Bob: You know the old expression, "Beauty is only skin deep?" Well, Alistair Begg says if you're considering a potential marriage partner, that's something to pay attention to.

Alistair: Is the attraction that I feel for this fellow, is the attraction that I feel for this girl, motivated primarily by physical instincts? Now, I want to suggest for a moment that that is some marginal consideration. Age takes its toll on all of us. Physical beauty is passing. To invest in a person as simply a physical package is to set ourselves up for a dreadful fall, because the package will begin to sag and will begin to droop, over time.[ Read Full Transcript ]

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, August 8th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. If you think you've found the right person to marry, make sure that person is more than just good-looking.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us on the Wednesday edition. Don't you wish that …

Dennis: … uh-huh, I do.

Bob: You don't even know what I'm going to say.

Dennis: I have a lot of wishes.

Bob: Don't you wish that somebody with some godly wisdom would come along and put his arm around your daughter or your son before they get married and say, "I just want to give you some wise counsel," and point them in the right direction? Don't you wish that for your kids?

Dennis: Absolutely.

Bob: Well, we've found a guy with some godly wisdom.

Dennis: We have.

Bob: And we're going to do that for you and your daughters and your sons today.

Dennis: And he is already married.

Bob: Right.

Dennis: So he's not got ulterior motives as he gives our daughter advice on marriage, or your son, for that matter. His name is Alistair Begg. He is the senior pastor at Parkside Church in suburban Cleveland. He is the daily speaker on the national radio program, "Truth for Life." He has authored a number of books with Moody Press.

Bob: And he has joined us over the last couple of years at our Rekindling the Romance events. He is a dynamic speaker, and he spoke to the student body at Cedarville University.

Dennis: Right.

Bob: And you can bet they were taking notes when he started talking about relationships that lead to marriage. I mean, that's on the mind of some of those college kids, isn't it?

Dennis: It really is, and as you listen to him, you are going to enjoy his Southern accent. He is from South Scotland.

Bob: Let's listen together. Here is Alistair Begg.

Alistair: [from audiotape.] Can I invite you to take your Bibles, and we'll turn to 1 Peter and chapter 3. I want to talk to you tonight about relationships and particularly interpersonal relationships between the sexes. And since they inevitably, in God's plan, lead to marriage, we'll read just these few verses in the instruction given by the spirit of God via Peter at your husbands and wives in 1 Peter 3.

"Wives, in the same way, be submissive to your husbands so that if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives; when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Your beauty should not come from outward adornment such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead it should be that of your inner self; the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.

For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and call him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.

Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life so that nothing will hinder your prayers."

There is more than an even chance that whether you meet your intended life's partner in this institution or not, it may well be that in the next two or three years of your life, you will, in some context, meet the person that will share your life with you, providing that God has planned for you to be married.

And since the statistics on relationships and marriage are so horrendous, not least of all within the framework of the Christian church, it's important that we are constantly making reference to this in our own thinking, planning accordingly, so that we do our very, very best if God intends for us to be entrusted into the custody of another to come to that day and to that opportunity prepared and ready for the privileges and the responsibilities.

Let me just say certain things to you this evening. When you think about relationships at all, in every relationship our relationship with God must come first. And, indeed, unless we have a meaningful, viable, increasing relationship with the Lord Jesus ourselves, not being kept afloat by our family structure, not relying on the temperature of the Cedarville campus, but our own personal walk with God, practicing the presence of the Lord Jesus, memorizing His word, being in it daily, sharing it regularly, then we really should go no further than that in terms of developing relationships, because it is in direct relationship to our walk with Christ that everything else falls into line.

Now, that is particularly so when we think about relationships with the opposite sex, and it is important that when we find ourselves in a context such as this, where the opportunities for friendship are many and varied, that we never assume that a friendship has to be more than a friendship when it begins.

We should never assume that friendship is going to be more than friendship when it begins and, by the same token, we should recognize that the absence of a friendship with someone of the opposite sex does not determine our significance or our meaning in life.

We need to recognize that there is no good thing that the Lord will withhold from those whose walk is blameless. If we are not involved in a dating relationship, if we do not have a special other person, there is no need for panic. God makes everything beautiful in His time, and to be unattached to someone of the opposite sex may actually be God's very best for you tonight, and it may actually be God's very best for you for always.

But let us assume, since the Bible lays it out as the normal pattern of life, that each of you who as yet is not married is planning on being married, and therefore you are going to be faced with crucial decisions as you go forward. You are going to have to decide where you are going to take advice, and whether you're going to listen to those who love you most and care for you the best of all.

Few relationships, if any, in life are neutral. You remember that from high school. There were people in whose company it was easy to be good; there were people in whose company it was easy to be bad. That is true not only of fraternal relationships but it is definitely true with those of the opposite sex. And when we make friends with the opposite sex, it is important that we take into account the way in which others view those friendships.

