The Spurgeon Files- Finding a Spouse

And welcome back to Clear Facts. I'm your host, Tim Dukeman. I'm here with Pastor Dave and our new special guest. Pastor Joseph Spurgeon. Pastor Spurgeon is the pastor of Sovereign King in Jeffersonville, Indiana, down by Louisville, and he's also host of the Patriarchy Podcast, and we are thrilled to have him here today. And today we're going to talk about marriage, and we're going to go through how to choose a spouse and how to deal with the troubles that do arise in marriage. And so to start us off, Pastor Joseph, how did you and your wife meet? It was an arranged marriage. I'm just kidding. Arranged by who? My mom, actually. So, true story. My mom and dad got to go to the Philippines on a mission trip. My dad was an assistant pastor at a church, and the head pastor went on a mission trip. And while they were there, they met my wife, and my dad baptized. My wife had recently converted. And my mom gave her my email. Now, at the time, I had a girlfriend.

And so – but – Oh, wow. She wasn't the very godly woman. Praise God I did not select her. And we emailed back and forth like twice. It's like, you know, I'm not looking. And this person on the other side of the planet. And I think she just emailed me because my mom pressured her so much. Was this back in the days when you got an email and it said, you've got mail? It might have been, yeah. I don't know if it was AOL. But it was certainly around that time. It was before Skype and FaceTime and all that stuff. But anyways, when my parents came back from that mission trip, they had all this video footage. And I'm pretty good at editing video and that kind of stuff. So I edited their video for their mission trip. And the pastor of the church liked it so well that the next year he came to me and was like, I'd like you to go and videotape.

Record it and make something better. And we've already got your ticket. So it's like, okay, great. Somebody's paid for me to go. At the time, you should know I was still somewhat running from God's call to ministry and God was working in me. So anyways, I was like, yeah, I'll go. So when I got over there, I remembered, well, there's at least one person here that I've messaged. We got off the airplane, and that day we went to – they had a big celebration at the beach. And there my wife was, and we met and we talked. And then the pastor of that church over there in Filipino church kept telling me to tell her things in Filipino that I did not know what I was saying. Stuff like, I love you and you're beautiful. Oh, wow. He was just messing around. But we started just talking and got to – She would translate for me as I would preach and stuff or teach the children. And then I came home and broke up with the other girlfriend who was, again, not a godly person. And God just began changing my heart. And we messaged each other through email. And then I went back the next year. And that's officially when we became boyfriend and girlfriend. And then another year went by.

Boyfriend, girlfriend was really, at the time, just in name, in a sense. Like, I have this girlfriend, guys, I swear I do. She's on the other side of the planet. You know, you tell me when nobody believes you. It's like your girlfriend from Canada. Yeah, yeah. And I've been sitting on the internet chatting with hot babes all day. Girlfriend's all over. For Martin's benefit, that's a Napoleon Dynamite reference. And then, what's Napoleon Dynamite? No, I don't want to derail you here. Yeah, yeah. It's a movie. Anyways, so after that second trip, that whole next year, we would type and text and send emails, and we're able to do Yahoo Messenger was the thing. Oh, yeah. I remember that. But I went back the third year, and I went back with the thought, this is kind of ridiculous. I've got this girlfriend around the planet. I'm either going to break up with her, or I'm going to propose to her, or we're going to get married.

I didn't know which when I went. Oh, wow. When I went on that trip, I did not know which. But there was a godly man with me, an older man. And he was like, dude, you're an idiot if you break up with her. Do you like her? Yes. I mean, do you think she's attractive? Yes. Does she love God? Yes. And will she follow along as you lead her? Yes. And you're an idiot if you break up with her. He's like, I would marry her. And I was like, you're right. they had this church service, which they called like a reunion service, where it was more of like just singing and it was like fun and that kind of stuff. And again, she would be the person that would translate for me. So she got up to translate the announcements. And one of the announcements that she did not know was that I was proposing to her.

You proposed to her during this service? Yes. Oh, my. And so I have a little video. You can actually go on YouTube and watch it. Yes. Because the congregation, they all kind of were always like pushing us. This video is going to be in the show notes just so everybody knows. It's very shaky cam. Okay. That's because you got married so long ago. It was. They did not have stabilization. Yeah. And the guy was so excited that he was – The guy that asked to film it. So I asked her to marry me, and she said yes. And then we had another year to get all the paperwork ready. And video chat started somewhere around there. We got to do Yahoo video at that time for a little bit. Okay. But I went back the next year, and we got married there in the Philippines. We had a ceremony there.

