What are the two advantages in not marrying? The first is that you will avoid trouble in the flesh (v. 28). The chief difficulties and sorrows of this life are connected with marriage and family. The second advantage is that you will be able to serve the Lord without distraction (v. 32).
How can you know whether God has called you to a life without marriage? There are two tests. The first is whether you have power over your own will (v. 37). The second is whether you are consumed with burning for marriage (v. 9). This means "burning" to marry a particular person. Paul calls a strong inclination to marry a "gift." He does not look on it as a contemptible weakness.
In every large church or Christian organization there are single women. Whether an aging single woman is happy depends on her attitude and her family's attitude. If she carries bitterness in her heart, arising from stubborn regrets that God did not grant her another kind of life, or if her family treats her condescendingly as an old maid at a lower rung of worth and achievement than other people in the family, the single state will be extremely difficult to bear. A right heart and a supportive family will enable her to attain the advantages that belong to the unmarried.
Guideposts to the Right Person
If God intends you to marry, three principles will infallibly guide you to your life partner.
The first principle in seeking a mate is that you do not need to seek one. If it is God's will for you to marry, your task is merely to recognize the mate He has already prepared for you. You find that person not by running about looking for him or her, but by walking in the will of God every day, serving Him and fulfilling those responsibilities He has entrusted to you. Many of the happiest Christian couples met when both the man and the woman were serving God and God led them into the same ministry. Perhaps they went to the same mission field or entered the same Christian organization.
The second principle in seeking a mate is that you need to respect your parents' judgment. Christians have always believed that a young person should not marry someone without parental consent and approval. I always taught my sons that I had the right to veto their choice of a wife, and there were times when I exercised my veto. Today, they are glad I did. The reason young people need parental direction in the choice of a mate is that love is blind. Girls are often misled by their maternal instincts into falling in love with a boy who is just a big baby. When girls are little, they bring home mangy dogs. When they are teenagers, they bring home mangy boys. A girl may be so fooled by love that she cannot see what is obvious to her parents and everyone else—that the object of her love is a loser.
I once knew a girl who was a spiritual firebrand in high school. I will call her Ruth. Ruth wanted to be a missionary, and it was clear to her friends and pastors that a future in missions was indeed God's will for her life. Then she met a boy who wanted to marry her. Not only that—he said that he too wanted to be a missionary. But the people in the church could see that he would never amount to anything. Against their advice, Ruth married him anyway, perhaps because she feared in her heart that she might never receive another proposal. The last I heard was that he was drifting from job to job.
Boys have a different problem. They tend to fall in love with girls who have sex appeal but maybe nothing else. Like every other conscientious father, I continually had to defend my sons against this threat, but to my relief and joy they married women of both beauty and substance. The few stories in the Bible about young men seeking wives are quite instructive. Isaac let his father choose a wife, and he lived happily ever after with her, never seeking another. Samson took a wife over his parents' objections, and the result was disaster. The marriage lasted about a week.
The third principle in seeking a mate is that you should marry a spiritual person. God will give you a spiritual mate if you yourself are spiritual. If a spiritual person marries someone who is unspiritual or unsaved, there are two grave dangers. The partner who starts out spiritually minded may in time grow weary of being different and adopt the outlook and values of the other partner. Or the children growing up in a divided home may mold themselves after the example of the unspiritual parent and bring grief to the parent who wanted them to follow the Lord. The Bible absolutely forbids marriage to an unbeliever.
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
2 Corinthians 6:14
I could tell many stories about the unhappiness people have brought upon themselves by ignoring this commandment.
A story from my own family history illustrates how God may bring two people together for marriage. My grandfather on my mother’s side, Joseph Tassell, was born in London, England, but when he was still a child, his family emigrated to America and went to live in Toronto, Ontario. Soon a girl named Caroline Taylor, London-born four years after my grandfather, also came to America, and her family settled in Toledo, Ohio. Some years later, in about 1895, when Joseph Tassell was about 23, he came to Toledo for reasons now forgotten. Being a serious young man and a good Baptist, he made his way to the local Baptist church for their next service, which was a prayer meeting. Not long after the meeting began, he felt an inner prompting to look around, and there behind him he saw the entrance of a young woman. She was Caroline Taylor. He had never shown much interest in girls, but after one look at this complete stranger he said to himself, “There’s my wife!†Whether he was praying for a wife at that moment, we do not know. We do know, however, that a young man living for the Lord was guided unerringly to the woman who was the best match for him on the whole face of the earth. We know also that he loved her instantly and that soon afterward they were married. Now, the next statement in a true story about Christian people cannot be, “And they lived happily ever after.†The Tassells went through many years of hardship and suffering. But the far better statement can be made that both remained true to the Lord until the end of life. Today, from Joseph and Caroline Tassell have come over one hundred direct descendants, and the majority of these who have attained the age of accountability have professed to know Christ.
Compatibility
One thing irrelevant to choosing a mate is compatibility. God may put you with someone very different from yourself, someone you can grow with and learn from, someone who is a complement to your weaknesses, someone you can help.
A happily married man and wife might differ greatly in looks. One might be very tall, the other very short. One might be light, the other dark. Many successful couples remind me of the nursery rhyme, "Jack Sprat could eat no fat. His wife could eat no lean."
The differences between a husband and wife might extend to personality. Not infrequently the Lord combines a bold person with a shy one, so that somebody in the family can talk, conduct business, and take the lead socially. Likewise He may assure that at least one person in the family has a head for money. Another match made in heaven might join a cheerful person with a gloomy person. The cheerful one helps the other stay on an even keel. A very trying incompatibility, however, is a difference in neatness. A sloppy person can certainly learn much from a tidy spouse, yet in the process the neater one may go through indescribable torments. I am thankful that my wife is a meticulous housekeeper.
A married couple should, I think, have some sameness in cultural and educational background. To share thoughts and ideas they should not be intellectually too disparate. Nor should they be too divided by customs and values to understand and accept each other's peculiarities.
