Dating 5
Note: Last year, I made reference in a podcast to the fact I had taught my teenage children 63 things about dating. I have repeatedly been asked to provide that list so I am going to do so, along with some brief commentary. Bear in mind, this was designed specifically for my own children. Also bear in mind, it is very much in the mode of a father giving his advice rather than a pastor preaching the Word of God. Understanding those caveats, proceed at your own risk. <grin>
50) Study marriage.
It mystifies me that, speaking broadly, most people put little to no effort into studying the single most important aspect of their life, humanly speaking. They will read a hundred articles about how to eat, listen to scores of hours of lectures on academic subjects, download numerous podcasts about how to be more effective at business, and never once crack a book about marriage.
The most important decision you will ever make is to trust Christ. The second most important is deciding whom you will marry. Marriage is so important because it affects every other aspect of your life for your entire life. Yet, comparatively speaking, an enormous amount of attention is given to the wedding and a paucity of focus is paid to the actual marriage itself.
People who do not do their homework, who do not study on their own time never improve, never grow. And if anything is worth studying, marriage is. So study it. Read books about it. Talk to people who are good at it. Talk to people who have failed at it. Hoover up information from your mother and me. Listen to podcasts about it. Search the Scriptures for knowledge on it. Nothing in your life will be more important to your life. So study it.
51) For your entire life.
I realize this is advice about dating, but I cannot resist the urge to drive this point home. There are some subjects that, once you have learned them, you can move on from on to something else. I didn’t understand eschatology or music or alcohol or ecclesiology or sanctification or suffering. So I studied them. Now I do, and I am moving on to study something else.
There are, however, a few things I constantly study, no matter how much I have previously learned. The art of pastoring and leadership is one. The life of Christ is another. And marriage, parenting, and the family relationship dynamic is another. Study marriage now, while you are planning for and preparing to get married. But once you have gotten married keep studying it. Solomon begged us to pursue wisdom, to chase it down as a hunter does his prey. I know of no hunter content with one kill; he always picks up his gun and goes out again. So it ought to be with us. Chase wisdom about marriage, and when you have found some, get up and chase some more down. Indefinitely.
52) Preparing for marriage is much more important than preparing for the wedding ceremony.
I have already said as much above. I believe you get my point here.
53) After marriage, never stop dating.
At the beginning I gave you this definition of dating: “A date is any specific period of time in which the two of you are purposely getting together in order to enjoy each other’s company, get to know each other better, to pay attention to each other; obviously, in this context it refers to romantic dating.” Once you get married you will still want to do all these things. But if that want to gradually wears away realize there is a need to underneath of it.
A marriage is a living, breathing thing. Any living, breathing thing that is not constantly being fed will die, no matter how alive it once was at some point. Your Christianity is that way. And so is your marriage. Being purposefully together feeds it, strengthens it, nourishes it. So continue to do so.
54) If you are away from home and dating, find a counsellor you trust to bounce things off of, big and small.
Technology has changed much about life since my dating days three decades ago. You can much more easily reach out and be with someone, so to speak, now. But although you can still stay in close contact with your mother and I if you are living elsewhere that cannot substitute for someone who is actually present in your lives.
The pantry of wisdom must contain the can of counsel. Without that, your pantry will never be well stocked. So find someone you respect, who knows you reasonably well, who is wise and spiritual and carries authority in them, and seek their counsel. Don’t do whatever they tell you; that’s not counsel, it is cultish. But pay it the most earnest heed.
55) It will really help if they also know the person you are dating.
Romantic relationships are complicated and important. This is why counsel is necessary. But it becomes highly complex indeed for the counsellor to give you wisdom about a relationship with only one side of it in view, almost impossible actually. Ergo, it will be most beneficial if your counsellor knows you both, to some extent.
56) Your integrity and your testimony and your future are much more valuable than the fun that comes from breaking the rules – either other’s rules you have agreed to follow or the rules you have set for yourself.
Rules matter, even when they don’t. Why? Because who you are and what you become by keeping them or violating them matters, in addition to whatever was important enough to be the genesis of the rule in the first place. Keep your character and your integrity and your future in view when temptation comes. You will thank yourself later.
57) Don’t be stupid but never settle.
