04 I do or I don’t: Making the decision

SPEAKER_02: You don't have to be over thirty. You don't have to be wealthy. Living together does not help. And all the statistics are starting to bear that out. In fact, living together is a better predictor of divorce than it is of marriage. And if you think about it, what's the single biggest predictor of success is commitment. And everyone will tell you that. It's the level of commitment. Are you willing to make the commitment or not? Well, living together is saying, I'm not willing to make the commitment, I just want all the benefits. So you can see why that's a great predictor of divorce. So on, I don't know what page it is, is like six on your handout? We have a series of questions. So if you've developed these friendships, these brother-sister relationships in Christ, the feelings or the thoughts are starting to come, maybe this might be the one. Well, how do you go? How do you get from A to Z? These are some questions to kind of think through. SPEAKER_01: And one more myth is that you don't have to be sexually compatible. So there's no such thing as sexually compatible. It works. God designed it to work between lots of different people and body types and all that kind of stuff. So it doesn't matter. So sexually compatible isn't a good indicator. Just one more thing. This woman is not getting married. She's a model whose sole purpose is to make brides feel inadequate without$10,000 dresses. Getting married is not this Hollywood glamorous affair. The wedding is not the adventure. The adventure is what comes after the wedding. So this woman is not getting married. These people are getting married. And they'll be married at the end of the day, just like just like everyone else will. So you can get married and it doesn't really matter. You can jump over a broom and that could be getting married. It doesn't matter. I actually envy this wedding because look at these are the grooms over here, and the hair of chorus over there is the bridesmaids. So when we got married, uh I'm I'm a comic book fan, and and Krissan learned to like probably would have liked the Spider-Man comics. SPEAKER_02: That would have been me. SPEAKER_01: I really like Broadway musicals now. SPEAKER_06: Spider-Man's okay too. SPEAKER_01: So the number one question is are are both of you believers? Um do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. We are told not to tie ourselves to someone who's not a Christian because they're going to be headed in one direction, and if we're yoked to them, we have to go along. If these two uh oxen decide to go in different directions, they are going to be causing each other nothing but heartache. And so, for the non-Christian's sake, do not marry a non-Christian. You will do nothing but frustrate them. It is just not the right thing. And let me just give you another reason why. Uh threefold chord is not easily broken, that is what is the what is the purpose that God plays in the relationship? If the husband and wife are both actively seeking to move toward God, they will grow closer together. And so part of the purpose of the marriage is they both have the same sight in mind and they'll grow closer together. The other thing is, what's going to keep you together? You know, the secular marriage is as long as you both show love, what's going to keep you together when that love isn't there? So if love is what's keeping you together, then why are you still together if you're not loving each other and that's when you get divorced? So what in your life will say, I want you to strive toward loving your spouse when you don't love your spouse? And the only thing that does that is God at work in our lives. So we have this commitment to God to fulfill our marital vows, and that's the thing that's going to keep us, so long as our commitment to God is still there, it's going to drive us back to move closer to our spouse. And so that's that's this aspect of having God at work in your lives. So God is more than a token, if you will, a token acknowledgement of Christianity is not sufficient for marriage. It has to be the willingness to submit yourself to God that drives you back to continue to pursue your spouse. SPEAKER_09: Um I thought to do this before as a triangle, and I thought it was really effective. It was like I thought that might go closer to God. Exactly. SPEAKER_01: Exactly. Yeah. And I and I think all that's right. SPEAKER_09: I just I mean it seems like really good in the hearing, but I just think you know a lot of sadly couples who have more separated. What would you say about that, or what you do when I mean not feel like God is enough on what you say in those situations where it's really hard for you to hear? SPEAKER_01: It's really rough. I mean, Krissan and I have had a lot of marital counseling with couples that are struggling, and everything I've ever seen boils down to a failure to make the other person special in their lives. It's really hard to do. And you'll have times when you're don't want to do it and you have to have something that drives you back to doing it. If you're committed, it will come back and it will and it will redeem itself. Indifference is what m what drives most couples to divorce. It's not necessarily the fighting, it's the after a while fighting and not willing to come back and try to make things right again. SPEAKER_02: I can the other thing I'd add to that is um a