Imagine I tell you that I met the woman of my dreams and on our first date we spent a full day together. We went for coffee, and we talked as we strolled the park. Then we found the perfect lunch spot along the canal front. By late afternoon we had talked constantly and are now holding hands. As a result, over dinner we decided to get married, tie the knot, get hitched!
What are you thinking of me and my first date? What is your immediate reaction, “You’re crazy?” To which I respond, “But you weren’t there; you have no idea of the love we feel.”
Obviously human bonding, relationships toward marriage, cannot occur from one date. It takes time to build a relationship that leads to a lifetime marital commitment.
Now suppose I tell you that I have been dating a young lady for five and a half years without any engagement or promise to marry. What are you thinking? I know I would be wondering if there is any reality for the future of this couple or are they wasting their precious time?
Just because something feels good does not mean it is good. That’s like gambling or playing the lottery. It takes time to build a sustainable relationship toward marriage, in the workplace with a boss or with your neighbor. How do you know that relationship has been built? Trust is at its core.
Without trust, relationships will always feel suspect, tentative or iffy. I cannot say how long it takes to build a trustworthy relationship, but I do know it is longer than a one-day date. We must discover core values, similar or complementary missions and dreams.
If you’re wondering about your future and marriage, we have a resource to recommend to you. It will walk you through multiple questions to consider, a budget, co-mission, and much, much more. You can find that resource here.
We’re often reminded that woman live longer than men. And in the possibility of my wife outliving me, there is a chance that she could remarry. Given that thought, let me finish my title to this blog:
I Want to Make It Difficult for My Wife’s Next Husband
What on earth do I mean? Well, I try to keep up with all the maintenance around our house, fixing things as they break. I try to keep the lawn mowed and the weeds pulled. I do my best to stay after the leaves in the fall. I like to leave her notes around the house when I depart for a weekend or longer. I like to vacuum and help with the dishes and cleaning difficult places. Suffice it to say, I try to make life easier for her.
But here’s the thing… If she does remarry, my goal is to make that poor guy sweat drops of blood trying to keep up with her “first” husband. I want to leave an impression that causes her to remember me–the big and small things I did just to please her. I want to be the hardest worker she’s ever known.
I desire to be the godliest leader that I can be, serving my King first and then her. I desire to love her children and grandchildren. I desire to speak words of affirmation and give gifts of praise. I desire to pray with her and over her daily. I want to make her laugh muiltiple times a day. I want to hold her hand often. I desire to tell her that I love her daily.
All these things and more might cause her next husband, who may have never met me, to never forget me!
Church planting and/or pastoral ministry is a huge undertaking, and it is not a 9-5 job. Pastors serve congregants all hours of the day and night. There is a high expectation placed upon a pastor’s life and schedule.
There are births, deaths, weddings, counseling, hospital visits, family visits all beside sermon prep, teaching, preaching and oversight of multiple ministries within the local church. It certainly can be overwhelming and far more than normal fulltime employment.
For most, pastoral ministry is a calling and a passion.
However, pastors have a marriage and children who can often feel as though they come after the ministry. Learning to put marriage before ministry can be a daunting challenge. I Timothy 5: 8 reminds us of a biblical priority, “Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
Here are some helps to keep pastoral ministry and marriage in their proper perspective:
Love your spouse more than your ministry. If you have a congregation of 100 persons, you will never please everyone. But you do need to please your spouse. If you are prioritizing the needs of your congregation above the needs of your family, you are already missing the mark biblically. Your first church is your marriage and your children.
Attempting to gain the approval of 100 persons is impossible, but it is not impossible to gain the approval of your immediate family. And here’s something to commit to memory: another can pastor your congregation, but no one else is called to lead and care for your marriage and family. (See Ephesians 5: 25-28.)
Pursue intimacy from your marriage and not your ministry. Your ministry is not the one that you are called to romance. Many pastors’ marriages have fallen to pieces because ministry was their mistress. Your spouse is more important than any one congregant and she/he should feel that. If your spouse observes that you’ve been out too many nights, listen and ask what a better balance might be. Specifically talk about evening ministry versus daytime ministry.
Create a regular date night and take a weekly family day. When ministry does take the priority and interrupts your marital priorities there will be more understanding given to you from your family.
