How to Be Engaged – Sean Perron & Spencer Harmon

Episode Transcript

FamilyLife Today® with Dave and Ann Wilson – Web Version Transcript

This content has been generated by an artificial intelligence language model. While we strive for accuracy and quality, please note that the information provided will most likely not be entirely error-free or up-to-date. We recommend independently verifying the content with the originally-released audio. This transcript is provided for your personal use and general information purposes only. References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. We do not assume any responsibility or liability for the use or interpretation of this content.

How to Be Engaged

Guests:Sean Perron and Spencer Harmon

From the series:Relationships Done Right (Day 3 of 3)

Air date:May 30, 2025

Spencer:Men, regardless of how women are dressed, are called to cultivate purity in their hearts and in their minds. That is their responsibility before God to honor Him in the way that they’re thinking regardless of how people are dressed around them. That’s always their call.

Dave:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann:And I’m Ann Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave:Do you remember your wedding dress?

Ann:I do. I just got it out not too long ago

Dave:What do you mean, you just got it out?

Spencer:Did you really?

Dave:Tell me you got it out and I don’t know this.

Ann:Because I have an eight-year-old granddaughter. I took it out of the box because I thought, “Why is it in this box? I’m going to take—”it’s the box that won’t turn it yellow. And now I’m so old, who cares if it’s yellow if she wants to wear it. So anyway, I put it on. She put it on. We all put it on.

Dave:You did. I didn’t even know that.

Spencer:That’s so fun.

Ann:It was so sweet.

Dave:All I remember is standing at the front of that church and when I saw you at the back in that dress, I can still see you.

Ann:That’s nice.

Dave:Of course I had hair back then, but it was—

Ann:You’re pretty handsome yourself there.

Dave:Oh man, you, walking down with your dad, who’s now with the Lord. I mean, that’s just—gee whiz, I didn’t think I’d feel what I’m feeling right now, but it was such a tender moment.

Ann:It was sweet, wasn’t it?

Dave:Last couple days we’ve been with Spencer Harmon and Sean Perron, and they’ve written three books, the Letters to a Romantic. And you guys have written about dating. We talked about that day one, a little bit yesterday about engagement, and yesterday was also about marriage.

Ann:Your dads of kids. You’ve been married for a while. You’re pastors. You work in the same church at different campuses, but this is an area that you guys are really passionate about.

Sean:That’s right.

Ann:And if you had to say, “We’re passionate because of—” so for you, Sean, why are you so passionate about this?

Sean:I think the Bible pops with relevance in every area of life, and every season of life, and the seasons of dating and engagement and marriage. But it’s particularly dating and engagement, or preparing for your wedding day, preparing for marriage, they get neglected, and people think that God doesn’t have anything to say. They think that it’s all about them. And the Bible comes in with a really incredible and better and more appealing vision of how to do life in those seasons.

Ann:That’s awesome. What would you say, Spencer?

Spencer:Yeah, I think that we were made to glorify God, and not just to glorify Him, but to enjoy the process of glorifying Him with our whole life. And when a person, and when a couple, takes these seasons of their life that sometimes feel like throwaways, they feel like the Bible doesn’t have anything to say about them. It’s just like, “Oh, I’m just engaged. I just got to wait until I get married,” or whatever. “I’m just dating,” just dredge through it. No, no, no. I want people to see these as, “This is a really unique season we have to glorify Christ. We are going to seek to do that with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.” And I want to help people do that.

Dave:So we mentioned the wedding dress and in your Letters to a Romantic: On Engagement, you have an interesting perspective on the wedding dress. I don’t think I’ve ever read something like this, so let’s hear a little bit.

Ann:Well, when we read it, I remember Dave going, “This is going to be controversial.”

Dave:Yeah, I did say that didn’t I?

Ann:I’m like, “What?!” And so then I had to pull it out, yep.

Spencer:Okay.

Dave:Yeah. So give us a little bit of your perspective.