lot of times, because we've ended up counseling couples, usually you wait too long to ask for help. And that's tragic because there are couples we know that have ended up divorced because they didn't want to admit we're in trouble. And by the time they they got, you know, to the point where it became obvious to the entire world it was too late, the marriage was dead. So I would say a lot of the times we're sinful people, so it's gonna happen. Christians are gonna get divorced. Ask for help. Don't wait until it gets beyond repair. There that's where, as brothers and sisters, we can hold each other accountable, we can encourage. So a lot of times it's a failure to ask for help. SPEAKER_01: I talked to one wife, she was already dead set on divorce, and I said, Why didn't you ask for help? And she said, Oh, it's too embarrassing to not admit we didn't have a perfect relationship. It's like, well, ultimately you had to admit you didn't have a perfect relationship because you had to get divorced. So it's like it's like no one has a perfect relationship. John Cunningham at Trinity says it best, and that is if you're not actively trying to work on your marriage and the problems in it, you're not married. You you have to, you know, the the act of working on the problems of of trying to communicate with somebody who's other is is part of the marital commitment. That is it. So that that struggle and striving is part of it. The other thing is at the bottom of the page we're gonna we're gonna look at this, are four things that that end up really devastating a marriage. And I've seen a whole lot of marriage shipwreck on one of those four. Um, usually two or three out of the four and they end up shipwrecking that way. And it's very easy, you know, you look at a couple and you wonder what's going on beneath the surface, but if you hear what's going on beneath the surface, you kind of understand that they they have deep problems and they're broken in some way, and usually it's one of those four ways that that ends up happening. But you're right, it's scary, and it's especially scary when you're trying to we're trying to face into the commitment of marriage. It's like, why would I want to make that commitment? It doesn't seem like it turns out all that well. Um but if you look at at Christian couples, you'll see that there's certain Christian couples who really given over to Christ, and that really makes a difference in their marriage too, because they keep coming back to it. And so um I I know we had a couple of couples who just encouraged us that it could be done. And you know, even if if you think about, you know, people, people are broken in a lot of different ways, and so and so that the hope is that you're not going to you're that you're gonna be able to overcome that brokenness or avoid that brokenness entirely in in certain series serious ways. The the next thing is do you have the same understanding of the gospel? The two most important aspects of being the right person is forgiveness and forbearance, and the gospel helps have that. And by having the same understanding of the gospel, I think everyone in the room probably thinks they understand the gospel. But I'll bet if we compare notes, we all understand it a little differently. And some of us may understand it in a way that's not quite the gospel. And if you don't understand the gospel, I would not recommend you get married. So I'm I'm gonna be really blunt in that. Understand the gospel first. So the first step is to understand the gospel. Because, you know, as you can see from from Jesus' words in Matthew 23, you can be very religious and not understand the gospel. So what are you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites for you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourself. So you can have the wrong view of the gospel. And if you think that um that your spouse is responsible for screwing up their moral courage and being perfect, that's not the gospel, and you're not going to have a very good marriage. So you will not be forgiving, you will not be forbearing. So you have to understand the gospel, and you have to understand on a very practical level of how it works in your life and how it works in your spouse's life. If you trust God for your own salvation, what can you do other than trust that God at work in your spouse's life is going to make them the person that they ought to be? And so that kind of understanding will change, uh, I think in essence, who you are. SPEAKER_02: The the next, the second question is three, four, and five on your list, these are the ones that I think don't often get asked. Usually we look around and we're saying, is he the right guy for me? And we have our list and we're kind of, you know, going down the checklist to see that's the wrong approach. The only thing you can change is yourself. So the question you ought to be asking him, am I willing to be the right person for him? So if he wants to go to Florida, am I willing to follow him there? If he are you willing to do what it takes to make those commitments, and you have to ask that of yourself before you start looking at the other person because they may have everything on your list, but if you're not willing to make those three commitments or to be the one who compromises so that you're the person who can make him or her the most special thing in all creation, you ha you aren't willing to