Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Friday, February 27th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. Passion in marriage is a non-negotiable. Stay with us.
And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us on the Friday edition. I've talked to singles who have put their checklist together, you know what I'm talking about – what they're looking for …
Dennis: Right.
Bob: …from a potential partner, whether it's a male or a female, it's all of the things that you hoped the other person will be.
Dennis: I actually saw one single man's bathroom completely wallpapered with his checklist.
Bob: He had quite a list?
Dennis: It was a long list.
Bob: I find that as singles get older, either the list gets longer, or it gets a whole lot shorter, you know? I'm just looking for somebody with a pulse, somebody who is breathing steadily. Yesterday and again today we are listening to a message that deals with an appropriate checklist …
Dennis: Right.
Bob: … the kinds of issues you ought to be considering if you're single, and you're looking around and asking yourself, "Is this someone I could spend the rest of my life with?"
Dennis: That's right and, Bob, frankly, in this culture today, it's sad that we have to feature radio programs to do what families ought to be doing for their sons and daughters as they grow up into their single years. And I would just say to a mom and a dad who are raising a junior high, high school, or a college-age son or daughter, the topics that Tommy Nelson is talking about, both on yesterday's broadcast and today, are very important for you to consider as you equip the next generation to make this choice of selecting a life mate.
Bob: Tommy Nelson is the pastor at Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas. He's written a book called "The Book of Romance," another book called "The Problem of Life with God," that's based on Ecclesiastes, and not long ago he spoke to students at Cedarville College and talked about the five things that make up a successful marriage. And yesterday he talked about the need for couples to be in theological agreement. He also talked about the need for them to have moral agreement, and he talked about the need for them to both have a ministry mindset. And today he's going to talk about two additional areas of compatibility. This is just fatherly advice to young men and young women about things you ought to consider long and hard before you say "I do."
Dennis: And if you're a parent, and you haven't had this kind of a talk with your single person, take some notes because this ought to be either a letter to your son or daughter or the topic of a date night. And just share some very important principles about how to have a successful marriage.
Bob: All right, here is Tommy Nelson with five guidelines for building a successful marriage.
Tommy: [from audiotape]. Some guys don't believe this – I believe it adamantly. If I was your father, and I'm old enough, you're young enough, that you could be my child, and I wanted to fix up your future mate – if you were my son, what would I fix up? I would look for, obviously, a believer that loved the Lord, a girl that was heading where you were heading. But do you know what I'd look for, guys, if you were a young man that loved opera, I wouldn't find necessarily a girl that loved camping, all right? I would get someone that was on the same page as you; someone that socially you could hold hands, and you could go together in things. I'm a great believer in social compatibility.
A premarital relationship has to be easy. Do you know what the problem with that is, is that opposites attract. And what will drive you crazy about your mate are the things that attracted you to them at the outset, and you have been careful of that.
I'll make you a statement – to the degree that you and your future mate are socially opposite, you had better balance it out with an equal amount of flexibility and holiness. Couples that are real, real close in everything that they like, if they don't watch it, they can get bored in life because it's easy just to go together. But if you're really at a disparity, that's okay.
But if you've got 30 pounds of difference, there had better be 30 pounds of flexibility. If you've got 100 pounds of difference with you and your mate, there had better be 100 pounds of holiness and godliness with each other. You've got to be able to enjoy the same things.
I did a wedding one time of the number-one draft choice in all the United States in professional baseball. He married Miss Texas, and she was – still is – beautiful. And this girl loved to dress up, she loved to go out, she loved evening gowns, she loved long, extended evenings at elegant restaurants enjoying good company. This guy, when baseball season was over, he had a Ram pickup with a couple of guns, decoys – he wasn't country, this boy was rural.
[laughter]
You know, what I'm saying? He also happened to be handsome off the page, and she was beautiful off the page, and they got attracted – both were Christians, and they were attracted to each other. Well, the season would end, and he would do what he had always done. He said, "Honey, we're heading to the woods." "I don't think I will." "Well, I am."