Not the legal one, the church ceremony there. And then we came back to the United States and got legally married. And so, all in all, as far as being in each other's physical presence, probably four weeks, all in all, in four years. And not a whole lot of conversation. I mean, just chats and stuff, like text stuff, not much. And yet, I'd do it a million times. As I'm listening to you talk, this sounds like a movie script. Yeah. And thinking about getting married, for you Christians who aren't married, I think they might hear your story and be like, oh, that's so romantic. And that's not how most people find a spouse. It's an extraordinary story. It's incredible what God did with you and Rowena. But could you talk about...

what was important to me. Because on the one hand, it's like, oh, that's romantic. And on the other hand, that's just crazy, Joseph. I know it's crazy. Especially for her. Think about this. Yeah, no kidding. She said yes, and then she was going to leave her family and come all the way around the world to a place she's never been before. So she'd never been in the States before. Never. She'd never flown before. Oh, wow. And at the time, her English at least appeared to me to not be that great. Like, it was better than she let on. She let me talk in broken English to her.

And then I realized she actually can speak really well. But so, yeah, it sounds very romantic. And praise God, I love the story. But I think what was in it was that we both loved God. I know we were talking before we started and somebody just said, well, as long as you have Jesus. And there's a truth to that. Like if you both love God. And you love Jesus. And you're attracted. There's the physical attraction a little bit. I mean, it's not like that's the most important thing. But it has to be there. And there was a willingness for her to be led and for me to lead. And I guess you might call that just the chemistry of us that work together. I do have one question.

Looking back on that story, is there anything that you wish you could tell your – how old were you when you got married? I was 30. Is there anything you wish you'd go back and tell your 29-year-old self or your 31-year-old self now that you think would have been helpful that you learned in the years since then? That's a good question. Yes, I would simply have gone back and done it earlier. My story is unique in the sense that's not everybody's story is what Pastor Dave is saying. But there are elements of that that are important, which is I think I got married at 30. And one of the reasons maybe it takes longer than not having the right person is that I think Americans, we build up a whole lot in our minds about what it means to be married. And you look back through the history of the world, the history of the church, and even in the Bible.

Um, a lot of the things that we think are so vital and important or not that important. For example, I've, I've heard people that are breaking up or have broken up with someone cause they didn't like the same music or the same, you know, it's like looking for all these, like I gotta have somebody that meets all my interests. And it's like, dude, you just want a dude, right? Yeah. Or one of the things that I've found that's really, it just kind of gives me facial ticks because whenever I see married couples say I married my best friend, I'm always just like, you can't see me, but I'm just like, no, you didn't. No, you didn't. That's just crazy. He was your best man. He wasn't. Well, so can you talk about that? Like, okay, so here's marriage. You have this story of God and how he worked for a guy from rural West Virginia, a young lady who grew up in a Catholic family.

She grew up in a Catholic family. She was rural. She was rural Philippines. Both rural, but completely different cultures. Yes. Completely different cultures. And you guys come together with no, with what anyone today would have considered as like, how do you, can you marry somebody you don't know? And yet you've been married how long now? 13 years. And you're expecting your eighth? Eighth child. That's correct. And you're happy. I'm absolutely happy. Yes. And your wife's happy. I hope so, yes. Interview her. Right. But I think it's possible for people to look at that and say, oh, well, that's just beyond, like, that's just crazy. Like, it's out of reach. And so if we strip away all of the extraordinary circumstances, missions trip, overseas, cultures and stuff, there are some things that are true for you and Rowena as you guys got married that were top.

priorities that have been the bedrock, the foundation for why you're still married, happily married with a growing family. And I don't think it's because you'd say she's my best friend. You're not like, like, does your wife understand everything about you? Well, no, I mean, maybe now we're much closer, you know, obviously, but at first, no, we didn't. I mean, like I said, we didn't know everything there was to know. Like And we didn't talk about movies and all that stuff that people think they have to have all these interested in. So what do you say? So as a pastor, you've got more than one perspective on this. You've got your own experience, and you've got your experience as a pastor. How many weddings have you done? You may not know the exact number, but two, 20? I've done a few. Plus, before I was a pastor, I was a DJ. I've done hundreds of weddings. As a DJ? Yeah. So I've seen it all. I've seen people.