make the commitment. So ask yourself am I willing to be the right person for him or her? Am I willing to make those three commitments to this particular person? And along with that, kind of one of the things we talked about is do you encourage each other to godliness? That's kind of a the next level down. Um and I this for me personally was the turning point in our relationship. We had a pretty deep friendship and a lot of people thought we were dating and we weren't. But there came a point where I was just absolutely, completely, totally selfish and thoughtful. Just thoughtless, mortified. I couldn't believe how stupid I was. And Dave pointed it out to me, risking our friendship, and then said, But I like you anyway. And I thought, I'm gonna marry that guy. Because he was willing to seek what was best for me and love me despite seeing a really horrible, selfish flaw. So do you encourage each other to godliness? Not just, oh, he gave me a Bible verse once on the back of a napkin. But do you do you actually are you willing to risk the friendship to do what is best? Because that's what part of the marriage commitment is. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so seeing fruit and seeing it abundantly, that that that that she's encouraging you to be able to do. This is abundant fruit. Right, this is abundant fruit. That that she's encouraging you to be more a man of the of the word, more a man of prayer, more um more you know, caring about their roommates and stuff. So, you know, it's it's easy to s to sort of justify this to yourself, and it's obviously subjective, but it's more than just, oh, he told me I was probably had enough to drink at some party and and and he walked me home or something. So it's it's really the the deep the encouraging you in terms of spiritual nature. And so the the question is, does he make me more the man that God wants me to be? Obviously, there's a lot of dating relationships. You meant she, he, either one. I'm depends who I'm talking to. So it obviously in a lot of dating relationships, the person actually doesn't make you more a person that God wants you to be. They actually end up hurting your spirituality and not encouraging you the things that should be encouraged. So that's this idea of being used in the other one's life and seeing them being used in your life. Number six, this is actually a piece of art that hangs in our home. It's a P. Buckley Moss, and it's called Young Philosophers. And we got it because it reminded us of our college days because we were always discussing God and things like that. So the the question is have you discussed your life goals and important issues, vocation, finances, children, holidays, chores? Do you have similar views? How do you make decision making? Where do you differ? Are you billing willing to be the one to compromise? There's the last three pages of your handout are questions. They're from a, I put the website on there. And it's uh it's a series of questions, but it's from a book, you know, before you say I do, here's questions and ask. And it's it's our hope that um uh mixed groups on grounds would use these as questions to talk and get to know each other. So this doesn't just have to be with the one that you think you might marry. This can just be with a whole bunch of people to kind of figure out who you are. SPEAKER_02: So we give you permission to talk about all these, and it doesn't mean you're headed to the altar. You may talk, you may ask a member of the office of sex one of these questions, okay? Everybody in this room, you have permission to do that. SPEAKER_01: And the goal is just is just, you know, these are life planning questions. I you know, I I I work with with clients and sometimes I ask them some of these questions. And one of the best things I'll ever hear is uh no one's ever asked me that question before. That's a really good question. I've got to go think about that and think about about who I am. SPEAKER_02: And can I just add to that? Don't take the kind of guest on view of these questions as let me dump, let me tell you everything there is to know about me. You see? Where it's a give and take. If you really want to get to know someone, you can't be, well, let me just tell you the answer to these three pages, you know, sit in sit in and get comfortable you're here for a long discussion. No, it's it's gotta be you want to ask these questions and learn about the other person. SPEAKER_01: And and again, the the the the reason for this is you're trying to come to the decision of marriage, and to do that, you're trying to know if God is calling you to be with this person, and you need to know what that person is like. A lot of couples get married, they don't really know each other, and they'll they'll tell you that they, you know, they d they don't really they didn't really know each other when they got married, and now they've gotten to know each other and there's all these problems that they have, then they they they would have gotten to know each other you know better, maybe they wouldn't come to a different decision. We try to get to know each other a lot, and we tried to uh to structure our activities around being able to see each other in situations other than those gazing into each other's eyes. It's easy to be compatible when you're recreating together. So we led a high school Bible study together, and it's a little more difficult when