Well, I got a phone call, and it go so problematic that she did the last thing that a woman will do sometimes to get a husband's attention – she fired the flare. She said, "I'm outta here." I don't think she meant to do it, but that's the only way she could get this kid that all of his life he had done what pleased him. Well, all of a sudden, your marriage, it's a wake-up call, and you have to do, 1 Corinthians 7, what pleases your mate. So there has to be a social or some sort of compatibility.
Number five – there needs to be legitimate passion. It had better be there. I am a believer in this, a lot of guys aren't, but I am. When I say to a couple, "Do you love the Lord?" "Yeah." "Are you walking with God? Are you all heading to do great things?" "Yes." "Tell me about your physical purity. Are you all staying pure?" That guy says to me, "Well, we have no real temptation." I say, "We've got a problem."
[laughter]
You don't just marry your best friend. You have to long for things that only are done with your mate. There is an intimacy, a passion, an excitement that has to be there. Maybe you can turn on the switch at the altar, I doubt it. There had better be some sort of passion, because where there isn't, that gets really old really quick. See, the marriage bed is the follow-through on all of the spiritual, emotional, social love that you have. All of the delight that you feel in that woman that has given herself and loved you, the delight of it is shown in a physical expression on the marital bed. When a woman has such appreciation for that man who goes out in that pit and works and struggles, the follow-through is in the marital bed, and when that isn't there, there is a problem.
In Song of Solomon they're not married until Chapter 4. There are things said in Chapter 2 and in Chapter 3 by this single woman that are exciting, indeed. She longs for him. That has to be there.
Incidentally, let me throw a little note in here – when these things aren't there, when you have a couple that is getting married simply on shallow reasons and the impulse of just longing to be – this primitive desire that we have to be married, you're going to start running into problems in communication, problems in keeping the excitement going. What happens a lot of times is a couple will go to this kind of panacea, there's a salve that you can rub on a problem relationship, and it will give it immediate relief for about a 24-hour period. It's called premarital sex.
In the midst of premarital sex, the worst of couples feels like it's a great relationship, and that's one of the great problems with premarital sex. It's not just that it's sin, but it creates a deception, and it retards the real development of the deeper things. The reason that a couple falls into premarital sex a lot of times is just the pure novelty of eroticism, and on a scale of sexuality, on a 1 to 10, premarital sex that occurs in spontaneity, in combustion, just goes off in an apartment – on an eroticism scale of 1 to 10, that's about a 12. And you can't maintain that in marriage.
When you get married, it's not going to be this explosive kind of thing that takes off. Oh, every once in a while things happen, but generally it's going to be the expression of character, it's going to come out of this fountain of character. Now, when you get into premarital sex, you just go around the character. What happens, though, when you get into marriage, is that premarital stuff doesn't happen like it used to, and you end up just busting it up.
Tony Evans says what was a great deal becomes an ordeal goes to a new deal, and you just try a new mate and get out of it. So if I was just an atheist, just on the counseling that I've done, I would say "Beware premarital sex." I'll go so far as to saying some of the bad marriages that I have seen, I can ask the question, "Did you all fall into premarital sex?" Usually, the answer is yes, and I tell them, "Your relationship probably wouldn't have endured to the altar if you hadn't had premarital sex. You just kind of kept spraying lighter fluid on this thing." But the real coals and embers weren't there.
I want to share one other thing here – the phenomena of a premarital relationship – there's a lot of confusion, a lot of talk right now on dating. Let me give you my opinion, which is equally authoritative and true on this, just from observations.
[laughter]
If you want to write it down, write it down, just listen, and let me give you, like Paul says, "One who, by the grace of God is trustworthy," that's seen this. A date is a time of enjoyment and of pure recreation of people of the opposite sex at a common event. That's all that a date is. It's responsible people enjoying a common event. There is no escalation, there is no continuation, there are no expectations that you put on it. Everybody kind of dogs dating.
I'll be honest with you – you know, if it came down to me hanging out with Michael and Darrell, I'd rather hang out with Sally, you know what I'm saying? I just really enjoyed the presence of just neat girls, and the opposite way of men and women, and that's no problem, okay?
Whenever that noun, a "date," becomes a process – "dating" – you're continually seeing the same person over and over and over. When that happens, escalation, expectations, and temptation are going to happen, that's a fact, and that's okay for the heat to build. But when you start seeing the same person over and over, what you're getting into is preparation for courtship. The problem we have in our culture is we don't have a fearfulness of dating. Call it what you want – "going steady" – when the same people keep seeing each other, it's going to escalate, there's going to be expectations, there's going to be temptations, and that's okay if you have a man and a woman that are theologically, morally, philosophically solid.
If that man, financially, can take on where that dating is going to go into courtship, it's going to go into marriage, if that man is in place, if you have two people who are solid, who are sound, that process that leads into courtship that goes to the altar, that's okay.
But if you don't, if you're not there socially, you're going to have to put off that wedding for years and years and years, and that becomes a frustration and a temptation. And if you're not there spiritually, then there are temptations that will come by that continual kind of relationship. Immature people in the continual same social context are – I mean – it's striking matches knee deep in kerosene. So dating is a thing all of you are going to do with the same person, but it demands a great deal of trepidation.
Bob: That is Tommy Nelson, the pastor at Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas. And not long ago, he spoke to students at Cedarville University about what to look for and what to be. If you want to be a married person someday, and I'll tell you, there had to be a wake-up call in that chapel that day for a lot of those college students who kind of thought, "Okay, maybe I've been approaching this thing a little too casually. Maybe I need to approach it with a little more earnest, not only who I'm looking for but who I am, whether I'm the right kind of person to even be looking in the first place."
Dennis: And, Bob, I think that's extremely important. When a single person is in the process of becoming God's man and God's woman, and they do have what Tommy was talking about, that edge to their lives, an edge in the sense of growth, an edge in the sense of missionand what they're about as an individual, it's so much easier to balance that tandem bicycle when it's moving, and it's moving in a direction. And spiritually speaking, I think what God wants from all of us is He wants us moving toward Him and moving in the direction of what His mission is for our lives.
And single people really need to be a part of the Great Commission, and in the process, as they find other people who are going with them in the same direction that's when you meet your spouse. That's how Barbara and I met. We were in the process of investing our lives in college-age students and high school students and, in the process, came together, and we didn't have to talk about our direction. We both had that direction. Single people, however, who aren't involved in going somewhere, sit back on a hammock, and they begin to panic, and they begin to try to force relationships, and they fret. And instead of becoming the right person, they are looking for the right person.
And what singles today need to do is not panic, but they need to believe in God and trust Him and get on with life, get on with being God's man, God's woman, and who He created you to be.
Bob: That's back to what Tommy said in this message, and I love this quote from him – "If you're single, and you want to know who to marry, run as hard and as fast toward Jesus as you can and if, out of the corner of your eye, you see somebody running in the same direction, take a second look."
Dennis: That's right.
Bob: That's the kind of advice singles need to hear.
Dennis: And then you may lock arms together and run in the same direction toward Christ. I have no idea what that decision to follow Christ has saved Barbara and me from as we've run toward the Savior.
But as I look around in the culture, I see a lot of people who are bored; a lot of people who are running off to have an affair; a lot of people who are married to their jobs. I'm telling you, Bob, this is a difficult culture to have what Tommy Nelson was talking about – a successful marriage. And I think that's why the spiritual dimension of life has to be at the very core of who we are and what we're about.
Bob: I talked to a friend of mine just the other day. His daughter is just recently married – two months into the marriage, and she and her husband are experiencing financial difficulties, and she just found out that one of the reasons for that is because some of their money is going to pay for Internet pornography.
And I think to myself, I wish she could have heard Tommy's message yesterday and today when he talked about moral compatibility, theological compatibility, ministry compatibility. You don't think about those things when you're head over heels in love with some smooth-talking guy or some real good-looking young lady.
Dennis: Right.
Bob: And yet you've got to pull back and think about those kinds of things, or you'll wind up like my friend's daughter, two months into her marriage and full of heartache and a loss of hope wondering, "How do we fix this and did I just make the biggest mistake of my life?"
Dennis: And, Bob, you've hit on something there that a single person can't begin to appreciate unless they experience it, and that's why they need to take our word for it here – you want to be in the process of becoming God's man and God's woman, totally sold out to Jesus Christ, not having to battle over the issue of whose you are.
