Don’t Waste Your Engagement: How to Prepare for Marriage
00:00:00.000 | Welcome back to a new week on the podcast.
00:00:02.700 | Our next question comes from an engaged man,
00:00:05.340 | Evan is his name, who writes in to ask this.
00:00:07.940 | Pastor John, I'm getting married
00:00:09.140 | in exactly 100 days from now.
00:00:11.740 | I'm 21 years old, my bride-to-be, Emily, is 18.
00:00:14.380 | I'm a student ministries intern at my church.
00:00:17.100 | We met last March and began a long-distance relationship
00:00:19.620 | after we met when her college trip
00:00:21.240 | and my student ministry retreat overlapped
00:00:23.140 | at a camp between our states in Wyoming.
00:00:25.560 | We have clearly felt God lead us to be married,
00:00:27.380 | and our mentors, church leaders, parents,
00:00:29.300 | and close friends have affirmed our decision to be married.
00:00:31.980 | I'm excited to take on the role of loving a woman
00:00:34.100 | like Christ did the church,
00:00:35.700 | but as the day draws nearer and nearer,
00:00:37.860 | I am made more and more aware of my need for wisdom
00:00:40.460 | and help to become a husband capable of loving my wife well.
00:00:44.500 | I'll be re-listening to all of the episodes on marriage,
00:00:48.300 | but with all that being said,
00:00:49.220 | what advice do you have for me?
00:00:50.500 | What are the most important questions we need to ask
00:00:52.740 | and likely are not asking due to the rushing excitement
00:00:56.020 | of the engagement phase?
00:00:57.420 | What would you say, Pastor John,
00:00:58.460 | to Evan and to his fiance?
00:01:01.260 | - Well, the first thing I want to do
00:01:02.460 | is send him over to DesiringGod.org
00:01:04.660 | to download a document called
00:01:06.620 | "Questions to Ask When Preparing for Marriage."
00:01:09.500 | The more issues you can talk about now,
00:01:14.500 | together, before marriage, the better.
00:01:18.100 | It's far more frustrating and threatening
00:01:21.900 | to think of something after you're married
00:01:24.640 | that you should have talked about before,
00:01:27.020 | which leads me to the second thing I would say,
00:01:30.460 | besides go get the document.
00:01:32.580 | Don't shy away, Evan,
00:01:36.260 | from any issue or conversation with your fiance
00:01:41.420 | in these days in order to avoid conflict.
00:01:44.660 | Now is the time to have every conflict you can have
00:01:50.520 | that might come up later.
00:01:54.360 | If you think that you can dodge conflicts now
00:01:59.360 | so that there will be a more opportune time later,
00:02:03.940 | you're mistaken.
00:02:05.620 | This is what engagement or courtship is designed for,
00:02:10.620 | maximum exposure to what each of you thinks,
00:02:14.780 | believes, feels, does habitually or occasionally,
00:02:19.500 | no secrets, nothing held back.
00:02:23.140 | You don't want marriage to be based on ignorance,
00:02:26.160 | but on trust in the face of all truth.
00:02:30.220 | The next thing I would say to Evan
00:02:32.380 | is that these are golden months
00:02:36.640 | in which to set patterns of spiritual leadership
00:02:41.640 | in which you take the initiative to read the Bible,
00:02:46.660 | pray, think, study, talk together
00:02:50.180 | about all kinds of biblical and spiritual realities.
00:02:55.180 | I'm assuming that you agree
00:02:58.460 | that you both need to be on the same theological page.
00:03:02.820 | That's not an artificial expectation.
00:03:06.580 | This means that if you're going to pull together
00:03:10.520 | shoulder to shoulder in marriage for some great purpose,
00:03:15.520 | which is what marriage is for,
00:03:18.020 | you have to be pulling in the same direction.
00:03:21.160 | That is, seeing God in the same way
00:03:23.940 | and seeing Christ and seeing the Holy Spirit
00:03:26.740 | and seeing faith and seeing love and salvation
00:03:31.380 | and heaven and hell and Satan and sin
00:03:33.420 | and holiness and obedience,
00:03:34.940 | seeing all these things in the same way.
00:03:39.060 | Otherwise, pulling together in harness
00:03:42.980 | will start to become very painful
00:03:45.600 | as you jerk each other around
00:03:47.940 | in different directions spiritually.
00:03:51.300 | Or more likely what happens
00:03:52.980 | is you just stop talking spiritually, which is worse.
00:03:57.980 | So take the initiative and go deep
00:04:02.880 | into every dimension of the spiritual life
00:04:06.340 | that you can in these days.
