Excerpts from The Sacred Search

Finding a wonderful life mate is not about winning the lottery. It's not a mystical exercise. This isn't to suggest you shouldn't seek God's guidance and make your choice prayerfully—of course you should—but in the end, you're making a rational, biblically informed, and hopefully wisely counseled choice. Own it—both the process and the final decision.

Excerpt 5

During an interview, a Hollywood actress didn't rave to a reporter about her husband's wealth, looks, or reputation. Instead, watching her husband on set with one of their children, she said, "The one thing I can say I did a good job on, I found a great man to father kids with. It's like if I didn't do anything else right in this world, my kids got a good doggone daddy."1

Right now, your children are theoretical. When they take on actual flesh and blood, you will experience emotions and a capacity for sacrificial love that you never even knew existed. You would be willing to swim across the ocean in a lead coat in order to save them. The most significant act of love, however, takes place before they're born. Before you agree to marry anyone, ask yourself, "Is this the best mother/father I can find for my children?" The time will come when, like this actress, you will be more grateful than you can imagine, or more regretful than you've ever been, because you have chosen for them a wonderful or below-average parent.

For starters, what you'll want more than anything else is for those babies to be with you for all eternity. You're going to want them to become Christians. It won't feel like "want." It'll feel like "need."

One mother approached me and asked me to speak with her daughter, a young woman who claimed to be a "seriously committed" Christian who was planning on marrying a young man who declared himself an agnostic and whose parents were Buddhists. I got right to the point.

"Do you want your future children to become Christians?"

"More than anything," the young woman replied.

"Then let me paint you a scenario. Your husband never goes with you to church, but you take your boy every week. When that boy turns eight, he asks his dad, 'Dad, why don't you come to church with us?' and Dad answers, 'Son, I don't believe that stuff. I think that stuff is for women, mostly.'"

Pausing for full effect, I asked her, "Who do you think that eight-year-old boy is going to feel pulled toward? Do you think hearing a dad he idolizes talk down faith is something that will help him grow toward God or get in the way? And then when he spends the night at Grandpa and Grandma's house, and sees their Buddhist shrine, and hears them talk about their faith, you've got a little kid who sees one parent go to a Christian church, one parent talk down faith altogether, and grandparents who practice an entirely different religion. I don't see how, if you want your future kids to become Christians 'more than anything else,' this is the kind of marriage you'd consider."

In addition to wanting your kids to know the one true God, you're also going to want them to be loved by both parents. Not tolerated, not merely provided for, but engaged with, loved, cherished. Watching your spouse love on and play with your kids will move you like few other things ever will. There may come a day when you have a terrible argument with your spouse, but then, later in the day, you watch him or her do something marvelous for one of your kids, and your heart will immediately melt with affection.

You're not just choosing a life partner. You're choosing your kids' future mom. You're choosing your kids' future dad. Is this person worthy of that job? Does he or she have what it takes?

Excerpt 6

Begin, even while dating, to see relationships as a path toward holiness, and you'll naturally apply the same principle in marriage. Relationships are God's way of working on two people, not helping you find the one person you want to spend the rest of your life with. You can get so obsessed trying to find the right person that you can mentally tear a decent but imperfect person apart. Or, afraid of what might happen, be too terrified to ever commit. I've probably contributed to some of that fear with the sobering tone of this book, but I'm going perhaps a tad too far in one direction because I see too many Christians not even considering some basic and potentially disastrous issues. If we truly understood all that marriage involves, every wedding would involve a certain amount of trepidation, if not outright fear.

But here's the hope: as Christians, we don't believe that a happy marriage is the primary goal of life. Glorifying God is. In most cases, God's glory is best pursued by making a wise marital choice and building a family that will honor Him. But remember Hosea, who, for the glory of God, was instructed by God to marry a prostitute who cheated on him, conceived children with other men, and all but broke his heart. Did he have a "successful" life? Absolutely. What about John Wesley? His wife quite possibly was mentally ill. Things got so bad that when she eventually abandoned him, Wesley wrote in his journal, "I didn't ask her to leave, but I'm certainly not going to chase after her." He had a disastrous marriage but also lived a supremely significant life. John Calvin had a fantastic wife—but she died barely a decade into their marriage, and he lived alone for the rest of his days.