Are you Jesus Christ's bond slave? Is He your Master? Have you written over the title deed of your life to Him? Once those issues have been settled, I'm telling you, the other issues that come your way are going to be much easier to deal with if you've settled the issue of who is going to be your Lord and your Master.
Bob: And if you're going with somebody right now, or you're engaged to somebody right now, and they don't show that kind of spiritual vitality …
Dennis: Be careful.
Bob: … oh, man.
Dennis: Beware. I'm telling you, you could be walking off into quicksand, and there are people who get a form of religion for a period of time …
Bob: That's right, right before the wedding.
Dennis: I'm telling you, on that, too, and you and I have both seen couples who have been pulled and lured and sucked into relationships and, truthfully, they have been manipulated.
Bob: Yes. You know, our team, a number of years ago, put together a workbook that you provided editorial direction for us on called "Preparing for Marriage," and this was a book designed for a couple to go through together before the wedding that gets a lot of the issues Tommy was talking about – the issue of your spiritual focus, some of the practical issues of your relationship and how that's going to function. Gets them out on the table before you say "I do."
And there have been some couples who have gone through these workbooks, and stuff has surfaced in the process, and they've said, you know, "I'm not sure it's wise for us to pursue marriage because fundamentally, foundationally, we don't see eye-to-eye on some pretty core things. It's better to get that out on the table prior to marriage than for it to surface following a marriage.
And that's why we encourage couples, before you say "I do," get a couple of copies of the "Preparing for Marriage" workbook. Go through it as a couple, get a mentor couple to go through it with you. That's probably the best way to do it. Find an older couple, somebody who has been married for five or 10 or 20 or 50 years, and have them walk through each of these chapters with you and ask you some hard questions and make that a part of your premarital preparation.
Go to our website, FamilyLife Today.com. On the site, you'll see information about the "Preparing for Marriage" workbook, and there is also information about the Weekend to Remember Marriage Conference – how you can get registered and attend one of these conferences.
Go to our website, FamilyLifeToday.com, and you'll find the link there, or call us at 1-800-FLTODAY, 1-800-358-6329, that's 1-800-F-as-in-family, L-as-in-life, and then the word TODAY. Someone on our team can answer any questions you have about the conference, or they can make arrangements to send the "Preparing for Marriage" workbooks to you.
You know, I remember when Mary Ann and I were first married, and, really, when I first started listening to Christian radio – as I was driving to work every day, I would tune in and listen to my local Christian radio station, listen to it as I drove around on my job throughout the day and as I was driving home. I really got a lot of help from listening to the programs that were on my local station, and it took me a while before I realized that for these programs to continue on my local station, they needed my support.
FamilyLife Today, like many of the other programs you hear on this station is listener-supported, and it's your financial support that makes it possible for us to be on this station each day and to be on our network of stations all across the country. You make it possible for FamilyLifeToday.com to be up and available around the clock as well.
So I'm going to say thanks to those of you who have supported the ministry of FamilyLife Today in the past and I want to let you know that if you can make a donation this month to help support the ministry, we have a thank you gift we'd like to send you. It's a two-CD series featuring messages from both Dennis and Barbara Rainey. Dennis talks to guys about what it means to be a man according to the Scriptures. What does biblical manhood look like? And then Barbara talks to wives about what a wife can do to help her husband step up to manhood.
These CDs are our way of saying thank you when you help support the ministry of FamilyLife Today, and you can do that online, if you'd like, at FamilyLifeToday.com. If you're online, when you come to the keycode box on the donation form, just type the word "manhood" in the box, and we'll know to send you these CDs.
Or call, toll-free, 1-800-FLTODAY, 1-800-358-6329, make your donation over the phone and mention that you'd like the manhood CDs and, again, we'll send them out to you – our way of saying thank you for your support of this ministry, and we do appreciate your partnership with us.
Well, I hope you have a great weekend. I hope you and your family are able to worship together this weekend, and I can hope you can join us back on Monday. We're going to talk about some of the challenges families face when they make a move – whether it's across town or across the country – how a move can disrupt your family and what you can do to help things go more smoothly. That comes up Monday as we talk with Susie Miller, and I hope you can be with us as well.
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 Monday for another edition of FamilyLife Today.
FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas – help for today; hope for tomorrow.