Pastors have marriage issues just like anyone else. Do not sell yourself short in realizing that your marriage needs marriage retreats and seminars. Do not avoid counseling. If there is a need in your marriage, then lead by example and find appropriate input and help.
Pastors frequently deal with conflicts arising within their church family and are often expected to help resolve issues. That said, you dare not enter the threshold of your home and sink into an easy chair avoiding your own family’s issues. If your family is dealing with a conflict, then you are part of the solution as well. Just because you have heavy situations within the church does not mean you receive a pass from directly dealing with home issues.
Dealing with conflict among others means you must develop the skill of listening. That skill is needed in your home also. Do not turn a deaf ear to the cries of your spouse.
Making sure that your heart is in your home as well as your ministry will serve you well. More than likely your marriage was before your ministry. And your marriage will remain after your ministry, so keep it the highest priority. Your spouse and your children will love and respect you for it.
Found in the book of Revelation chapter two, there is a scripture written to the church confronting His loved ones. The issue? They have forsaken their first love, and He encourages them to return to the first works of their faith.
What if we took this same thought and brought it into marriage? Have you in any way left your marriage in your heart, mind or emotions? Have you grown cold or bored or lazy in your relationship? Have you given up on your marriage changing? Then return to your first works.
What are those first works? Think back to dating and then engagement. What did you do to grow, maintain and secure your love? How did you appreciate one another? What were your conversations like? What fun was found in your relationship? What were you prioritizing during that stage of life? How were you caring for one another? It is in answering these questions that you will find your acts of first love.
My wife, while I was in the military, wrote me a letter every day. I returned that loving action and wrote to her often. We sent cards that lifted our hearts and caused us to think about one another in positive ways. When together we did lots of fun things: talked, were silly, talked, asked questions, talked, complimented one another and talked. No question and no conversation was off the table. We gave one another complete freedom to share our hearts. Nothing was too unimportant to discuss or process.
We actively sought ways to grow our relationship toward marriage by reading books, pursuing wise counsel, honoring one another, thinking of the other first and serving one another. We complimented freely and often. We held hands as much as we could. We kissed and we prayed together. We fell more and more in love.
Repent of your coldness and return to your first works that lit the fire of your relationship. It is well worth the effort!
Every marriage has it challenges and some more than others. Does that disqualify us from ministry in our local church or elsewhere? The answer? Yes and no.
The first step is assessment. How long have we had this struggle? Is it a repeated struggle? Have we sought counsel for this particular issue? Do we avoid finding solutions? Are we actively trying to find solutions? Are we being stubborn and refusing personal change? Are either one of us in active sin? Are we blaming our spouse solely for the struggle and not taking any personal responsibility?
The answers to these questions can help us determine whether we should be involved in ministry during this season of our relationship.
We recently experienced a couple sharing with us they feel disqualified for entering a couples’ ministry at this time because they are attempting to work through some of their own marriage issues. I asked them if they ever struggle raising their children or have they made huge mistakes in parenting. They said, “yes.” I then asked them if they should stop parenting or perhaps consider adopting out their children. As ridiculous as that sounds, sometimes it’s just as ridiculous to think disqualification from ministry over aggressively pursuing marital healing.
You must know if you can minister to others while experiencing conflict yourself, but neither does the conflict always disqualify you from serving others. It is out of our own pain sometimes that we learn to help others. And healed people can bring healing to many!
The key is, after assessment, chase healing. Give it everything you have and pursue growth in your marriage and in your individual lives. As we heal individually, our marriage will also experience healing. There is no perfect marriage, but we serve a perfect Savior who possesses all the answers we need for our daily life challenges!
I have been asked this question multiple times. I am not the final authority, but one thing I know for sure is that not every divorce is sinful, but most are the result of sin.
“Not every divorce is sinful.” Does that statement in and of itself leave room for the divorced to be placed in local church leadership? I believe it does and here’s why.
Historically divorce was rare in the United States, and it was easy to simply say that divorced persons could not serve in leadership. In other words, in the rare case of divorce, denying leadership responsibilities was easy, quick and involved far less discussion and prayer. But that position can be punishing and made more so out of tradition.
With the changes in divorce proceedings and forced divorce, i.e., no-fault divorce, we are left with multiple interpretations of scripture. Also, one must decide if they desire to be led by feelings and culture or scriptural precedent. As a counselor, I often heard the following, “How can it be so wrong if it feels so right?”