00:04:09.680 | And the next thing I would say,
00:04:11.640 | and this applies to both of you,
00:04:13.780 | is that your own personal fellowship of faith
00:04:17.380 | and joy and hope and obedience toward Jesus
00:04:21.620 | is foundational for the survival
00:04:25.140 | and the flourishing of your marriage.
00:04:28.260 | The marriages that I watch unravel,
00:04:31.180 | unravel in tandem with the unraveling of spiritual reality.
00:04:36.180 | One or both of the couples falls away from Jesus.
00:04:43.180 | When that happens, the spiritual resources
00:04:46.380 | for handling the normal conflicts vanish.
00:04:50.380 | And so the point is, don't just think
00:04:53.300 | that what you do together strengthens the marriage.
00:04:58.300 | Far more important,
00:04:59.780 | and this may sound like an overstatement,
00:05:01.820 | but I thought about it and I'm gonna stick by it.
00:05:04.740 | Far more important is what you do apart from each other
00:05:10.620 | as each of you meets Jesus and consecrates yourself
00:05:15.180 | afresh over and over so that your devotion to Christ
00:05:19.680 | is absolutely unshakable personally between you and him,
00:05:24.680 | and your experience of him is profoundly satisfying.
00:05:29.620 | When two people operate out of that individual profundity,
00:05:36.340 | the marriage will endure and not only endure,
00:05:41.220 | flourish with joy and fruitfulness.
00:05:45.240 | Now, of all the hundreds of things that need to be said
00:05:48.480 | and could be said, here's one last thing to say.
00:05:52.280 | Don't assume that your affection for your bride-to-be
00:05:57.180 | is known and felt by her.
00:06:01.100 | Instead, put it on your lips over and over again.
00:06:06.300 | And over again every day.
00:06:10.060 | Find fresh ways to say it.
00:06:14.100 | Say it, not just show it.
00:06:18.200 | Say it.
00:06:19.460 | Lots of guys think, "Why show it?
00:06:22.220 | I earn a living.
00:06:23.820 | I guard her, I protect her."
00:06:25.940 | Look, yes, show it.
00:06:28.060 | Yes, show it.
00:06:29.380 | Do the kinds of deeds she loves for you to do,
00:06:32.660 | but don't just do things.
00:06:35.300 | Say things.
00:06:36.860 | This is true for both of you, but I'm talking to you, Evan.
00:06:41.300 | Lavish your wife with expressions of delight
00:06:46.300 | and appreciation and admiration and affection
00:06:51.620 | and enjoyment in your wedding vows.
00:06:55.320 | I hope you're going to promise to cherish her
00:07:00.100 | above all others and forsake everyone else,
00:07:03.080 | cleaving to her alone.
00:07:05.460 | Put that cherishing and that cleaving into words every day.
00:07:10.460 | This will pay dividends of great joy
00:07:17.340 | and great deep bonding of soul
00:07:21.140 | at a very, very wonderfully profound and happy level.
00:07:26.140 | It's true that there's a warning in the Book of Solomon,
00:07:32.260 | in the Song of Solomon,
00:07:33.620 | not to stir up love until it satisfies.
00:07:37.520 | That means, I think, among other things,
00:07:41.420 | perhaps you can immerse yourself in this book
00:07:45.980 | in a premature and inappropriate way
00:07:48.300 | because in the vernacular,
00:07:49.860 | it can turn you on in premature ways.
00:07:53.300 | But, but, I'm going to risk it anyway and say,
00:07:57.380 | go to that book and learn what I'm talking about here.
00:08:01.880 | Learn how to put into words, to her face,
00:08:06.880 | the cherishing that you feel for her.
00:08:11.900 | May God bless you in these months.
00:08:15.500 | - Amen, good word.
00:08:16.340 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:08:17.260 | And thank you, Evan, for today's question.
00:08:19.900 | We are going to return on Wednesday
00:08:22.180 | and we're going to hear from a leader who is wiped out,
00:08:24.740 | spiritually and emotionally and mentally drained in his work
00:08:28.900 | and he wants to know how to use his downtime
00:08:31.220 | to recharge and whether it's possible to recharge his body
00:08:35.300 | and recharge his soul at the same time.
00:08:38.120 | It's a really good and important question
00:08:39.460 | coming up on Wednesday for anyone who is feeling tired
00:08:42.520 | and needs to be refreshed.
00:08:44.780 | Well, you've been listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast
00:08:46.980 | with longtime author and pastor John Piper.
00:08:49.060 | You can find our audio feeds in our archive
00:08:51.020 | and you can find your way to our inbox as well
00:08:52.940 | with your own questions all through our online home
00:08:55.500 | at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:08:59.060 | I'm your host Tony Reiki and we will see you on Wednesday.
00:09:01.900 | (upbeat music)
00:09:04.480 | (upbeat music)
00:09:07.060 | [BLANK_AUDIO]