I think this ain't going to make it. There was one where a father of the bride got in a fight with the groom during the reception. I mean, I had music cranked. Oh, wow. And it was louder than the music, and they just told me to cut it and go home, and it was over. Wow. That ain't making it, man. So I've seen a lot. But there are things that are the same here, and that is we had a commitment to God. A commitment to love each other that, for example, divorce is not a word in our vocabulary. It's off the table. What do you mean by that? What I mean is that it's just not an option for us. We are completely committed. Obviously, there's always the areas where it is, but we are not going to get divorced. You mean you don't threaten divorce. And that was something that you understood going in is like, we're burning the ships.

Yeah. We're in this. And so what you did was you put all of the pressure of the decision before the decision was made in a hope to prevent the regret later. Do you find as a pastor that when people are dating Christians, I mean, we could talk about unbelievers, but I think we're probably better suited to talk about Christians dating. Is it your observation that Christians don't scrutinize the relationship and the pairing as well as they should before they're married and that that actually causes a problem? Once they're married, because they were more concerned about whether they had the same musical interests instead of the things that actually make for a sustainable marriage. So how should they scrutinize better? Can we be more specific about how to scrutinize to have a better marriage? I guess it's looking for the priorities of what's important. And again, it is a love of Christ.

It is a, are you going to head in the same direction? So as I told you, I was running from the call to ministry a little bit at the time. And yet God, that first trip to the Philippines was when God worked that out in me. And so she knew that I was going to become a pastor and that's where I was headed. So she was on board with the direction that we're going to be going. Did she know what that meant though? No, I didn't know what it meant. You know what I mean? Like we both don't. Well, yeah. I just think that's important to say that like when you get married, if you look at the vows for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer and sickness and in health till death separates us, like what are those vows mean? Except that you have no idea what's coming. Yeah. Other than you're going to commit to serving the Lord together through it all. And that's what it sounds like you was top of the list for you guys was like, we don't know what the future exactly is going to be.

We're not even trying to write that story, but we're trying to build a marriage and a family that can withstand and walk through those things with God's help. Yeah, and we're going to have faith that God is going to guide us and get us through. In fact, that's been the key throughout our whole marriage is trusting God to provide, trusting God to get us through different issues. So you guys never had any troubles with that? Well, I mean, yeah, we've all had problems. trials and struggles about that and yet at the same time we've had to remind each other of that and we get through it like one example of this is when after we got married she came here we felt that God was calling us to go to seminary and we applied to different seminaries and I went I got approved at the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville And one of the things we asked God was like, well, if you want us to go there, you need to provide a place for us to live on campus. And he did. The place came open. The problem was we had no money and no jobs. And so we're leaving West Virginia, and we're going to this place. We know God's called us to it. And so we go without money, without jobs. School's going to start. I don't know how I'm going to pay for it. The day that we arrived in Louisville, though,

We both got jobs. My wife worked on campus. We didn't have any children at the time. So she worked on campus and I worked at Valvoline with, well, I won't bring him up. So you're a grease monkey. Yes. Yeah. But isn't that irresponsible what you did? Getting married without any plan. No. Okay. But open that up because if Christians are listening to what's going on in society, like marriage is off the table. So then if they're listening to Christians, it's very common to say, well, you need to have gotten through school. You need to be established. And this is not just true for the men, but for the women, there's this trajectory, this arc of like, and then marriage, you didn't follow any of that. So like, cause I just don't want people to look at, listen to your story and say, oh, well, he's an idiot. Well, I am an idiot, but God has been good. Right. So the, the, but the truth is what is marriage? If you look in the scripture, it's, it, it's the,

Man and woman building something together. And they don't necessarily know what it is. I mean, if you think me getting married that quickly is crazy, consider that Adam was a day old when he got married. It was the first thing he did. So the whole purpose of marriage is to be building a life together. And I think we've got that backwards in America. It's why the marriage rates keep getting older and older. Because we think we have to have the life built and then we put them together. And the problem with that. It is hard to bring two built lives together because you're all set in all your stuff and there's no building life together. And so some of this is you have to have faith to get married and at least a Christian marriage. I want to go back to the burning the ships thing for a quick second because I remember when I was preparing to get married.