Spencer:Yeah. So I’m a pastor. I do weddings all the time. One of the things that I care about is the ceremony and how it’s done. And we wrote a chapter in this book to—me and my wife co-authored this chapter together because I wanted her voice involved in this as well—of, “Hey, one area that we want to encourage our sisters to think about is modesty on their wedding day.”

And the way we approach this topic is, so if you’re a woman and you’re about to get married, and you’re thinking about it, maybe you’re about to go get your dress and you’re thinking about “what kind of dress I want,” so I want you to think about this. First off, let me say this. It’s wonderful that you want to wear a beautiful wedding dress. I know little girls dream. I have a little girl right now that’s obsessed about getting married. It’s really concerning to me actually.

Sean:She’s cute. She is so sweet.

Spencer:She is, but she wants to get married. And little girls dream about this day, and “I want to have this beautiful wedding dress.” Here’s what I want you to think about. I want you to actually think about the very end of your ceremony. And I want you to imagine everybody walking out of your ceremony. What do you want them to be thinking about when you leave? Think about that for a second. What types of things do you want them saying to each other as they’re walking out of your ceremony? Do you want them to be saying, “That dress was amazing”? Is that the primary thing you want them to be saying?

And a lot of the times we think about these issues of the stuff of our wedding, this applies to other things outside of dresses. This applies to the whole ceremony itself. What are you trying to highlight? Are you trying to draw attention to yourself or are you trying to draw attention to Christ? We were made to draw attention to Christ, and that applies to our bodies. So this is 1 Corinthians 10:31, that we were bought with a price, so we should glorify God with our bodies. So the question is, how do we do that? How do we glorify God with our bodies?

Sean:So you’re saying God cares about it.

Spencer:God cares about your body, and He cares about what you put on your body, and whether it is drawing attention to you or drawing attention to Him. And I believe that we should apply that principle to every aspect of the wedding ceremony, including the dress. And so what I’m caring about is actually—I’m not going to give you a neckline standard; I’m not going to do that. What I want to say is, I want you to think about your wedding day. Think about what you wear. And I want to encourage you that the motive of your heart be, “I want people to see how great Jesus Christ is in every area of my wedding, and I don’t want to distract. I actually don’t want to draw the eyes of people to my body.”

Now let me anticipate an objection. It’s a real one. Many of my sisters—I’m a pastor; I talk about modesty because the Bible talks about modesty—they’re like, “Well look, it’s not just a woman thing. Don’t put all the blame on women. There’s a pornified culture that’s trained the eyes of men to look at specific parts of a woman’s body.” And I say to my sisters, “Yes, and amen.” That’s exactly right.

Men, regardless of how women are dressed, are called to cultivate purity in their hearts and in their minds. That is their responsibility before God to honor Him in the way that they’re thinking, regardless of how people are dressed around them. That’s always their call. What I’m asking the women, though, with a wedding dress is, I’m asking you just to examine your motivation. Why? Why that dress? Is it the primary motive, “I want to draw attention to myself?” or is the motive of your heart, “I love this dress. It’s beautiful. I can’t wait to wear it on my wedding day”? And “My heart overarchingly in this, that’s governing the type of dress that I get, is the glory of Christ.”

Ann:Well, I mean, I was 19 when I got married, and I was young. And so just to give you a perspective, I have no church background. I’m a new follower of Christ, and I was being discipled in college through Cru at the University of Kentucky. I’ve shared the story before, but my discipler came up to me, and she said, “I want to talk to you about what you’re wearing.” I’m like, “Oh, okay.” She said, “What you’re wearing is not modest, and it’s causing guys to stumble.” I’m like, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about right now.” “What’s stumbling? What do you mean?” And she said, “You’re drawing people’s eye to yourself.” And I said, “I know. That’s the whole idea.”

And so for me, this whole concept of modesty, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” Of course, and some women are hearing, “But I do want people to say, ‘She’s the most beautiful bride.’” You want to say, “Oh, look at her. She looks amazing. It’s the most beautiful thing that I’ve seen.” And so now you’re saying, “No, take your eyes off of yourself,” which is like, “Wait, what? It’s my wedding day. This is the only time I do get attention on myself.” But you’re giving a bigger picture of what’s going on.

Sean:Yeah, and so I would say modesty and beauty are not at odds, and it’s actually a pornified culture that convinces women that those are in competition with one another. Rather, modesty actually can be incredibly attractive, incredibly beautiful. And I think because as Spencer was talking about the whole ceremony is designed to point to God, why you wear a white dress represents purity. Ephesians 5, “without spot or wrinkle or any such blemish.” There’s this beautiful bride adorned for her husband.

Psalm 19 says, “The sun is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber.” This radiant, amazing, beautiful picture that’s represented in the gospel. And I think a sister in Christ who is getting married, they should look amazing. They should look beautiful because that is how God has made us for the great marriage feast that we’re going to be a part of. We are going to look completely conformed into God’s image and radiant, but that is very different than being immodest.

Modesty is about covering parts that are only meant to be seen by the one who you are in a covenant relationship with, and dressing in such a way that does not amplify or accentuate those parts to draw attention to them. And so Jenny and I, we counsel a lot of couples, and a lie that they think is, they think, “Okay, I have to dress provocatively,” or “I have to wear a wedding dress that looks provocative, so my husband will be attracted to me sexually on our wedding night.” And that is just a lie from Satan. And it doesn’t make sense because we’ve had couples who have been so pure in their entire relationship, but on their wedding day, they look more immodest than I’ve ever seen them, than anyone in the church has ever seen them.

They’ve bought into the lie that that’s what they need to do to be appealing to their husband and to look good and to look beautiful, when actually the opposite is true. Just a few hours later, they’re going to be completely unclothed in a great way as God intended to. But when people leave the ceremony thinking, “Oh wow, that was really uncomfortable,” they’re not thinking about Jesus Christ and His gospel. They’re thinking “That was awkward. Did you see that? That was awkward,” and everyone is talking about it. Everyone always talks about it. The difference is, are we being beautiful and radiant that’s modest and humble and honoring God, or are we being self-centered?

Spencer:Can I say one thing? This is a provocative statement, but I think it’s really important. When we talk about the wedding day, we often say, “Hey, this is your day. This is your day. This is your big day. It’s all about you.” And what I want to say is for the Christian, no day is your day. Every day is His.

Sean:I die every day.

Spencer:Yeah, it’s crazy. But this is what it means to be a Christian. What it means to be a Christian is, I find my deepest joy and my deepest satisfaction in living for the One who redeemed me and bought me by the blood of Jesus Christ. I’ve been transformed, so that I love living for Him. And so I get when people—people said that to me on my wedding day, and I didn’t say, “No, it’s not. It’s not. No, quit it. It’s God’s day.” No, I’m not talking about that. That’s being a church curmudgeon.

But in our hearts, are we saying, and I know that this is an intense thing to say to grooms and brides who’ve been planning this big day. It’s not your day. It really isn’t. It’s a day in which we celebrate this gift that’s being given to you by God, and we’re honoring you, but we’re honoring you because of what marriage is and what it points to.

It should be celebrated because of what it is. It’s this magnificent display of the gospel, which is why I believe in big party wedding receptions. And the reason I do is because it’s a reflection of the wedding feast of the Lamb. Christians should be the biggest celebrators of marriage. I mean, Jesus started his ministry at a wedding. It’s amazing. We should celebrate marriage because of what it is, and I think brides and grooms, we have to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, Romans 12:1-2.

You should have so much joy on your wedding day. I want my sisters to enjoy picking out their wedding dress. I want them to delight in doing the decor and the food and all the things. I love it. I celebrate it with them, but at our heart level, my motive, my why, for my dress and my decor and my everything is, this is God’s day not my day.

Ann:I love all of this, but I also think when I see a woman, because I was that woman, dressed provocatively or immodestly, I tend now to have grace toward her. I think there was a time I was judgmental, like “What is she thinking? Does she need all the attention to be on her?” But I always now realize there’s a story behind this story.

Spencer:That’s exactly right.

Ann:And I think the thing for me, it is like what we’re trained as little girls of what’s beautiful. And because I’m from a family that there was pornography around, so I was exposed to that, so I thought, “Oh, men think this is beautiful.”

