Choose Your Partner Carefully
By Rick Warren
“The righteous choose their friends carefully.” Proverbs 12:26 (NIV)
If you’re supposed to choose your friends carefully, you should be even more careful about choosing your life partner. And notice that you do get to choose. God leads, guides, and gives you guidelines. But ultimately, who you marry—and whether you marry—is your choice.
However, many people believe the myth that there is only one right person for them.
That’s romantic, but it’s just not true. It’s not biblical, and it’s not even logical! If there were only one right person for each person in the world, one person making a wrong decision would break the chain for everybody else.
Let’s say I’m supposed to marry a woman named Susan. Instead, I marry Kay. So then, Susan might marry somebody else, who was supposed to marry somebody else, who was supposed to marry another person! Do you see how the apple cart is upset for everyone on the entire planet?
There are many people God would want you not to marry. But there likely are quite a few other options that could fall within his will for your life. And in those cases, it’s your choice. You can follow your preference.
There’s another myth that many people believe: Love alone is reason enough to marry.
I frequently talk with people who are planning to get married. And sometimes I look at them and think, “There’s no way.” The family background, spiritual foundation, or personalities aren’t right. They don’t have the same amount of energy or ambition. They don’t even have the same values and goals. But they “love each other.”
Loving someone does not mean you should marry that person.
God may not tell you who to marry. But he does give you principles that will help you make a wise decision. In tomorrow’s Daily Hope devotional, we’ll go over a list of traits to look for in potential partners.
But first and foremost, if you’re a believer, it’s foundational that you marry another believer so that you have a spiritual unity and a shared life purpose.
There are few gifts in life that are better than a good spouse. Relying on God’s guidance can help you make a wise decision.
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This devotional © 2018 by Rick Warren. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
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