Like some of the conversations that I had or that my wife relayed to me is that – and I think this ties into the idea that you should – like people – everyone should finish college before you get married. The reason people want – like people wanted my wife to finish college before we got married, and she didn't, but they wanted that. I don't mean to say people, but people? Your parents? I don't remember. It was somebody in her family that she – I forget who it was at this point. But basically the idea is that they wanted her to be able to get a good job in case we got divorced. Right. A plan B. Yeah. That and the other thing was they would tell her things like, well, make sure you always have like your egg money is what they called it. Like you have this like stash of private money that your husband doesn't know about. And that way if you have to leave – So they're setting you up for divorce. Yeah.

Because when you start planning for divorce before the marriage, your plans often work out. Right. So you were talking about burning the ship's mentality, which is a war analogy that just says when we establish a beachhead, we're not going to leave ourselves the out of retreat. We're going to burn the ships we came to this land on. We're either going to conquer this land or we're going to die in this land, but we can't get away from this land. Right. And so that's what you mean by burn the ships. And that really needs to be a Christian's approach to marriage. And here's the thing. If you were in war and that was your approach, it's stinking scary. It's like, you kidding me? And yet, that needs to be the Christian's mentality. If I could tell a story about when we got engaged, without going into the whole story, when Vanessa and I met, we met, I became a Christian through our dating relationship. I don't recommend any of the stuff we did because it was very painful and doesn't typically end up with...

good results. However, we had dated and then we'd broken up. We'd gotten counsel that said that you guys ought to break up. And so we did, we broke up. And then as we were getting back together, or I was looking at the prospect of us getting back together, I had a meeting with a pastor and I'm just a young single guy, 23. I just turned 24 when we got married. So I'd been 23, young, two years into the faith, like not an old mature Christian, didn't grow up in Christian home or anything like that. And so I go into this meeting with the pastor and his wife, and he opened the meeting with prayer. And it's worth noting this couple was the same couple that said we ought to break up, that there was their counsel that we ought to break up. So I'm kind of coming back and being like, so, you know, time has passed, things have changed. I've been working on it. I want to get your, you know, your opinion. And so the pastor prays, and I kid you not, he says, amen. He looks up from saying amen. And he says,

why should I even believe you're a Christian? And I was like, ugh. I didn't know that's how we were going to start off this conversation. And so I just kind of chuckled at him and laughed. And it wasn't a nervous laugh for like, why did you ask me that? But then he pressed me again because I didn't answer. I just kind of chuckled. And he says, I'm serious. Why should I even believe you're a Christian? You're here wanting to know about getting married. I want to know why I should even believe you're a Christian. And I just kind of chuckled some more. And the third time he asked me, he's leaning across the desk and he wasn't like threatening to hit me or something, but he was being aggressive in his questioning of me. And I said to him, I eventually I answered and I said to him, I said, the reason you should, what I said to him was, if you don't think I'm a Christian, you missed your opportunity to say so. And he's like, what do you mean? And I said, well, you baptized me like three weeks ago. He was a pastor of the church I was going to at the time, you know?

And then he chuckled and he laughed and he sat back and he said, well, okay. And I didn't, for years, I'm not kidding you, for over a decade, I thought the whole thing was a joke. I thought he was joking with me. I thought this was just like a fun, fun for him. It wasn't fun for me. I thought maybe it was fun for him. And years later, he said to me, he says, no, it was never a joke. And I'm like, well, you were serious? And he's like, yeah. And he said, what I wanted to know is if you had the backbone to stand up when things got hard. Wow.

And that's why he questioned me. And I was just like, oh, so this was marriage prep? That's what that question was? And so are you going to be able to handle it when the heat's on as a man was what he was probing in me? And when we talk about what needs to be true about you before you get married, one of the things we've said is it doesn't need to be true that you've got your life all together financially or... career wise or any of that, though, those are good things. We're not sitting here saying none of that matters and you don't need to worry about it. Live in a cardboard box. No, but that we don't, we're not putting all of these mile markers in front of marriage, finish college, get a job, all these things. Be smart, like work hard, be smart financially, like look, work for the future. Yes. So those are some of the things that the world might put in front of us. What sorts of things do Christians put in front of us? Well, unfortunately, some of those same things.