you're trying to run a high school Bible study and disciple a bunch of kids, because then you're guaranteed to see each other, but you're guaranteed to see to see each other in a situation that's not just all fun and games, it's a lot of ministry and work. And I just think that was a much better preparation for marriage. So we're kind of fans of of that kind of an activity to get to know someone. And then you may, you know, may do a project like that, and then you may say, well, I really think that person's better for my roommate, and you can introduce them there because you've gotten to know them that way. Um, have you spent time with each other's families? You are not just mirroring the person, you're mirroring into their network of relationships, some of which cannot be given up, like family. So you should at least be able to look at their family and say, I can I'm I'm willing to be married to you despite your family and and and go and and and go. SPEAKER_02: Speaking from personal experience, I just say my family's on the weird side, but yeah. Good thing they didn't scare him off. SPEAKER_01: Whereas where's my family is unique? SPEAKER_02: Well, no one in my family is a believer, and everyone on Dave's side was a believer, so there's a little different. SPEAKER_01: And then number eight, is your communication clear, comfortable, and respectful? Can you be honest and real? So so you're just you're trying to see if that's do they make decisions the way that you would make decisions? Do you do you respect that? Are they able to share those kinds of things? SPEAKER_02: The last two are just kind of practical. Are you able to form an independent family? Can you, you know, if you have some prior commitment that's keeping you from being able to be married, that that's kind of a at least a slowdown or stop. And then we would add, have you worked together or seen each other when you're not at your date night best? So if you've got these brother-sister relationships and you want to move to the next level, I would say expand your time beyond recreation. You know, study the Bible together, read a book together, discuss it, you know, volunteer, serve on a ministry team together, uh, join the same small group, or any of those things where you can see each other in real life kind of situations. And it's okay to talk to other people, to seek counsel, to go to people who know you best. Maybe it's your parents or your pastor, or maybe it's your roommate, and say, You know us, what do you think? You know, it's okay to ask um questions, attend premarital marriage counseling. We teach a premarriage counseling class at our church, and we have couples who are not yet engaged take it together sometimes. Just to ask the questions. So let those feelings of romance raise the issue, don't run the other way. SPEAKER_01: And if you have to take one thing away from the talk today, it's that marriage is the adventure. You don't go and have a life adventure and then marriage just gets tacked onto it. Marriage is the life adventure that you're committing yourself to this other person, and you're committing yourself to the other person, and then and then you're figuring out what you're going to do with your life together. So when we say are you able to make an independent family, you don't necessarily even have to have a job. You can you just have to have some sort of means of being able to work. So if you can make a little bit of money, you can you can be married and have a job together. Uh similarly, uh, you know, if if marriage is just the intersection of what you have in common, we've talked about this before, that's difficult. But if marriage can uh can sort of spread out to be everything that you have, then even as you change in life, uh it's okay because you end up you know drifting apart. But now if you're the union of those two interests, you just cover more ground. So if you if you go in different directions and you share in each other's lives, now you've got lots of stuff that you're interested in so long as you're back and forth. And uh, you know, one of the best things I I heard was you have to give the other person the ability to change and grow. And as they change and grow, you have to be encouraging in that, not discouraging in that, and continually sort of uh figure out what that means and what what does our new adventure together mean? If if you're now good in this area, then how are we going to make that a part of our lives together? Just very quickly, there are four things that will do, will destroy a marriage, and we've seen these so much that there are things that you can do now to make sure that you're preparing yourself to be the kind of person that does not destroy your marriage. The first one is substance abuse. It can be alcohol, it can be drugs. I've seen alcohol and drugs destroy more marriages. That I would say if you have trouble with alcohol and drugs now, get it together. Do not inflict that on another person. Get that together before you get married. SPEAKER_02: Pornography, also another addiction that will destroy it. SPEAKER_01: Pornography is another one. Adultery is one, but it starts with pornography quite often. Adultery will destroy a marriage, it breaks the marital commitment in multiple ways, and pornography is one of those aspects that is the starting block. So there's a lot of drinking. Drinking lubricates a lot of debauchery on grounds, and you just need to sort of have figured out how to handle that. Now, Christians have a lot of good ways of handling that, and the Christian community is largely not a part of that. And I think that bodes well, that puts you in the upper half of marriages, gives you a lot better odds of actually making it. So the you you know, of all the marriages that you see that don't make it, a lot of it is they became Christians, Christian marriages, they became Christians after getting involved in a lot of this stuff, and it's still baggage that they've got along with it. Another one is abuse, verbal abuse, or physical abuse. So that's a lot of the talking that you need to do before marriage is can you communicate without it being abusive, without getting angry, without can you disagree? Do you know how to have a disagreement? Do you know how to have a constructive disagreement? Um, Krissan and I were at one place and we were talking, and we were so excited about the subject matter, and two people thought we were arguing. And we were like, we do this all the time. We do this for fun. We love this kind of stuff. We were debate. We were kind of shocked that they thought we were arguing because we were just passionately talking about a Bible passage and what it meant. And we do this all the time. Well, we often take opposite sides to kind of Yeah, we we we iron sharpens iron, and and we've we've we've we've learned to enjoy ourselves when we're disagreeing about stuff. So so create you know, creatively disagreeing and knowing what that looks like and being able to communicate and giving the other person the benefit of doubt on the heart and all that kind of stuff is is learned skills. And of course, the last one is abandonment. Uh you can I mean abandonment in marriage is is really just kind of get devastating. It can be emotional or literal abandonment. And so maintaining your engagement and you know, i being engaged with the other person, maintaining that kind of connection uh is important. And how do you learn that when now when you're not married, your brother-sister relationships in Christ? You just you you learn to be committed to someone who's eternally a part of your family and to maintain that kind of connections and those kinds of things. So that's all that's all part of it. SPEAKER_02: And you can see how they break the commitment. Because if you're addicted to something, that's now a higher priority in your life than your spouse. So that's breaking the commitment. Adultery is breaking the one life experience. Now you're sharing something with someone else that you shouldn't. Abuse, how can you make someone the most special thing in all creation if you're downgrading them uh either emotionally or physically? And then abandonment, how can you make someone special? How can you share one life if you're not there? And you can be physically present but have checked out of the relationship. So it's not just, you know, I have to be in the living room every night, but you can be there and have abandoned the relationship. So you can see how they all break the marital commitment. SPEAKER_01: And I will tell you, if you avoid these four, you have a much greater chance of having a good marriage. I mean, these these are the four things that just destroy marriages. And there's probably some others, but these are the four that we've seen over and over and over again. We have the same problem in raising kids. A lot of parents aren't the great parents, and you face into well, am I ready to be a father? And it's scary. But when you look at the level from top to bottom, you realize that if you avoid these four, you're probably in the top 20% of marriages. You'll probably have a pretty good aspect. If you're both committed. Christians and you understand the gospel, you're probably in the top ten percent of marriages. You know, and if you actually you know are are have made that commitment going in and not just gotten it afterwards, you know, you're probably in the top five percent of marriages, it votes very well for your for your marriage. Okay, questions. Yeah. SPEAKER_07: Okay. So earlier you all were talking about the male and female role, and I was wondering if you could just apply that to um, I guess the initial like that sort of relationship? Like how does that work? SPEAKER_02: Those roles apply only in marriage. So I think it's a mistake to teach that somehow all women have to be subject to all men, that there's some kind of universal head and helper. That's if you just think about it on the face of it, that's impossible. How could I possibly submit to ten different people? You know. So but it can raise the issues when you're getting to know someone of like if you're a woman, do you trust his decision making? Because you're gonna have to submit to that. So if you don't think he has a godly or um I don't know, wise way of making decisions, then you have to decide, can I help him grow in that area, or is this a run the other way? Uh the same, and then I don't know, how what would the flip side be for a man? Can you does she respect you? Does she grant you kind of the respect to make those decisions? That would probably be the flip side. Right. And those can be red flags. SPEAKER_01: And you may also be asking the question in male-female relationships of courtship, is there somehow where the man ought to be the initiator and the woman ought to be the responder or