And there was a time my dad was a baseball coach, and he had the whole baseball team at our house in the living room. I was nine years old, and I walked through the middle because I had to. I was so embarrassed. This whole baseball team of high school boys and he said, “Oh, this is my daughter Ann. She’s all dressed up today. And when she fills out that sweater, then she’ll really be a looker.” Now think about that. As a nine-year-old, what I think is, “Oh, when I look a certain way and I’m shaped a certain way, then I’ll be beautiful.”

And so I think if I was discipling, and this is why we need to disciple our daughters, our women, our men like, “Honey, this is what beauty is.” This is the, “Oh, you’re so beautiful.” It’s not that you’re going to attract a certain kind of look or you’re being a temptress or you’re showing off all these amazing parts of you. It’s having another woman say, even ask this question, “Tell me why you think that’s so beautiful.”

Sean:Yes.

Ann:Because there’s a story behind the story. So I’m just thinking about my sisters that are coming from a rough past like me. I didn’t know what beauty was. I didn’t know what God thought beauty and modesty was, and so we need to teach our daughters and teach our friends these things.

Sean:Yeah. And God’s the author of beauty. He’s the One that made it. He wants everyone to be beautiful. We distort beauty—

Ann:Exactly.

Sean:—and we make it about us, and it’s not. It’s about being made into His image. The adorning of the heart, as Peter talks about. The heart is deceitful, beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. That is true beauty.

Spencer:Yeah. I mean, God created romantic and erotic love.

Sean:Song of Solomon, a whole book of the Bible.

Ann:A whole book.

Sean:It talks about everything in Song of Solomon.

Spencer:Yes, it does. We’ve got little girls, and we live in a world that focuses on external beauty.

Ann:Yes.

Spencer:All the dolls they play with, everything; you can’t escape it. It’s just the water we swim in. And so we’re constantly talking with our girls. They love dressing up, and I love it when they dress up. It’s sweet and cute, but they’ll talk about being beauty, and we ask that question, Ann. “Well, tell me about that. Why do you think that’s so pretty? What is it?” And they’re young.

But those are the kinds of conversations we want to have and to say, “Hey, God’s definition of beauty is far more freeing and far more liberating, and not enslaving, because He says that you are incredibly beautiful because you’re created in His image. He loves you and He loves the way He made you. And you don’t have anything to prove right now. You don’t have to prove anything by the way you dress. Just because God made you is what makes you beautiful.”

Dave:Let me ask you this. As I was thinking about what you guys are saying, I know Ann’s dad—again, he’s passed. Great man—

Ann:—in many ways, and super flawed.

Dave:—became sort of my dad. I didn’t have a dad. He became my dad. He was my high school coach. And those words that he said to Ann—I know him. He didn’t mean harm.

Ann:No.

Dave:That’s just the way—he thought the way men of the world think. He doesn’t have any of the teaching you just did. He had never heard that. And he matured over the years. But he just said what he thought every guy would say. So here’s my question, you guys. I was thinking what you just said about your daughters. How have you guys made your wife feel beautiful? I know there were days that I made Ann feel the same thing her dad made her feel by a harmful comment, or even maybe a flippant comment, about her body or about her beauty being connected to her body.

Ann:Or even a struggle with pornography that men can have. It can make a woman feel less than.

Spencer:Yes.

Dave:Oh yeah. And so I was wondering what you guys do. I know there’s men out there, “I want my wife to feel beautiful by how I speak and treat her.” How have you done that?

Sean:So many thoughts here.

Spencer:Let me give you a homework assignment that I always give guys. Whether you’re struggling with pornography or not, I would encourage you to do this. Men, saturate your mind with biblical definitions of beauty. So you spend time in Proverbs 31, spend time in 1 Peter 3:1-6, and saturate your mind on what the Bible calls beautiful. Meditate on it. Read it every day. Memorize it. Put it in the mirror. Let that soak up your mind and then let that be the language of your compliments and affirmations of your wife.