I wouldn't go so far as to suggest to you tonight that I believe in arranged marriages, but I think I'm quite close to the idea, because it has always struck me as very strange that our children grow up entirely dependent upon us. They want to know whether they should attend this function or that function; whether they should apply to this school or that school.

In the earlier days, whether these shoes are right with these trousers or whether this skirt looks good with these heels or whether my hair looks good here or over there or whether you like this color on me now or then, and you're just dying under the weight of all the decisions that you have to make in order to help you chart your course and then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, you show up at the front door on the arm of someone I don't even know called Rodney.

[laughter]

Who in the world is Rodney? And then I see in your eyes this strange, glazed look as you look up at Rodney. The look in my eyes is not glazed at all, it's piercing.

[laughter]

I want to know all about Rodney – who his dad was, who his mum was, what size his shoes are, whether he washes his socks at night. I want to know everything about him because, as a father, I care for my girl– ss – and the same is true with our sons. That was plural.

[laughter]

What, do you think I developed a speech impediment since this morning?

Western society is obsessed with externals, facial features, figure, muscular composition, weight, hair style and so much more. Most magazines, even "Reader's Digest," is there now, managed to have an article somehow or another related to our bodies even if it is only the health of our bodies. And this puts tremendous pressure on our culture.

Young women quickly assuming that their significance is directly related to their shape and to their dress size. Young men frequently modeling themselves after professional athletes, disappointed that their futures are less than perfect, and products offered from toothpaste to self-tanning products with the covert message that image matters more than character.

Image doesn't matter more than character. Therefore, it is vitally important that when you think these issues through that you're asking yourself the question – is the attraction that I feel for this fellow is the attraction that I feel for this girl, motivated primarily by physical instincts?

Now, I want to suggest for a moment that that is some marginal consideration. But beauty is, for all of us, in the eye of the beholder. Oh, there may be shared perceptions, but we often have very clear understandings of what we regard as lovely.

And so the more significant questions don't have to do with shape and size and structure, but we need to be asking questions like "Do I enjoy having a conversation with her?" "Can this fellow carry on an intelligent conversation?" "How do I feel when I introduce this chap to one of my father's business associates?" "Is this character a social misfit?" "Does he or she have a growing interest in spiritual things, or do I get the impression that they are simply saying that because they know that it is important to me?"

My young friends, tonight, listen. These questions get to issues that are enduring. Age takes its toll on all of us. Physical beauty is passing. To invest in a person as simply a physical package is to set ourselves up for a dreadful fall, because the package will begin to sag and will begin to droop, over time. The law of gravity is the law of gravity. There is only so much you can do to keep it all up where it needs to be. And some of us never, ever had it up where it needs to be in the first place, and so we are, of all men, most miserable.

[laughter]

When I came to America for the first time in 1972, I came in search of a girl. I knew who the girl was. I wasn't trying to pick her out of the crowd, but I tracked her down to Michigan, to the shores of Western Michigan, found her there amongst a bunch of young American fellows who had muscles in places that I didn't have places.

[laughter]

They took great delight in teaching me how to water-ski. They could ski in their bare feet. They didn't need two skis, one ski, no skis. They skied in their bare feet. They gave me these gigantic doors on which to stand, never telling me that if you don't get up the first time, you let the rope go. My hair was like on the front cover of "Sweet Baby James," where he wears the blue denim shirt, find it in an old-fashioned store somewhere, but it was long, and they dragged me through the water like a dead dog, much to their hilarity. "We'll get rid of this Scottish whippersnapper, 139 pounds soaking wet, ugly little creature that he is, coming over here for our American girls."

Then they took me on dirt bikes. That was a bad decision on my part. Some fellow's father had an agency or a dealership or something, and I arrived at a place that I don't know where it was to find all these bikes. The fellows got on the front, the girls got on the back, and off we were going through the Michigan dunes.

So I did what they did. I got on the front; the girl got on the back; they all took off. I went about 100 yards and ditched it in the sand – with the girl, as well. I got back up. I can't bore you with the story – I had dreadful hay fever, the worst kind of hay fever. It produced horrendous nosebleeds. I ditched the bike in the sand; my nose began to bleed; the hay fever began to go. The blood began to congeal with the sand on my face. I look like a Mohican Indian somewhere. And they had given a helmet, of all things, and my hair was sticking out in bunches at the side. Boy, did I look good.

[laughter]

And the final ignominy was that I had to ask the girl to drive the bike while I sat on the back, and she rode the bike back around in the sand, and they were all there waiting for me – the All-American Marines, and here he comes, peering over the shoulder of his girl – the Mohican with the hair sticking out of the back. What possible hope did I have? I was a no-hoper – no chance.

Now I have to go home across the Atlantic Ocean and leave this girl and the dirt bike and everything else behind. Sometimes when we ride in the car together now, all these years later, I look across at her, and I say, "My, my, my, it certainly couldn't have been physical."