Well, lots of things can be wrong that feel right. So, leaving selfishness behind, let’s delve into the question.
First, divorce in and of itself is bringing trauma to the family. It rips apart two adults who have become one in covenantal relationship, and it is devastating to children. Kids do not care about 2 +2 if mom and dad are ending their marriage and affecting all the security they need, know, love and crave. As churches desire to be “relevant to culture,” they will cave to the feeling side of divorce. Church leaders in an effort to not offend will compromise the scripture.
But God “hates” divorce (Malachi 2:16) because He knows what it does to individuals, families, extended families and ultimately to culture. I love when leaders are compassionate to those who have experienced the trauma of divorce, but that compassion dare not lead to an unscriptural view.
Many who experience divorce would tell me that it occurred before they were Christians. However, marriage is not a Christian act; it’s a creation act of God. That means that any and all marriage vows are spoken to God until death do we part.
Timing in divorced leaders is important. If the divorce was a year ago or even three plus years ago, there needs to be time, a season to observe the prospective leader’s character and integrity. How have they grown through what occurred them? What was the cause of the divorce and was it scriptural to divorce? Has there been a remarriage of either party? Was there repentance and ownership taken for their part in the marriage ending? Have they received counseling for the wound(s) of divorce on the soul and spirit?
Paul told Timothy (I Timothy 3:2,12) that an elder must be the husband of one wife. Did that mean one wife versus multiples wives (polygamy)? Did that mean only one marriage partner for life? Or did that mean the divorced and remarried person is simply disqualified since they are now living with a second wife or husband?
The literal Greek translation was “one-woman man.” This meant a man who walks in integrity with eyes and faithfulness toward one woman and one woman only–his wife. The focus was and is moral purity.
My personal reasoning behind this is that scripture did allow divorce for marital unfaithfulness and for abandonment. The church must focus on Christlikeness in character, longstanding integrity and godly leadership. Why? Because leaders are to be an example to the body of Christ–ones to emulate.
Divorce is not God’s plan, and it will never be. With that clearly stated, we live in a fallen world and divorce is a part of it just as multiple other fallen nature things are. Redemption has come through Christ and He redeems the whole of man, not just partial aspects of mankind. We live and we walk in His redemption, through His shed blood and by receiving the forgiveness of our sin. (Ephesians 1:7)
He traveled with his job and found someone in a neighboring city who was lonely and looking for a hook-up. She didn’t care that he was married. He didn’t care that she had children and was in the middle of divorce proceedings. It was pure attraction, or so they thought.
Attraction turned to kissing and kissing progressed to the bedroom. It was fun, exciting, exhilarating. He felt young again. She felt needed, desired and idolized. Ongoing thoughts of how dangerous this was, how risky and how destructive it could or would be were dismissed over and over.
He told himself no one will ever know. He also told himself the feelings for her were not real; it was just lust fulfilled. He knew his secret was safe with her and she knew hers with him. It felt so good. How could it possibly become a casualty? The flirtations were simply irresistible.
Darkness always has a way of being exposed. Secrets almost always surface. What is hidden will come to light; as it was in this case. And as it did, this man lost his ministry position in his church, lost his marriage and lost his relationship with his teenagers. That’s a lot to lose and a very high cost to pay.
His sin wreaked havoc with his life, his business, and his family. The price he paid for his wrong decisions was costly and there was now no going back.
What could have happened?
First, decisions need to be made before facing the opportunity. Decisions like how will I respond if the opportunity presents itself to be sexually unfaithful? Boundaries should have been in place along with measures of accountability.
Second, you must push through a lot of convincing cautions to pursue sin. All along the way there is that personal hesitation, the internal warnings, the still small voice of God, the scriptural warnings, and the rapidly beating, nervous heart.
Third, obedience to God and your spoken vows to your spouse must come to the forefront. John 14 says, “If you love me, you will obey what I command” and “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.” (John 14:15, 21) By disobeying God you are literally saying you do not love Him.
Fourth, if you had an agreement with your spouse that included boundaries for your marriage, now is the time to apply them. Life is good until there is a test. You must choose to pass the test.
Fifth, recognize the voice of the enemy because he will make a way to tempt you in the areas where you are vulnerable. Shore up those areas.
Please take the time to read: I Corinthians 6:12-18, Romans 6:11-14, and Galatians 5:19. If you have not written boundaries for your marriage, I highly encourage you to do so. Yes, it feels prudish, but written boundaries provide one more layer of protection.
Marriage oneness is a gift from God. However, one of the more difficult areas of marriage to reach oneness in is that of finances. My wife and I struggled in this area for years. She was a “spender” and I was a “tight wad.” At least that’s how we each viewed the other when it came to finances.
The Fidelity company did a study in 2024 of couples and their money. It was pretty telling as they surveyed 1,800 couples. Fifty five percent felt good about their financial health. Twenty five percent said that money is their greatest relationship challenge. Among Gen Z couples that percentage increased to 29%. But what else did they discover?
25% said they resent being left out of financial decisions
25% said they are frustrated by their partner’s money habits
34% said the disagree on their savings goal
36% do not know how much money their spouse earns
55% said they are making retirement savings decisions together
53% did not agree on the amount of savings they needed for retirement
47% disagreed on how much risk they are comfortable with in their investments
We obviously need to improve our financial relationship. We need to communicate and agree on our tithe and giving, our savings, our credit card use, our debt and our overall budget. God desires finances to be a blessing, not a curse.
Mary and I finally discovered that she was not a “spender,” but rather a giver. I was not a “tight wad,” but rather a saver/investor for our future. Those two areas combined in our marriage, honoring one another and how we are built financially, has become a huge blessing and now an area of strength, agreement and oneness.
We save more in order to give more.
The blessing of the Lord makes rich, and he adds no sorrow with it (Proverbs 10:22).
Young men and women with an active faith in God and His word, the Bible, are long-term men and women who take saying “I do” seriously. They share similar moral beliefs and deeply held values. They possess a higher commitment to sexual fidelity. And those who regularly attend church have about a 40% less likely chance of divorcing. (See this Harvard study.)
Marrying when young often means less relationship baggage primarily because there are less exes. Maturity in a relationship is not measured in chronological age. Maturity is measured in one’s ability to think of their spouse or future spouse first and not themselves.
Cohabitation is precarious, uncertain and shaky because it undermines the quality of your marriage commitment. While marrying Corrine, you may find yourself thinking about your years with Heather and then comparing your new wife’s sexual responses to Bekah’s. It will increase the instability of your marriage foundation. Cohabitation is pretending to be married with a widely open back door. There is no need for commitment in sickness and in health; there are no vows spoken to one another and to God. There are no community of believers helping you to remain committed to each other without the bond of a legalized marriage.
And then this
In a Wall Street Journal article dated Saturday, February 5, 2022 Lyman Stone and Brad Wilcox wrote, “[In surveying] 50,000 women in the U.S. governments National Survey of Family Growth, we found that there is a group of women for whom marriage before 30 is not risky: women who married directly, without ever cohabitating prior to marriage. In fact, women who married between 22 and 30, without first living together, had some of the lowest rates of divorce in the National Survey of Family Growth.” Now that says something which majorly contradicts the former conventional wisdom of trying it to see if you like it.
One of the reasons couples are marrying later today is hope against hope that they will not encounter divorce. They are vying for a lower risk rate. But along the way as they give themselves freely to various sexual partners and/or cohabitate they are actually decreasing their chances of marriage without experiencing divorce. Research is now growing and concluding that to cohabitate prior to marriage and to experience multiple sexual partners, couples are less likely to be happily married. The pretest thought simply does not work.
It has been God’s word of truth
The word of God has revealed this truth for centuries. Social science is now only catching up to the truth written in the Bible about relationships and marriage. God’s word is more current when it comes to marriage and pre-marriage than tomorrow’s scientific study found within academia.
For example, did you know that sexual pleasure between husband and wife was God’s idea? Solomon wrote these inspired words, “May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer–may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love.” (Proverbs 5:18, 19)
Paul the Apostle wrote:
But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. (I Corinthians 7:2-5)
God is not embarrassed by sexual intimacy, He is not a prude or naïve when it comes to His wonderful gift, but He did place very strict, very safe and very loving boundaries around it. Paul also clearly warned us when he wrote, “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.” (I Corinthians 6:12)
Sexual pleasure is God’s intent for marriage and procreation is not the only purpose of sex, but sexual fulfillment within marriage is a process, a learned experience.