Because what you’ll start saying to your wife is, “Honey, you look beautiful today, but I want you to know that the thing that was most amazing about you is the way you serve our family. I want you to know that I know you’ve had a really stressful day today, but the fact that you were so kind to our children, even when it was a really long day, that’s just amazing to me. I find that incredibly attractive.”

I sent my wife a text message the other day. It was the most vanilla thing ever. I can’t even remember what it was, but I said, “Hey babe, I just want you to know I just hung up the phone, and I was thinking about the fact that you said this thing to me. And I just want you to know I appreciate that so much and I love you so much for that.” Do I compliment her physical beauty? Yeah, I think she’s absolutely beautiful.

But is my mind soaking in scriptural definitions of beauty? Guys, if you only compliment your wife’s physical appearance, you are training her in what you believe beauty is, and you will train your daughters and every woman in your life on what beautiful is. But if you spend more time complimenting the hidden person of her heart, you’re training her what biblical beauty is.

Sean:Yeah. There’s a chapter in there, I think it’s called “Love Her Invisible Pearls.” So there’s all these invisible gems, all these beautiful treasures that you might overlook that are invisible, but they’re not. They’re obvious. They’re character traits of God and who He is displayed through her that you can highlight and praise.

I would say this as far as having the perfect body. So if you think about Genesis, you think about Adam and Eve, they’re in the garden and they have probably the most beautiful bodies that have ever happened in the human race. They’re incredible. Not a flaw, not a blemish, absolutely amazing in the Garden of Eden paradise.

They eat the fruit, and they’re ashamed, and they go, and they try to get fig leaves to cover them. They feel this overwhelming sense of shame, and they try to cover their bodies. The funny thing is nothing changed physically about their appearance. They looked the same, but they felt shame.

And for wives, even if they had the perfect body, whatever they think that is, that is not going to solve their problems. That is not going to bring them satisfaction. It’s not going to bring happiness to their marriage. It’s not going to bring happiness to them because the perfect body is not the solution.

What is the solution? The solution is the perfect body of Jesus Christ, which was broken on their behalf. He hung naked and ashamed. He bore our shame on the cross so that we could then be forgiven of our sin and have confidence to approach the throne of grace and have confidence to approach one another as husband and wife, knowing that we are accepted by the other person because of what Christ has done in our lives. We’re accepted by God, and that gives us confidence, not in having the perfect body or perfect appearance. Reinforcing that truth can change an entire marriage and change a relationship for the better.

Dave:And that was the gospel.

Spencer:Amen.

Ann:Yeah. That is the gospel. That’s true.

Spencer:It’s the wisdom of God. That’s how he calls it. The gospel is the wisdom of God.

Sean:But it seems foolish to me.

Ann:It’s funny. Our granddaughter, one of our granddaughters is two, and she had fallen, and she was trying to calm herself down. I was walking down the stairs with her, holding her hand, and she’s saying this to herself as this mantra. She’s like, she said, “I’m kind and I’m beautiful and I’m joyful.” She remembers that her parents have said like “Autumn,” her name’s Autumn Joy. That’s why they said she’s joyful.

But I thought, “Man, I love that.” And the reason the parents are speaking that over to her, and it’s not just what she’s gifted in doing, it’s who she is. That’s what you’re saying. It’s the character qualities. It’s the image bearer that we carry as daughters and sons that’s so beautiful.

Sean:We’re chosen, holy and beloved, Colossians tells us.

Ann:Yes.

Sean:And when we know that that doesn’t change. We’re chosen, holy, and beloved in Christ. Even when we sin, we’re still chosen, holy, and beloved. It’s amazing.

Ann:I just have to ask this question because after three days, I’m thinking listeners are like, “Who are these guys?” They’re like 32 years old, and they’re like, Jesus is in the studio. Your maturity, your devotion to Jesus, like your friends—you’re kind of rare in many cases for a 32-year-old man who’s sold out for Jesus, living this life to be a godly man, to raise godly children and to be the husbands and the men God’s called you to be. How’d this happen?

