subject: God's Word [print this page] Now to my right is a man who needs no introduction if you are a regular attender at Fellowship. We call him the goateed one, our spiritual development pastor, Preston Mitchell. Before Preston facilitates our discussion, let me say something up front that you need to understand. Lisa and I are not experts on marriage. However, we do have a great marriage and the reason we do is because we have built our lives individually and now collectively on the principles and precepts from Gods word, the Bible. I know in a crowd this size that we have people here who are single adults. About 45 to 50% of those folks who show up here are single. And if you are single, most of you are thinking about marriage. We want to address some of the questions that you have about marriage.
We have others here who are married and might be experiencing various degrees of difficulty in your marriage. We, hopefully, will address some of your questions. It is a pipe dream to think that we can understand and feel exactly what you are feeling. But we can hit some areas, talk about some issues and direct you to studies and counseling that can make your marriage a 4Keeps marriage. Thank you, Ed. How many of you have enjoyed this tremendous series. Hasnt it been great? Ed, you know, the first week of your series you talked about the value of the marriage vows.
Ed Young Ministries says that if you have said these vows or will in the future, how do you know for sure the other person is the right one? Well, hopefully, you know that they are the right one prior to standing before a pastor and God and some friends for the event. What I share with singles comes from both the Bible and life experiences. I have a series of messages entitled RATING YOUR DATING WHILE WAITING FOR MATING. It breaks down a lot of what I teach. You can pick it up in the bookstore. But let me give you the cliff notes on it. If you are single and are considering a specific someone as a possible life partner, I think there are several tests that you need to take him or her through.
The first test would be the spiritual test. You need to make sure that they know Christ personally. I am not talking about just lip service, but an actual story about their life before Christ, what happened when they met the Lord and what else God has done since that time. When you both are operating from the same spiritual dynamic, it helps you in conflict resolution. Marriage is about conflict in a real way. You have two self-centered sinners trying to do life Gods way, and you need to be on the same page spiritually and have knowledge of the ministry of reconciliation. We need to understand the concept that God sent Christ to die on the cross for our sins, something that we dont deserve, and that He rose again. If we have accepted that, we have it inside ourselves to want to make issues right. Speaking of the spiritual test, it also helps in raising children. Lisa and I have four. Child rearing is challenging. I dont know where we would be without that common bond of Christ.
I would also use the character test. It is important to measure the other persons character. Lisa and I dated for a long, long time and I was able to see her in various situations. Honesty, responsibility, endurance and other things like that are huge. Another test would be the one of good old time, just kicking back, hanging out, living life on the rugged plains of reality. If you are dating and contemplating marriage, I would advise dating at least 12 months. What that does is it allows infatuation to fade like a good pair of jeans from Old Navy. It also allows you to expose the relationship to family and friends.
PRESTON: Well, I have a question for Lisa. When did you know that Ed was the right one for you?
As he mentioned, we dated for six years. We meet when we had just finished our freshman year of High School. We had dated just one year when Ed told me that we were going to get married. I told him, that was great but I wanted to grow up and be a flight attendant and fly all over the world. I told him he would have to wait until after that for us to get married. By the time we were sophomores in college, I reminded him that he had once said we were going to get married. I told him I no longer had the desire to be a flight attendant and that we should get the show on the road.
But actually we had answered those questions and passed those tests. I just knew in my heart that there would be a part of me that would be empty without him. And I believe that he felt the same way.