something like that? I would say we are in live in such an age in which it is so difficult to actually make real connections and talk about stuff that if either one of you is brave enough to initiate something and raise and and raise issues, I think it's good. I mean, in half the relationships, it's the female who ultimately says something like, Are we dating or what's what what's going on with our relationship? And the guy's like, Relationship? That would be a really good idea. I like that idea. And he's suddenly encouraged because he thought you were so wonderful that you're totally out of his reach and you'd never want to marry him, and you're thinking the exact you know what I mean? So it's so difficult for two people to actually connect and find that they're both talking about marriage that I would say that if either party is bold enough to raise the issue and have their feelings hurt and put it all out there and say, you know, I'm I'm thinking about that you're the kind of person that might make a good husband. I mean, how many people in this room would you feel brave enough to say that to someone even if they thought it? It's very difficult. And so you kind of do it in little steps, and there's got to be steps on both sides to get to the point at which you say, we're talking about marriage, aren't we? That's that's frightening. You know, and then you start moving closer together. So whichever person I think can raise that, I think it's okay to raise it. The difficulty is to be really honest. You know, you're the kind of person that I might like to marry. SPEAKER_04: I have no interest in this guy. SPEAKER_01: You know, but I'm gonna say, oh, that's very flattering, and I'm not gonna be honest back, you know, and now all of a sudden, you know, you've got all this miscommunication. And and miscommunication makes great Hollywood scripts, but it makes terrible relationships. And how many times in a movie have you just wanted to shake them both and say, talk honestly? You know, because but then there wouldn't be a plot. So so I don't, you know, I think for Christian guys, Christian girls wish that we would be more initiative and that we would just take the lead and we would just say, I like you, and I think we're thinking about marriage. SPEAKER_02: They wish but you can just say, I'd like to get to know you better, right? It's okay. SPEAKER_01: But you know, for for guys, sometimes we have to see the the the the parade of animals before we realize we actually need a a wife. Um and and and you know and it's like a guy can go on oblivious to his need for a wife until God does something and smacks him in the head with a two by four to get his attention, and then he's like, I should get a wife. And then, you know, he then he goes out and he does that. So it's it's very difficult to for a guy who who doesn't yet know his need to come to the point of knowing his need. And I can kind of remember the point at which you know God smacked me in the head and said, Um, Krissan is being used by me in your life. She's intended for you, and you're going to lose her unless you marry her. And it's for me, I mean, for me, the decision of marriage was That was actually me hitting you in the head. The decision of marriage was was was was I did not want to lose my best friend in life. And I thought that that would be tragic. And and and you know, I mean, I I actually had a dream in which Krissana had married my roommate. I've lost my best friend. I'm really thinking we're gonna get married. I probably didn't. I just I'm just gonna lose your head. But you realize you're gonna lose you're gonna lose your you're gonna lose your best friend, and I and I didn't want that to happen. SPEAKER_02: So Well and along those lines, and when we started talking about, okay, are we headed toward marriage or not? There was a point at which marriage in the abstract was absolutely terrifying. But if I thought about spending my life with Dave, what else would I want to do? He is my best friend. Of course I'd want to do that. So it I know in the abstract it is really terrifying, but when it actually becomes a real person, it's he loose the fear kind of subsides. SPEAKER_01: So I don't I don't I don't know if that's helpful, but I you know I would just I would just say, you know, maybe as a result of this talk there'll be a lot more weddings this spring or something like that. And and and you know, it's it's actually that's actually what God intended for the relationships to head towards. So we're we're just sort of saying that is the right direction. Make sure you're doing it with your eyes wide open and you know what the commitment is. Yeah, question? SPEAKER_04: One over here. SPEAKER_00: Okay. Um I guess I'd like to ask about the difference uh as you see it between courtship and dating and and you guys said that you spent a year um where marriage is on the table, you're talking in. I I I guess I'd like to have explained what the difference between that year and and dating was, because it seems that it's a courtship model that that it it kind of dissolves back to dating. SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Christians, I think, often get confused about how to handle it. I view the dating model as not necessarily having the intent to make the decision of marriage. Marriage may be a possibility there, but you're dating primarily to date, not primarily to make the decision