Couples considering marriage are often focused on each other's ability to live. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg concludes his practical advice on what to look for in a husband or wife. Now, what I would like to do is help you by suggesting what you should look for if you're planning on getting a husband. And then if I have time, I'll tell you what you should look for in a wife. Number one, what should I look for in a husband? The man should be committed to growing in his relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Secondly, a husband should be an individual of obvious integrity. Thirdly, you need to look for a husband who is able to lead boldly. Fourthly, you need to look for a husband who displays the ability to love sacrificially, to love sacrificially. Seek out men who display a self-sacrificial dimension, not a person who says, well, one of the things I'd like to mention to you is that I'm a very self-sacrificing person. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Sorry. Take that one off your resume. Self-sacrifices detected in subtle ways that vary from person to person. For example, watch at the end of an evening with friends to see if this character is quick to organize and spearhead the cleanup or whether he just waits for everybody else to clean up. Observe the way he relates to children and to strangers. See if he possesses a willingness to hold doors for passers-by with full arms. Watch his attitude to waitresses and to other people who are involved in serving the public.
And in these things, you'll begin to find out what you're dealing with. Fifthly, a husband should be able to laugh heartily. Humor is a vital element in preventing marital failure. The ability to laugh doesn't mean that he's the class clown or even a joke-teller. In fact, he may be hopeless at telling jokes.
That may be the funniest part about him. But it is important that he likes to laugh. And a key trait to look for is his willingness to laugh at himself. If he takes himself too seriously, look out. Listen carefully to him, not necessarily when he's on show, but can he tell a story where someone else is obviously the hero where he comes off looking foolish? When he laughs at the comic misfortunes of others, is he able to laugh without being crude and unkind and cruel? Humor is vital.
It's way up on the top of my list. Sixthly, and there are only six, a husband should model genuine humility. Genuine humility keeps its focus on others. You need to watch and see if the other person can share the joy of a competitor's success. Watch Chariots of Fire, and in the fictitious scene that is created between the race between Eric Liddell and Abrams, a race that never ever happened, but it was good for the story. Remember, Eric falls, and then when the Vangelis music kicks in, that spurs him on, and he gets up again. And eventually he runs to victory, and it cuts from the victory to the bleachers. And in the bleachers, Abrams sits, and out comes his girlfriend, very pretty looking and all in white, as I remember, with a large hat, I think. And she sits down beside him, and he's morose. And she says to him, well, you came second. And he said, I don't want to come second. And then he says, if I can't win, I won't run.
To which she replies, if you don't run, you can't win. And if you find yourself in the company of somebody who cannot be an understudy, who can't play second fiddle, who's always got to be the theme of the story, the joke of the party, the success of the event, I want to suggest to you girls that you might want to take a long, hard look at whether you're in the company of the person with whom you want to spend the rest of your life. Okay, fellas, here we go. What do we look for in a wife? Number one, tall, two, thin, three, sorry, sorry.
I couldn't resist that. That's terrible. Number one, it's the same as number one for the husband. It's obvious a good wife must have a personal faith and trust in the Lord Jesus.
It is the basis for any and all of the other qualities on the list. I can't overstate for you the importance of ensuring that you don't enter into an intimate relationship where one person is a Christian and the other is not. The Bible is clear. Don't get unequally yoked. To be unequally yoked is to be unable to pull together. That means there are two divergent standards, two opposite goals, two radically different interpretations of life, two incompatible masters to serve, two contrary powers at work. Unbelief, allied with belief in Jesus, means just one thing. There can be no real intimacy in matters that really count.
The two cannot pull together because they are not truly together. And so Paul commands believers to marry, 1 Corinthians 7, 39, only in the Lord. And in the course of pastoral ministry, I've watched and experienced empathetically the sadness of girls who got themselves way committed into something and felt unable to extricate themselves. They thought that they could evangelize Him.
They thought that they could bring Him round. I sat with them and said, if He's not about to bow before your Savior while He doesn't have your hand in marriage, do you think He's going to do when you marry Him? Oh yes, I'm sure He promised me that when we get married and so on it goes. And I've had occasion just to sit and say to the girl, you can either cry now or you can cry later.
You can cry now because you've lost Him or you can cry later because you've got Him. And the same is true for a fellow if he is going to anticipate anything other than a godly wife. Secondly, we need to look for a wife who possesses beauty that is deeper than the skin. I don't know of anyone who sets out to find a spouse who's physically unattractive, but the importance of a gentle and a quiet spirit is almost unquantifiable. A wise fellow looks for a woman who possesses a natural radiance rather than a glow that comes from a bottle.