[laughter]

I actually met her when she was 13. I decided pretty quickly that if ever this girl would grow up around her eyes, and I got the chance, I would marry her. I've never, ever wanted to marry anyone else. For me, just 16, I wrote letters to her for seven years – four of those years across the Atlantic Ocean. Never doubt the power of the pen. All those American water-skiers bowed to the Scotsman's pen.

[laughter, applause]

So, girls, your beauty shouldn't be that which comes from time spent in front of a mirror but rather time spent in front of the mirror of the Word of God. And, men, the biggest thing that you can bring to the possibilities of marriage is the character of integrity and a life of spiritual maturity.

Bob: Well, that's part one of a message from Alistair Begg.

Dennis: The power of the Scottish …

Bob: … the Scotsman's pen. Barbara said the same about you.

Dennis: Oh, sure, she did.

Bob: That pen from Ozark, Missouri.

Dennis: Ozark, Missouri. You know, here is what I don't want our single listeners to miss, because we have literally hundreds of thousands of single listeners, and we have moms and dads who are raising the next generation of young men and women who are going to date.

The message is this – character does matter. Why? Because life is full of choices; marriage is full of choices; family is a reflection of our choices. And your choices are ultimately a reflection of your character and what you're basing your life on, and what Alistair has so beautifully exhorted us and illustrated for us is that if our lives are not built upon the foundation of God's Word, and we're not building our character upon that foundation, there is no way we're going to be qualified to get married.

Bob: I was talking with a young woman not long ago who was dating a particular man and thinking about him as a potential marriage partner, and she said to me, "You know, I think he's a diamond in the rough," and I remember thinking to myself, "You know, a piece of cut glass can look like a diamond in the rough, you know, let's wait and see whether the diamond is really there or whether it's just fool's gold." Because this is a lifetime commitment, and I think what Alistair is trying to remind us of in this message is that you need to be sober in your judgment on these kinds of things.

In fact, we have the entire message from Alistair Begg available here at FamilyLife.com. You can go to our website, and you can get more information on how to get a CD of this message, and we have other resources that we recommend for singles who are contemplating a marriage relationship. Just to go our website, FamilyLife.com. Click the red button that says "Go" in the middle of the screen, and that will take you to the area of the site where you can find out about getting a copy of the CD.

There is information there about the "Preparing for Marriage" workbooks that FamilyLife has put together to help couples with their premarital preparation. And then, of course, the FamilyLife Weekend to Remember Marriage Conference is a great way for couples to begin their marriage. We have a number of couples come prior to marriage to the Weekend to Remember, and in our conferences we have special sessions designed for singles to help them think through God's purposes and God's plan for them for marriage and how you can know if this is the right decision for you to make.

You can get more information about when a FamilyLife Today Weekend to Remember conference is coming to a city near where you live by going to our website, FamilyLife.com, and, again, click the red "Go" button you see in the middle of the screen. You'll find a link there to more information about the Weekend to Remember Marriage Conference and about the other resources I've mentioned.

The website, again, is FamilyLife.com or you can call 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F-as-in-family, L-as-in-life, and then the word TODAY.

You know, we have been having some fun with our listeners this month. We've got our 2007 Challenge Fund going on during the month of August. We're coming up to the end of our fiscal year, and many of our FamilyLife Today listeners have been calling and making an August donation to help us end our fiscal year in a healthy place.

And in addition to making a donation, they have been issuing challenges to other listeners to join with them and to make a donation. And, for example, we got a challenge from a listener who wanted to encourage people who listen in Nash and Edgecombe counties in North Carolina, and I have no idea where Nash or Edgecombe counties are in North Carolina, but this listener was calling and saying to the rest of you who live in those counties, join with them, and you make a donation this month to FamilyLife Today.

We also heard from a single woman who says she listens to FamilyLife Today. She hopes to someday be married, says God hasn't brought anyone into her life yet, but she's hoping He will in His timing do just that, and she listens to FamilyLife Today to be ready for that day. She wanted to encourage other single women listeners to make a donation to FamilyLife Today.

And then we heard from Cheryl, who listens in Pennsylvania. She made a donation of $50, and wanted to challenge other people who are avid walkers to make a donation as well. And I guess all of us are walkers at some point, right, but I think she had in mind those people who kind of do it intentionally.

Anyway, these are some of the challenges that we've been getting from listeners as they've been making donations this month, and we'd like to encourage you not only to make a donation to FamilyLife Today in August to help with our fiscal year-end but also to issue a challenge of your own to folks who live in your part of the country or folks who are in the same stage of life that you're in or people who share your particular convictions.

When you call in to make your donation just mention who you'd like to challenge in our challenge fund, or if you're donating online, there's a place there where you can issues your challenge, and we appreciate those of you who have called and joined with us, and we look forward to hearing from the rest of you as well.

Now, tomorrow we are going to hear Part 2 of Alistair Begg's message for singles, and tomorrow he talks specifically to young women about what to look for and what to watch out for in a young man. I hope you can be with us for that.

I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We'll see you back tomorrow for another edition of FamilyLife Today.

FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas, a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ.