QUESTION:  I'm praying about a young lady I am dating/courting in order to find out where God would want our relationship to go. But she has many questions in her mind about whether a marriage can last. She is surrounded by many couples, both Christian and non, who are married but have been divorced. Additionally, her parents are not happily married. She also wonders if she should get a prenuptial agreement to protect her assets. How can I encourage her to know that marriage can work as God intended it to?

ANSWER:  It’s interesting to me that I’ve recently received several variations of this question – and all from men. We women often fall prey to the assumption that the root reason for the current surplus of singles is that the men are not willing to commit. Yet, your letter reveals that this isn’t uniformly the case – unfortunately.

Because you are a man and thus you will benefit most from the discipleship of other men, I will address my thoughts to the women reading this column. But before I do, I’d like to offer you a few ideas to pray about and discuss with your pastor, accountability partner, or other mature man.

The first is that this is an opportunity to learn to trust God in your calling to lead a wife and family. If you are a servant-leader who emulates the patience and graciousness of your own Master, you won’t try to coerce her to agree. Additionally, you will show her that you trust God for her response to your input. This approach will no doubt go very far in building her trust toward you, too.

The second is that you have an opportunity to serve a sister in Christ – no matter whether she ends up as your wife – by praying for her, studying the Word with her, and helping her to understand that the faithlessness of others around her is no reason to withdraw her trust from the only Faithful One. The Bible does not show the stellar performance of any human being. It is a record of mankind’s flawed obedience and unbelief toward God and God’s justice, mercy, and patience toward us. The same is true today. God’s people are a trophy of His grace, not a trophy of impeccable performance. Perhaps you both may benefit from doing a study of God’s faithfulness to uphold His precepts and promises.

Now, to the women. If I were able to sit down with your girlfriend, I would ask her to tell me the history of your relationship and how she came to faith in Christ. Then I would ask a few questions and request that she consider some observations. But as I only know what you’ve presented, here in condensed form is some of what I might say to her:

• Grace:  You obviously see sin abounding in daily life. Is it possible, however, that you are not seeing things clearly or in the true perspective? Can you take a moment to reconsider these marriages to find any evidences of grace at work? Trying to be objective, how would you tally the good versus the bad? This may help you to better evaluate those marriages.