to help grow our marriages.

There are also a number of small groups that I think will make a dramatic difference in your marriage. Take the initiative and use the resources available to you.

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Okay, let me say this to those of you who are single. This is important because we live in a society where singleness, being single, is often very, very difficult.

Often the assumption is that marriage is normal, married people are normal, and to be single is somehow lacking or not normal.

This gets communicated all the time in movies, in books, sometimes even in churches.

Very often there is a subtle, or a not-so-subtle stigma attached to being single.

You add to that, in our society, the pressure to resist God’s standards of sexual purity. Those pressures are incredibly intense.

So I think to navigate the challenge of singleness with integrity and grace in our society is a tremendous achievement, and that in a church we ought to be cheering on those who pursue that.

Those of us who are married too often forget these things. We do.

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And I want you to know that one of our commitments as a church is to be a place that prizes both married people and single people.

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So I’d like to ask you if you’re single if you wouldn’t mind standing real quick because I just want to say a couple words to you.

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I want you to know that I think the fact that you’re here and you’re devoted to growth in your spiritual life is an honorable thing.

Many of you are involved in regular acts of serving, of devoting your time and energy and resources to a cause greater than yourself. That’s an honorable thing. I just want you to know I’m proud that you would do that.

And I want to say that one of our commitments as a church is to be a community of married and single persons where we value one another, we learn from one another, we respect one another’s struggles, and we’re for one another.

So I want to close in prayer, but I want to pray specifically for those of you who are standing right now.