In my book on pastoral transitions, Next, I explain this concept this way: “Sixth, learn the difference between adjusting and settling. In college, I searched the Scriptures for what kind of a wife I ought to pursue and how I ought to pursue her. She never materialized, no matter how hard I worked at it. But I refused to settle. Plenty of girls ran the halls with their hand held out, metaphorically begging some guy to put a ring on it. I wanted no part of them. I had a pretty good understanding of what the arc of my life and my family’s life required, and I was not about to settle for less because I was lonely or desperate or frustrated. So, I did not. As I write this on Sunday afternoon at my dining room table, my wife sits three feet away from me; and I am thrilled that I did not settle for less.
By the same token, in my transition from one pastorate to the next, though it would be unwise to settle for some quick opportunity just because it was available, it was wise for me to adjust some of my expectations. I had to let go of some of the things on my “I’d-like-to-have” list. I had to realize some of my expectations were unrealistic. And I had to discern how to do that while at the same time not settling for less than God’s best.”
If your idea of not settling is marrying a billionaire’s son, well, that is just stupid. Don’t be stupid. But don’t water down your convictions or your convictions of what is absolutely necessary in a husband or wife just because you are tired of being lonely.
58) The most important decision of your life is whom you choose to marry.
Again, I have already said as much along the way. I trust you will not forget it.
59) Do not date someone that – as far as you know at the moment – you would not marry.
Dating is not for fun; it is for discovery, discoveries directly related to the most important aspect of your entire life. If you already know you wouldn’t marry this particular person than stop dating them. Yes, it really is as simple as that.
60) Jack, keep in mind what kind of a homemaker she will be; Emma, keep in mind what kind of a provider he will be.
I know. This is one is terribly old-fashioned. I accept that. I also happen to think this old-fashioned approach is both biblical and practical. Having said that, it then follows that if you choose to hold the same view of marriage as I do here this instruction matters.
She may be cute and fun, but coming home to a filthy house and unkempt children gets old fast. He may be dashing and handsome, but constant financial pressure gets old just as fast. While nothing you discover in dating can determine how well the other will do in these important areas you can at least find clues. Look for those clues, and pay attention to what they are telling you.
61) Ask yourself a million times, “What kind of a parent will they be?”
There is no project in your life that will cause you more work, more worry, more blood, sweat, and tears than parenting your children. And you do not do it alone. At least you had better beg God you won’t have to do it alone. It is a joint project, one God designed that way.
It then follows that the other parent in this project along with you needs to be biblical in their thinking and practice, needs to know how to balance mercy and truth, needs to know how to work together as a team, and needs to know and do a thousand other things.
One of the things I vividly remember from my dating days was how little attention my peers seemed to pay to this aspect of marriage. But it has enormous implications for your marriage choice. If you marry a wonderful husband but he is an awful father heartache will haunt every day of the second half of your life. See, it isn’t just what kind of a man is he; it is what kind of a man will he raise? Does he have the temperament, the patience, the perseverance, the stubbornness, the compassion, the wisdom, the leadership, the commitment necessary to be a good father? Or not?
62) Ask yourself even more, “What kind of a Christian will they be?”
I do not know what it is like to live in a home in which the two do not walk together. My parents loved the Lord and each other. Mandy and I do the same. And having said that, I have some idea of just how difficult marriage has been all these years just the same. I do not mean that being a good Christian doesn’t make marriage easier; it does. What it doesn’t do is make marriage easy. Marriage and all that surrounds it is fantastically hard over the long term. I struggle even to wrap my mind around trying to do it side by side, arm in arm, heart to heart with someone who doesn’t love the same Lord I do.
Sadly, I have pastored many people like that, caught in a marriage they neither anticipated nor wanted, with too much character and spirituality to back out of it. So they trudge on making the best of it. I admire them for it. But I so don’t want that for you.
63) Marriage is the right person in the right way at the right time.
The most important phrase here is the first one, but the other two matter as well. So do it well. You have the best chance in the world now to do so. Later, when you have a past, when the ghosts of your bad choices gather and hover around you as you seek to move forward, it will be more difficult.
Marry well. It is the prayer and hope of my heart for you. I will love you no matter what you do, no matter what decisions you make, no matter what advice you take or ignore, no matter how life turns out for you. Unconditionally. But a beautiful marriage makes everything else in life worth living for, and worth building on. May God richly bless you, most of all, in this – that you marry well.