Spencer:The Bible; the Holy Spirit and the Bible? Seriously? No. We wrote these books. We’ve made tons of mistakes. We’re deeply flawed. We sin every day against our spouse, against our God. We have been loved by God, and the Lord has changed us and made us different. Any wisdom that we have is actually not the result of age or experience. It’s the sufficient word of God.

One of the convictions that we have as authors and as pastors is that the Bible is sufficient to address the problems and the pain and the suffering, even the really complex stuff, that people face, because we genuinely don’t believe that we have the wisdom in and of ourselves. Actually, I start most of my counseling sessions with people and I say, “I just want to remind you that I can’t help you.” I say that to people often. I can’t, I’m not an expert, but I believe that the Bible really does provide hope and help for you.

And we have been so loved by God and so covered in grace, and we should be a total wreck right now. But the Lord has been so gracious and kind to us, and He’s giving us opportunities to influence the way people think. And we just want to be really careful to give Him glory, and not just to give Him glory verbally, but to give Him glory in the way that we work through stuff. Like we want it to be explicit that we’re leaning on scripture and we’re leaning on the Bible, so that way people can pick it up and do the same thing themselves.

Dave:It is explicit.

Spencer:Amen.

Sean:Praise God.

Dave:No, really it does.

Ann:Yeah. Your friendship is really cool to watch too.

Sean:Yeah. It’s a joy.

Ann:It’s fun to see you guys have so much fun.

Dave:Thanks for your wisdom, beyond your years.

So do you have any thoughts, any reflections on just finished our interview with Sean and Spencer, and we got a lot into the modesty of the wedding dress. Never thought we’d ever have a conversation about that in my life, let alone they wrote about it and then we got to talk about it. What do you think?

Ann:There’s a part of me that’s always careful. I’m always thinking about maybe the new follower of Jesus or somebody that has a really rough background. And so they’re hearing that like, “Oh, I’ve never heard this before.” And so I give grace to people like that because I had no idea as I said earlier. I had no idea.

Dave:No idea about?

Ann:About being modest or I had never even thought of that because I grew up in a culture of saying, “Flaunt it.” But I like talking about it. I like thinking about it. And maybe what I should say is I hope that we don’t get stuck just on the wedding dress because the entire day is this beautiful covenant commitment between two people that are following Jesus, and we’re making these vows before God and before friends. And so the wedding dress is not the highlight of the day. It’s what God is doing between a man and a woman and making them one.

Dave:And I know that for our wedding, that was our only hope, that Jesus would be glorified, that Jesus would be made known. We even said that to the pastor. And now as a pastor who’s done hundreds of weddings, I always say to the couple the goal of this day. I want to sort of mentor them to remind them. And most of the time they get this, but sometimes they don’t. It’s like, this is a day to glorify Jesus, not me, not you, not the bride, not the groom. But when you think in those terms, just like any other part of your life, you think every aspect of my life has the potential to lift Him up. And so the dress matters. The tuxedo for the guy matters.

Ann:The vows matter.

Dave:The music matters, everything. It’s a display to the world of the glory Christ. And that’s what a wedding is.

Ann:I like that. That’s good. I like that. And I think it’s good to remind couples that it’s not about them. It’s not just about love. It’s about this commitment that God has made to us and now we make to one another, to love Him and to serve Him together for those of us who are in Christ.

This is FamilyLife Today. And we’re Ann and Dave Wilson, and we’ve been talking with our guest, Sean—

Dave:About a wedding dress. That’s what we’ve been talking through.

Ann:Have we ever talked about a wedding dress on air? I don’t think so,

Dave:No, but Sean Perron and Spencer Harmon took us there, and it really comes from their book Letters to a Romantic, which I encourage you to pick up.

Ann:The first one’s on dating, the second one’s on engagement, and the third one’s on the early years of marriage. So I think they’ll be really helpful.

Dave:Go to FamilyLifeToday.com, click the link there and get any one of those or all of them.

Ann:FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife®, a Cru® Ministry. Helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.

If you’ve benefited from the FamilyLife Today transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs of producing them and making them available online?

Copyright © 2025 FamilyLife. All rights reserved.

www.FamilyLife.com