We’ve all been there. Someone starts paying you a little extra attention. Their smile curves your lips. Their stare reddens your cheeks. Their words are spoken with a hidden meaning. You contemplate their question. They imagine their future with you. You imagine your future with them. You know those dreams that are gone in a glimpse? You see the two of you tomorrow, then a wedding dress, a house, kids and eventually the rocking chairs on the front porch. They are assessing you and you are evaluating them. In your mind, everything seems perfect.
Until you are brought back to reality. Yes, he has an incredible smile. Yes, he is polite. Yes, he makes you feel like a million dollars. Yes. Yes. Yes. You can continue rationalising and ticking multiple boxes but there is one box you cannot tick. It’s the most important box. Everything else is debatable. What they look like, where they work, what sport they play.
Some things are negotiable. Some things are preferences. Yet if you are a Christian and strive to take up your cross and follow Christ, when you are looking for a husband, there is one thing that cannot be negotiated.
He must be a Christian.
I didn’t say, ‘he must go to church’. I didn’t say,’ he must believe in Jesus’. I didn’t say, ‘he must have been baptized’. There are many people in this world who go to church, honestly believe that Jesus was God and were baptised as infants. This does not make them a Christian. There is a difference. Hear me out.
A guy can seem like the man of your dreams. He might compliment you. He might call your mum ‘Mrs’ and your dad ‘Sir’. He might open the car door for you. He might buy you flowers. Heck, he might even drive you to church and sit in the front pew with you! Just because he does all these things, doesn’t mean he is the perfect man.
The thing is that the Bible clearly states that as Christians, we are not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers (2 Corinthians 6:14).
Often, people can appear to be something that they are not. I know so many Christian women who married charming men. These attractive men knew what their girlfriends wanted them to be and so they played the part til they made those girlfriends their wives. Only too late did these wives learn that their husbands had been pretending all along.
To this day these women continue to struggle living with a man who does share their beliefs or they are living alone because their husband ran off with someone else.
The thing with feelings is that we get caught up in the moment, rather than seeing the bigger picture. We see them as they are now and how they make us feel instead of really asking who they will become and facing the hard truth.
On the other hand, I have seen so many Christian couples who are shining God’s light, just in the way they relate to each other. Their common belief brings them together for a common cause. Rather than arguing, they are in a partnership. Together they are seeing more and more people come to know Jesus. They are selfless and put each other before themselves. They read their Bible and spur each other on to become better people. They pray together. At my church I see elderly couples more in love now than ever. I see old men opening the door for their wives who now have walkers or wheelchairs.
I want a man who will one day become an old man like the ones I see at my church. If you want some one like that, they need to be showing those qualities now. Don’t just hope for the best thinking they’ll develop them later on.
Plainly put. If you want an eagle, don’t pick up a crocodile egg and expect it to transform.
On a final note, how can anyone argue with 2 Corinthians 6:14?
“Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?”
Don’t set yourself up for failure. See the potential beauty that comes, if you will only be patient.
C
One Road Less Travelled 