It is less important to find a woman whose beauty comes from time spent in front of a beauty parlor than from time spent in the presence of the Lord Jesus. I recall walking on the beach with the man who turned out to be my father-in-law and his daughter, one of four daughters, was out swimming in the water on the shore and I was walking along with him. And as we reached the spot where she was swimming, she came out of the water and she walked towards us. She tossed her head back and her hair and he turned to me and he said, what a beautiful girl, inside and outside. The inside is the key.
The outside is the bonus. Thirdly, you need to look for a wife who is an initiative-taker with an attitude of submission. This simply parallels what we said previously about a man being a sacrificial leader. Any wise fellow is looking for a woman with ideas, abilities, hopes, plans, gifts, dreams, the whole panorama of abilities that she brings to marriage. Because in entering into marriage in more areas than we're prepared to admit, we as the husbands will be dependent upon their knowledge, upon their insight, upon their courage, upon their faith, upon their expertise. So when I hear a noise in the night downstairs, I have a very brave wife for which I'm thankful. You may be the kind of guy that immediately runs down the stairs and takes care of it. I'm the kind of guy that wakes her up and says, honey, there's a noise. And after all these years, she knows what that means.
She dutifully gets out of bed, takes me by the hand and we go down the stairs together. I am unashamedly dependent upon her, not only there. The word submission is so frequently understood. It's become a sensitive issue for many people. It's not uncommon for girls to tell me that they're not going to say that part in their vows. Incidentally, anyone who does, I tell them get married by somebody else because I'm not going to marry you. And that of course goes over very well with the girl's mother.
But anyway, who cares? God's intended role for a wife is not to wait around for her husband's directives or somehow or another, she was paralyzed without them. You don't think that Adam and Eve in the garden, Eve was sitting around with a bunch of flowers saying, what am I supposed to do with these? And Adam said, well, put the daffodils on the left, put the tulips on the right and put the begonias over here behind me.
No, he said, honey, I don't know what you do with flowers. There will seldom be a day as a man when we do not have occasion to depend on multiple levels upon the wisdom, insight, initiative, grace, courage, faithfulness, integrity, skill, giftedness of our wives. All of that said, it does not negate the fact that in the order of God's plan for marriage, the man is entrusted with the awesome responsibility of being held accountable as leader in the home. It is therefore imperative that you do not fall into the clutches of a bossy self-opinionated woman who you will see it in relationship to her father. You will see it in relationship to her peers. You will see it that she's unprepared to submit her heart and her mind and our lifestyle ultimately to the clear teaching of the word of God. The roles of husband and wife in more ways than physically are not in the scriptures interchangeable and therefore certain expectations for the individual role of each other needs to be understood and worked out. Fourthly, a wife, the kind for which we look should build her husband's confidence.
Trustworthiness stems from character. A woman's intrinsic qualities are revealed by our actions. A girl knows the difference between dressing in a way that is attractive and dressing in a way that is deliberately seductive. Girls know the difference, so do we men.
If you find in dating a girl that it is clear from the way she carries herself that she enjoys the possibility of creating titillation in the minds of other men who are around in the context, whether it be of the swimming pool or whether it be of the coffee shop, whatever it may be, let that be to you a gigantic warning sign. It may be an opportunity for learning and growth. It may however be the occasion when you slip out the backjack and you get a new plan, Stan, and there's no need to be coy, Roy. Just get yourself free. Just hop on the bus, Gus.
No need to discuss much. That's actually from Paul Simon. There must be 50 ways to leave your lover, which of course I'm not suggesting to you, but it just came to mind and I'm sorry.
Two more and we're finished. We're looking for a wife who displays kindness that touches others. Women don't have the exclusive ownership of the characteristic of kindness, but often they do a much better job in expressing compassion than most men.
It would appear, I don't think this devalues. Indeed, I think it exalts women to say that God has fashioned them to be capable of special tenderness. Men are frequently intent on keep moving.
Let's get going. Women are far more willing to stop in the cause of compassion. In fact, probably if you think about it, women that have marked our lives have often marked our thinking on account of their tenderness. And as our culture continues to promote a feminine men and masculine women as Christian people, we must be prepared in the face of radical abuse and possibly persecution to be unashamed in holding firm to the guidelines of scripture when it comes to these things. There were very, very clear reasons for the old Testament commands relating to the distinction between the sexes. And actually we do well to pay more attention to them than we're prone to do in an increasingly androgynous culture. Girls should look like girls and will always be their best when they do. And of course men should be like men. It seems almost impossible that we have to say these things, doesn't it? Finally, a wife like a husband should have a sense of humor that braves adversity.
The ability to laugh will get couples through more than a few rough spots. I think about Susan when she came to Scotland with me after we were married. First of all, I had no money.
She had a little money that she'd saved. I took all her money and we used it to get back to Scotland. We cruised to London from the port of New York. Don't get any illusions about how beautiful it was.
