How to Know if You Have Met the Right Person For Marriage
Copyright 2011 Heaven Ministries ~ Marriage Preparation Ministry

Statistics now show that 60 percent of marriages fail. Why do you think that is? It is because we are not marrying suitable people. If a person exploits you and disrespects you during the courtship / dating period, what makes you think anything is going to change after marrying them?

During the “getting to know one another” stage of the relationship do they care more about what they can receive from you than getting to know you? Do they care more about what you have, how you look, or what you do for a living than the person within? These things are all very superficial and do not matter for having a loving and stable marriage.

Building A Firm Marriage Foundation Before Getting Married

If your relationship starts out as a sexual relationship but never develops into anything else and you marry them, what will the relationship be based on? Lust and desire are not emotions that we should base our marriage on. Having sex with someone before getting married does not guarantee marital success. But getting to know someone’s character and seeing they have moral convictions about marriage purity does!

Marrying someone with lots of money and stuff will not guarantee marriage happiness, but marrying someone because you both live comparable lifestyles in Jesus Christ does! Marrying someone because they are good-looking does not guarantee happiness ever after, but marrying people who are committed to staying married, no matter what, does!

The bottom line is we need to marry people who share our same beliefs in Jesus Christ. Just because two people “say” they are Christians does not mean they are compatible people. One person’s faith may be VERY different than another person’s faith. Know who you are marrying!

The root of the problem for failing marriages is that they do not start off right to begin with. Without a firm foundation to support the marriage on, it cannot survive, hence divorce or at the very least an unhappy marriage.  We need to start off our relationships on something tangible and true! God and His principles are something we can hang onto when times are tough in our marriage, but feelings of lust and desire diminish with time and will not be around to help us when we are having marriage difficulties.

Why are we so superficial in our relationships? Why are we jumping into marriage with such fairytale images of happiness ever after? I think it is because we have not been taught how to find suitable marriage spouses from our parents and because we aren’t waiting on God. We seriously need to pray about our friendships with the opposite sex and never take our focus off of the reason we are able to even love another properly in the first place. If Christ had not sacrificed his life for ours how would we have learned what real love and forgiveness is all about?

Jesus Christ living in us gives us the fruits to discern the difference between someone who is only using us and thinks they want to spend the rest of their life with us, and the person who we should actually marry. Look for the fruits in others. Fruits do not come from outside appearances, nobility, status, money, power, etc. But fruits of the Spirit come from within a person. These are what we need to look for in a potential marriage spouse.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, against such there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)