Concluding with married sex is better sex
Married couples have better sex for numerous reasons. They are committed to one another. They desire to please one another and give versus taking to meet a need. Intimacy is not filled with lust, but rather love. The married partners are monogamous. Sex within marriage is the safest sex. It is sex without worry, without thought of being caught, without fear of disobeying God’s command and sex within marriage is the best sex because you know the desires of your life mate.
For all of these reasons and more we can conclude that God was right all along. His written word and His commands were all for our good and our pleasure. Boundaries are an important part of life and so it is also true of sexual boundaries. May you find this truth for yourself and then experience the pure joy of obedience and God’s gift to you.
In my many years of studying, researching, writing, interviewing and counseling in the pre- and postmarital realm, I had little hope I would see secular research come to agree with so many of my findings and beliefs. But the proof just keeps showing up in article after article.
My belief, without waver, is that premarital experiences directly relate to our marriages and that pre-marriage sexual experiences harm the marital experiences of life as a married couple. In the recent past the typical sequence to marriage went something like this: dating, sex, cohabitation, maybe children and then marriage.
Sex and cohabitation before marriage
Psychologist Galena Rhoades PhD and Scott Stanley in an online article titled Before “I Do,” What Do Premarital Experiences Have to Do with Marital Quality Among Today’s Young Adults, now questions this contemporary view of how family life begins in our society. She believes that every serious relationship has certain milestones, like the first kiss to actually coming to a definition of where the relationship is going. She unequivocally states that about 90% of couples are sexual before marriage according to one study (Diner, 2007). She also states that most couples live together before marriage (Copen, Daniels, and Mosher, 2013).
But then she writes this, “Many of them have sex with multiple partners before finding the person they will eventually marry. Do premarital sexual relationships relate to later marital quality? Yes and no. It depends on who you are having sex with. Men and women who only slept with their (future) spouse prior to marriage reported higher marital quality than those who had other sexual partners as well. This doesn’t mean that sex before marriage will doom a marriage, but sex with many different partners may be risky if you’re looking for a high-quality marriage.”
Dr. Rhoades makes this eye-opening conclusion, “We generally think that having more experience is better [in life] but what we find for relationships is just the opposite.”
Multiple experiences with multiple partners sexually is now actually linked to marriages that are worse off and that having a long history with cohabitating may actually cause you to devalue your spouse.
Marrying young
Brad Wilcox, a director of the National Marriage Project and Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia wrote an article on how marrying young (by young I mean early 20’s) and without cohabitating “seems merited.” He wrote, “Our analyses indicate that religious men and women who married in their twenties without cohabitating first–have the lowest odds of divorce in America today.” Read that last sentence again, please.
What is it that the author of this study suspected as to why the success rate? “We suspect one advantage the religious singles in their twenties have over the secular peers is that they are more likely to have access to a pool of men and women who are ready to tie the knot and share their vision of a family-focused life.”
It has been believed and practiced for decades that a college education with a lot of dating, partying, fun, one-night stands and living together and then finally career all came first before settling down with a commitment to marriage. The statistic of living together (70%) before marriage is scary high. But Professor Wilcox wrote this, “But the conventional wisdom here is wrong: Americans who cohabit before marriage are less likely to be happily married and more likely to break up.” In fact, he says that couples who do cohabitate have a 15% more likely chance of divorce than those who do not.
Milestones in dating and pre-marriage days in a couple’s life means something because decisions mean something. We can remember when our spouse first spoke the words, “I love you.” We can recall where we were when we became engaged. We either loved or endured premarital counseling, but it was another milestone, a decision we made for us and our success in marriage.
Fifty years of marriage
Over 50 years ago my wife and I abstained sexually out of total love, commitment and respect for one another–keeping for marriage what belongs only to marriage. We did not cohabitate because we knew this one act reduces the chances of a healthy lifelong marriage. We had a large wedding because we wanted others to celebrate with us, hold us accountable and enter into our joy of oneness. We went on a two-week honeymoon dropping out of life as we knew it to simply work on becoming one. We did not know one another intimately (sexually) prior to marriage, but we discovered the joy of purity meeting purity night after night.
It was not a college education, financial security, sexual experiences or age that helped to create these milestones, it was love for God and a desire to obey His truth. We were married in our early twenties and we continue to celebrate milestones in our marriage. We are celebrating the milestone of half a century of marriage throughout this year and we are thankful for a godly foundation.
Steve Prokopchak 