Do you want to learn how to love? Are you ready to share your life with someone? Dr. Greg and Erin Smalley discuss how you can know you’re ready for marriage.
Erin points out a number of myths in our culture about marriage.
• We have a soul mate.
• We need to be married to be complete. Erin explains. “We don’t need our spouse; we need God!”
Greg and Erin tackle a number of issues to consider before getting married.
1. Are you looking to your would-be spouse as a source or as a gift?
2. Do you truly understand what it looks like to sacrifice?
3. Do you serve? Maybe you’re dating someone and you’ve had opportunities to serve or support them. Have you taken those opportunities?
4. Do you regularly look for the easy out when challenges arise?
In Greg and Erin’s early years, they found themselves fighting and becoming wrapped up in talk of divorce. Greg describes how they decided to remove that word from their vocabulary.
“If divorce isn’t an option, then the only other option is… to work through things.”
Erin shares the true purpose of marriage – to make us look, feel, and think more like Jesus.
“God is working in and through us – and when the rough times hit, He is molding us into the image of Him. I wish we would have known that early on.”
Erin and Greg also make the distinction between happiness and joy.
“We both want to become more like Christ, but in the journey along the way there’s pain, there’s joy, there’s laughter, there’s love… although we know the destination, we get to live out that journey.”
Greg sums it up. “Success as a married couple is you become more like Christ.”
Key Scriptures: Psalm 121; Ecclesiastes 9:9
Featured Songs: The Maker by Chris August; Glow in the Dark by Jason Gray; Press On by Mandisa