But when I look at young Christians, men or women, and there's a little difference in what they're looking for. When we're trying to figure out what should you have at the top of your priority list when you're trying to find a spouse, what would you... You've already said, well, you need to trust Jesus. But if you could speak to the men, like if I was a man, these are the three things I'd say. This is what you need to prioritize in looking for a wife. And then the same for a woman. Yeah, for a man looking for a wife, we said... loving Jesus, I would say you're physically attracted to some degree. And then this is what I would argue is the most important. Is she leadable and teachable? You do not want to – people talk about and brag it on the Internet that, man, I want a fiery wife or you're not man enough to handle this woman. But really, what man wants a woman that they're going to have to fight the whole time they're married?

So is this a woman that has a gentle and quiet spirit? And you might test it along the way. Like, will she let you pick the restaurant you go to when you're out on a date? Or is she always going to have her way on all these things? She's always fighting you on stuff. If that's the way that's happening, I would run. Because if you're fighting over who's going to make decisions before the marriage, then that's what your whole marriage is going to be. I mean, God changes people's hearts. And that's another thing I would look for. Is this a woman that is forgiving? I think you would look both man and woman. You want to look for somebody that has a heart of forgiveness towards people, right? Doesn't hold grudges because you're going to sin a lot against each other. And one of the ways you make it through is I forgive you and you move on.

So that's the gentle and quiet spirit that I would be looking for is, is she leadable and merciful? And so you might want to elaborate some more on that. Well, I think that's right. Maybe, you know, I'm trying to draw out your thoughts. I mean, we have you up here. I want to hear what you have to say. In terms of cultural engagement, I find that a lot of Reformed men are looking for Reformed women. who have all of their same theological peculiarities. And I have not found myself to be very impressed with Reformed men or Reformed women when it comes to their priorities about getting married. Well, see, those things are good, but they don't matter as much, right? So, does she love Jesus doesn't mean that she...

Is she a West ministerian follows the, she subscribes to the whole thing. Right. But it's even more specific than that. But she's post-millennial and she's theonomic and she's done all this. She knows who the Nephilim are and all that stuff. Right. So it's like, well, we're all chuckling, but as a pastor, haven't you sat in conversations with people who are like, they literally in their dating conversations, I have at least they're fighting about this. Like they're having real fights and processing whether, They're going to stick it out based on this stuff. Well, that does bring up one thing that I wanted to kind of ask about for you to unpack a little bit for us. Because when I hear you all talk about a meek and quiet spirit, I think God's graced me with a really great wife. And she's teachable and she's followed me. That doesn't mean that she doesn't have any of her own opinions. Okay? Now, Tim's sitting across from me. His wife...

Is very teachable and quiet spirited. And sometimes I don't know if she has her own opinions or not, or if she just checks in with Tim to find out what they're supposed to be. I can imagine being surprised. I'm just saying what that actually looks like. So sometimes when a guy's listening to that, I can imagine a reformed guy listening to you say she needs to have a meek and quiet spirit. And it's like, well, she's arguing with me about this. and insert uber fine point of theology that she sees slightly different than he does. And he feels like that she needs to just whatever he says about that. Does that make sense? So, I don't know how you unpack the difference between just a good godly woman who's teachable, but who also is intelligent and has opinions, and on the other hand, a woman who's unwilling to to hear and is intractable. Do you see what I'm talking about? How does that work its way out in a guy trying to find a good wife? Yeah. So, headship and submission is a big deal. When Joseph says leadership, that's what I think about is headship and submission. And I'm afraid that it's a drum that you can beat too often in a relationship. And that you actually

Men, in looking for a spouse, will end up exasperating a woman because they're always trying to prove whether she'll submit. It's almost like it's like a game. It's like, how crazy can my requests be before you will become intractable? It's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's like, I'm going to push, push, push, push, push. And then when you break, I'm going to say, see, that's the problem. And it's like, no, you idiot. Like, you weren't living with her in an understanding way. You weren't loving her. Like, I tell people when it comes to arguments in marriage, I'm like, if it comes down to a, honey, I'm the husband, and it's my responsibility to make this choice, this conversation's over, and this is the decision. If that's the normal way that conflicts get resolved in your marriage, you have problems. Yes. Wow. You have real problems. And I'm afraid that a lot of Reformed men, guys in our circles, They, they're like, so like, well, I'm the man, you know? And it's like, seriously, dude, like I'm not, I'm not in favor of like, oh, servant, we need to be servant leaders and we need to, we have tie breaking authority or any of that. But it's like, is there anything else besides like servant leadership and tie breaking authority and like knuckles dragging on the ground being this, like, I'm just going to push and push and push and push and push to the point where you, you are, you are overwhelmed. And then I'm going to say, and there's the problem. Like, can we seriously, can you?

A good, godly woman who is teachable will disagree with you and needs to disagree with you because it turns out you're an idiot. I'm way less confident in the decisions that I make now than I was when I was 25. I knew way more then. I really had it all figured out. And a lot of that is I can draw a straight line to saying the fights that my wife has picked with me and said, hey, dude, this thing. It's awful. And it's like, well, is she being unsubmissive? Is she not having a gentle and quiet spirit? I end up thanking God, not always in the moment like I should, but eventually for saying, I'm glad that God gave me a stubborn woman because I'm a stubborn man. Like when we were in premarital counseling, one of the primary concerns of those doing our counseling was that I would just overwhelm my wife because I'm big and I'm loud and I'm pushy.

And they're just like, this poor girl is so quiet and so deferential that she's just going to get steamrolled. And it turned out as we were in counseling and as they got to know her a little bit better, they realized that that was not the thing they needed to be concerned about. That in fact, she was good for me because while she is quiet and she is deferential, she has opinions and she will let you know what they are. And fight for them. And I don't mean like in this perfect way where our fights were always the most productive and always, you know, the most godly. Listen, I wish that were the case. Not always the case. But she was able to be helpful to me. And what I've realized is I needed someone who had a strong enough personality. Now, do I appreciate, did I go looking for a woman who would fight with me? No. Was God gracious in giving me a woman strong enough to help me in the points where I'm most weak? Yes.

Very thankful for that. And that's just me. Some men, you know, I think Joseph is a lot more mild-mannered and compassionate than I am impatient by nature. Like, I'm way more of a, I don't know what the word is, fighter, jerk, whatever. But I'm often impressed by Joseph's patience. You told us once that empathy is not one of the gifts that your wife would attribute to you. Yeah, no, yeah. I'm working on it. Let me jump in on the patience point for a second. I had a conversation with the elders at one of our churches not that long ago, and we were talking about one of those side, secondary issues that the Reformed types like to argue about, and I got his opinion on it, and then after he told me, I was like, well, what does your wife think about that? And he's like, well, We haven't talked about it. And they've been married for years and years. And basically what he was talking about is that he had other things that needed to happen first and were a lot more important. And he just hadn't gotten around to it. And I think there's a lot of wisdom in that. When Pastor Dave talks about these guys wanting their wife to agree with him on all these finer points, there is actually stuff that they ought to be...

They probably ought to be addressing first. And if you get to post-mill and theonomic stuff in 10 or 15 years, okay, but you probably have bigger fish to fry, and you should be patient. And the other thing I would say, too, is just that I think good leadership is bringing people along a little more slowly and being willing for them to realize some of these things on their own without having to fight about it. Something I noticed. I'm sorry, I interrupted you, Pastor. Well, what I do notice listening to your two stories as I hear them, the unifying factor that I hear is that actually there was a lot of involvement from people outside of the two of you that was giving you directions. Because I really question whether any young man is going to be able to, whether most young men are able to parse out the fine points of, is this girl teachable? But when other people are looking on, they can give direction and say,

Like Pastor Dave, they would say to you, you know, at one point they were like, we don't think you're right for each other. And then later they recognized that you were good for each other. And Pastor Spurgeon, you kind of said more or less the same thing, that there were other people that were involved that helped push you in the right direction. And I think for a lot of young guys, they're just trying to do this. They're determined that they're the final arbiter of whether or not this is the right or wrong thing, and no one else can speak into that. And I do wonder how much that...

that has to do with some of the issues we're talking about. You know, um, I host the patriarchy podcast. So in the patriarch circles, it's all about the father tells the daughter who's the Mary, but the sons are all left off to do whatever they want. Right. And so my wife and I have talked with our kids. Yes. The daughters need to have their, their, the ones come and talk to me and I'll help them. But so do the sons, the sons need to get the advice from their, their fathers and their mothers. And, and, and, I grew up in a time when parents were pretty hands-off regarding a lot of that. Like, you turn 16, 17, 18, and what do you want to be when you grow up? You decide it all, and you do it all on yourself. And that's a terrible place to be. And so, yeah, you should seek out your parents' advice. If they're not godly people, then you've got fathers and mothers in the church that...