of marriage. And dating often is this progressive romantic and physical involvement. Whereas courtship, I don't I don't think it needs any romantic and physical involvement. It could completely have no romantic or physical involvement, but simply trying to make that decision. Now, obviously, there were times in which I had butterflies in my stomach for croissant, but I don't trust those, to be really honest. I actually want to make a more cerebral decision. And then there was a time at which I didn't have any butterflies in my stomach, because we've been talking about marriage and it's you know, a lot of discussion and stuff. Uh and that was a point at which I knew I wanted to marry her when the butterflies disappeared, and I knew that I still thought God was calling me to be married to her. So so courtship is coming to the decision of marriage and courtship has intention. Has intention. SPEAKER_02: The issue is a marriage is on the table, and we are now trying to get to know each other with the intent of making that decision, I think. SPEAKER_01: And obviously, you know, you kind of follow God like this. You don't you don't always you're not always on sometimes you treat them too well and sometimes they treat them like dirt. So so it goes back and forth. But you know, it's a lot of people say I just knew, and I I think that I think that sends the wrong message. Just knowing for some people is because they make decisions intuitively, and to them, just knowing is a hundred or a thousand tiny little objective evaluations that that mean that they think God is calling the two people together, but they can't articulate them in pro-con lists. You know, we as a couple like the pro-con lists, and we we like whisking a lot of stuff out and having it a little bit more. And and then, yes, I could say at the end of all the pro-con lists, we just knew, but what it would mean is we had sat down and at least at least intuitively evaluated all of that and come to the conclusion that we were better in the kingdom together than we were apart, and that God was calling us toward that. SPEAKER_04: There's a question over here. SPEAKER_06: Uh you just like earlier you directed to kind of for all of us to kind of think about marriage. But I was wondering if you kind of contextualize that a little bit so that like for all the guys in this room, we all turn to like, you know, that creepy Christian kid or something. SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Marriage is the norm. Most people are going to get married. Singleness is, I think, a special calling, and it may be God's calling for you. All of us have a period in which we're single. We have a period in which we're married, and then half of us have a period in which we're single again because our spouse has died. So so you you don't need to wait until marriage to do what God wants you to do. You can do that immediately today and you should. And uh what's the quote running toward God? SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, Ken Botsford, some of you may know, he's a board member here at the Study Center. He said the best way to find your spouse is to run toward Jesus as fast as you can, and then look to your right and left and see who's running with you. And say, Maybe I should marry that person. And I can tell you, my I would add to that, if no one's on your right and left, run faster because he's ahead of you. SPEAKER_01: And and and I and I think that that sets it up because marriage is not an ideal. Marriage is is a God-given institution, but it's not an ideal. And there's no sense in trying to hurry toward marriage. I you know, in the terms of decisions, deciding uh deciding to be a Christian is number one, who you marry is number two, and it will have a huge effect on your life, for good or ill. People who regret things in life, there's two things I found they regret marrying the wrong person, meaning marrying someone they should have known they shouldn't have they they should have known they shouldn't have married because they were abusive or involved. And the second is um getting involved in in drug addiction or alcohol addiction. So those are the two things people regret if they did them. Other than that, people just regret not having done stuff. So I would say don't marry the wrong person. It's much better to be single. And don't marry if you're not ready for marriage, meaning you're not yet the right person. And that all comes from maturity in Christ. So it is correct, if you just seek his kingdom, this will be added to you. But our world tends to shut it out. And so if anything comes out of the day, it's not to try to idolize it. It's just be open to if God is calling you to marriage, be open to that. And he will make it clear through a lot of his of his word and his and the way he would want you to evaluate the word. He'll make it clear when that's the right thing to do. I think it's an admirable thing to do. Even before the fall, we weren't meant to be alone. And it's a good, like it's a good you have to decide and commit yourself to. SPEAKER_08: How do you know if it's God calling you if you have like that tug of like that's the right person? SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, I mean the the the tug is gonna come and it's gonna come for a lot of people, probably. It probably won't just come for one person. Because, you know, I look around and I I see a