It was horrendous. We were on a Russian sailing ship called the Mikhail Lermontov in 1986 in Zurich. I was reading the Herald Tribune with a doctor as we headed for Kenya together. And as we sat on the plane, I saw a tiny paragraph. It said, Russian motor vessel sinks off the coast of New Zealand. I put my hand over it.
I said, the Mikhail Lermontov. And then I looked down and that's exactly what it was. I don't know whether we were on his maiden voyage, but it was close.
To say that this thing was backward is an understatement. I couldn't use up your time describing how horrendous it was as I ushered my young bride lower and lower and lower into the belly of this cavernous thing. And then finally into our stateroom where you had to go in and then step back and then let the second person in.
And then at that point you were here and so were your bunk beds. And neither of us have ever done drugs except on that particular 10-day voyage. And I don't know what it was we took, but it was a combination of anything that was available from the gift shop.
Dramamine and anything that went with it. And in a semi-comatose state we celebrated our marriage. She on the top and me on the bottom and then me on the top and she on the bottom, sailing towards London, leaving America behind, leaving her family behind, leaving all those boys in Michigan behind, leaving the whole thing behind.
Do you think she's got a sense of humor? And when we finally got to the apartment that the church had set aside for us in Edinburgh, she said about the business of making a home, I told her that I had put together some furnishings, which I had got from a friend at college who was adept at picking up junk everywhere he went. And I didn't really know, but we put this, I stored furniture in a garage and we had it picked up and brought to Edinburgh. I was gone on the day that arrived. She was not. And she had the embarrassment of standing there as two elders from the church picked these horrendous pieces of furniture off the back of this equivalent of a U-Haul and carried them up the stairs. And I remember coming home to her. It was maybe two or three days into this project and this furniture, there was not two pieces that matched. It seriously was uglier than anything you could ever imagine.
This stuff was bad with a capital B. And in the evening I took it down the stairs and smashed it all to bits with a hatchet and put it out for the garbage to pick it up the following morning. Do you think my wife's got a sense of humor?
She better have. And if you're looking for a girl that can put up with your strange peculiarities, you better look for one who can laugh as well, because I've seen you. And you're pretty funny. Now, when I go over to the dorms tonight and tomorrow night, I'll be dealing with the young men and other more personal questions. I'm not going to engage in them now, but I want to finish with a quote because there are people here tonight and you're saying, I don't have a boyfriend. I don't have a girlfriend.
Frankly, I'm not planning on getting one anytime in the near future. And I'm wondering whether it may be that singleness is my lot in life. Well, let me quote to you from one of my favorite singles, John Stott.
What about us? He says as singles, we too must accept the Bible's teaching. However hard it may seem as being God's purpose both for us and for society. We shall not become a bundle of frustrations and inhibitions if we embrace God's standard, but only if we rebel against it.
Christ's yoke is easy provided we submit to it. It is possible for human sexual energy to be redirected both into affectionate relationships with friends of both sexes and into the loving service of others. Alongside a natural loneliness accompanied sometimes by acute pain, we can find joyful self-fulfillment in the self-giving service of God and other people. The chances are you will meet your mate in the next three or four years.
Do not assume that a friendship has to be more than a friendship when it begins. Do you know how many people got married and they weren't even friends? Covenant before God that you will not add to the statistics, but God helping you, you will please him whether in singleness or in marriage, living according to the principles of his word. Whether we are married or single, our lives bring glory and honor to God when we follow the instruction of his word.
You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. If you've been enjoying these messages on marriage and singleness, you'll want to get a copy of Alistair's book titled, Lasting Love, How to Avoid Marital Failure. Just as he did in today's message, Alistair asks the question, what should you look for in a potential spouse, looks or success, a great personality? Alistair describes the inward characteristics that ultimately contribute to a loving, lasting relationship.
Before you enter into a marriage relationship, these are essential traits you'll want to consider. Request your copy of the book, Lasting Love, when you donate to Truth for Life today. Visit truthforlife.org slash donate, or you can call us at 888-588-7884. This year at Parkside Church, Alistair is leading the congregation week by week through the New City Catechism. This is a collection of 52 questions and answers designed to guide believers through key truths from the Bible. And today, you can obtain a copy of this catechism. It comes in a flip book format that you can stand on your kitchen counter, on the table where you eat your meals or next to your computer on your desk.
This item was extremely popular when we offered it several years ago. You can view an image of the New City Catechism and purchase copies of the flip book online at truthforlife.org slash store. I'm Bob Lapine. In the book of Genesis, we're told that God looked at Adam and said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him. So was the Apostle Paul contradicting the Old Testament when he said it's good for a man not to marry? Tune in tomorrow to hear the answer. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.
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