should be able to see and help you. And, you know, as we talk about finding a spouse and you think about it, in our day, it's going to be, that's a difficult time. It's a difficult thing to do. Do you think it's harder now than it has been in the past? Because I hear a lot of guys say that. They're like, well, you don't understand. It's so much harder now. I think it is because churches are not as full. You know what I mean? There's not as many people to pick from now. as far as Christians. But on the other hand, our world is a lot more interconnected than it's ever been, so you don't necessarily have to find somebody just in your congregation. That's easier to do now than it's probably ever been to go outside of your congregation. But it is difficult now, and that's why you need other people. If you're just trying to do it all on your own, that's difficult. Yeah, it feels to me like the whole idea of dating and picking a spouse.

It seems that our culture has come to the point, Christian culture, Reformed culture, has come to the point where we've developed our laundry list of priorities. And it almost feels to me like in business, where marketing and making yourself available is so much more accessible now than it used to be. But what I found in business is that the old way of the best advertising is free, which is word of mouth. And that for all of the online gimmicks and stuff, that's still the best advertising you can get. And I think that's still true of marriage. That actually, if we've created an environment where we pick our spouses based on whether or not we line up in terms of interest online, for one, people just aren't honest online.

Can we just say, like, you're lying on your Christian dating site. And it's not an intentional deception. It's just that you're trying to put your best foot forward and it's just not always the truth. Like, you're not putting your bad days up there. And the things that are of greater importance, like, do the people around you who don't have those same commitments to put the best foot forward, what do they have to say about you? What do they think is going to be really important in the spouse that you... To be a good marriage, I remember saying to a man years ago, this was before I was even a pastor. I was in pastor's college. And I remember saying to a guy who was lamenting the fact that a young lady that he liked just didn't have any interest in him. And it was painful to watch because he tried hard. And she just didn't, it wasn't working. And I just said to him, I said, dude, you don't need her. And what I meant was not that she was a bad girl. She actually was a sweet girl.

But I was like, dude, you given your temperament and your personality, you need a woman who is incredibly patient, who is long suffering, who is very supportive because he was he was sort of melancholic by nature. And I think when we pick a spouse, we don't often think about what our weaknesses are. And in our spouse, we need someone who will help those weaknesses and strengthen those weaknesses. Everyone's like, oh, we need to line up and be all the same. And I'm like, ah, so what happens when you're both bad at the same thing? Like who helps then? And so I said, instead of having this laundry list of things, and that could be she needs to be super attractive or she needs to be super intelligent or she needs to be good at grinding her own wheat and making her own bread and doing everything from scratch or whatever the priority is, literally whatever the priority is, that actually one of the things you should do is you're looking at what you should look for in a spouse. One of the things you need to do is you need to look in the mirror and say, hey, what am I bad at?

And the way you're going to find out what you're bad at, especially as a young man or a young woman, is by having the people who know you well say, you're going to need someone who's got these qualities because you're going to need this kind of help. And God has his way of lining people up like that through overseas missions, trips, or meeting at a pool hall one night, you know? Offices attract. I mean, that's the thing, right? They do. people together. But it's weird that it's like, we don't want to marry an opposite. We want to marry, we want a homosexual. Unpack that. I don't mean to say homosexual, but I mean like, what's the word? We want somebody just like us. We want a homogenous marriage.

We want somebody that doesn't rub our sensitive spots and makes us feel really good all the time. And that's not always the best for us. And here's one of the things I've learned about young people is it's like they think that marriage doesn't – it's like no assembly required. It's like they want a spouse who comes like pre-programmed with all the stuff that they're supposed to be. And what I end up finding out is that that's just because you don't want to do the work. So you want a wife who's already submissive and a wife who's already got all of your opinions and a wife who's already got all the same ideals because you don't actually think you should have to lead her. Yeah. And I'm like, dude, you're going to have a hard time. It goes back into what I was talking about. You're meant to build the life together, which means there's work to be done to grow together. I always tell people in our marriage counseling, premarital counseling, you're not who you're going to be.

You're marrying a person today that's not going to be the person that's going to be 10 years from now. So what do you guys talk about in premarital counseling? Can you guys give us a little bit? That's top secret. We charge top dollar for that. So it's loud clang. Ain't no room.