lot of admirable Christians in this room, and you know, if if I were if I were Yentl and and doing matchmaking, I could just probably roll dice and match you all up. Because it's being the right person, not finding the right person ultimately. So you're gonna have those feelings. Typically the feelings last about nine months, and so if you've gotten to know them more than nine months, then you've gotten to know them, and and at least some of the butterflies have worn off. So that's why I'm not an advocate of nine days and then and then decide to get married. I just think you need longer than that. Yeah, I just think you you need you need longer than that to be able to know. But I would say the tug ought to at least raise the issue. Now, I'm married. So if I look at someone and I have a tug on my heart, I know what the answer is. God's told me that. It's told me I'm married to Krisson, and I and all the tugs, I I just ignore them because they they're they're they're they're irrelevant. That's why you put it all back within the context of God's word and you're trying to figure out is this the one or not, and and and work that way. Yeah. SPEAKER_03: I was wondering if you explain the distinction between courtship and engagement. And the reason that's confusing is if you're committing, as we discussed, to courtship with a single person, then when where is this sort of according to multiple people out of the interaction? SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Courtship is trying to come to the decision of marriage. If you've come to the decision of marriage, an engagement is a preparation for the marriage ceremony. We are advocates of short engagements. Having celebrated our negative first anniversary, we don't think there's a whole lot of value that came from having waited a year. But if you've made the commitment of marriage, why not go ahead and get married? That would be my response. Yes, it takes a while to prepare a ceremony and all the hoopla and stuff like that. But if you do if if you decided to get married, we could hold a broom and you could jump over it and you'd be married. You could go down to the Justice of the Peace tomorrow and you'd be married. You could go down this afternoon, it's still open. So so and if you if you decided to make that commitment, I don't think there's any reason necessarily to hold off. I I have a lot of relatives in Italy, and in Italy, the young people want to live together and the old people want them to get married, so they get engaged, and engagements last for seven to fourteen years because they're never getting married, but the the old people sort of require the engagement for them to live together. I just don't think that's the right way of going about it. If you're going to be committed, be committed. I would say engagement is you've made the decision. And I can't imagine I know we've we've had a number of different people who, you know, during engagement, all the Ushy Gushy feelings drop off. And they say, What am I supposed to do? All of a sudden I don't even love the guy anymore. And the the advice I've always heard, the right advice is go ahead and get married. You you you made the decision with right decisions. In marriage, Ushy Gushy feelings are going to come and go, and engagement is the worst possible time. No glue, all the problems. So engagement, you can have all your feelings drop off completely. And once you get married and you start, you know, building a life together, they'll all come back again. SPEAKER_02: So it's interesting. In the Old Testament, once a couple was engaged, if the engagement was broken, divorce laws applied. So they took it so seriously that if there was a break in the engagement, they didn't apply kind of the pre-engagement rules, they applied div divorce rules to that situation. So they it was kind of like you've made the decision just waiting for the ceremony. SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Whereas courtship, I think you could have courtship with different people and and and decide not to get married, and that's different. You haven't made the convention. SPEAKER_02: No, we're not headed in that direction. It's actually there's very little written about it. That's that's it some possibility, but it's not the only possibility. It's speculation basically, because they they didn't write down a lot about marriage like we don't today, because everybody knew it. So they didn't have to write down what the rules and procedures were. SPEAKER_04: Other questions? Yeah. SPEAKER_05: Um you were somewhat like female of two of you. But what about like some of those situations where like I I know some people like the the husband is like a Christian, but the wife like isn't a Christian, then I don't know if like that's why it's like he might have like a tribe to a Christian or something, but they've been like for a long time. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean the Bible says if one party is a Christian and the other party's not, if the party who's not a Christian consents, stay with them because that's better. But I don't think it encourages us to actually form that union on purpose with our eyes wide open if one's a Christian and one's not. So I I just don't think that's a great idea. unknown: Yeah. SPEAKER_01: Other questions? Okay, we will hang around afterwards if you'd like to talk. And again, thank you very much for coming.