Thoughts on Finding a Spouse

“He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the LORD.” 

Well, come back to this verse…

The Task

My task is to answer the question of “how to find a spouse.”

I’ll do what can. It’s not an easy task, especially because the question is… 

How to find a spouse in an age where marriage is derided, fornication is widespread and normalized, and absence or abdicating fathers are common? 

That is the age we live in. That’s your time. 

If you’re here, that means you’re up to facing down a difficult task. So I’m down to do what I can to make it less challenging. 

That’s what we are going to talk about in this first session: the landscape you must navigate as you try to find a spouse. 

But first a love story… 

The Change

I met my wife at bible study I taught in 1998. 

I had been a Christian for about a year and a half and she was a recent convert. 

We both were in high school. I was a senior and she was a freshman. 

We don’t recall the first time we met (so it wasn’t love at first sight). We weren’t each other’s “type.” 

But there was a night when I became enamored with her. She shared with tears at a bible study how she was being rejected by her classmates for becoming a Christian.

The sincerity of her faith intertwined with her natural beauty drew me towards her. 

Little did I know she felt the same way.

We became fast friends that night and wrote each other several letters a week for months. I read some last week. Silly stuff. We were kids.

I eventually confided in her that I was interested in her more than and wanted to get to know her and her family better.

But on one condition. 

I told her that I knew I was called to the ministry. I wanted to do mission work and plant churches.

I would likely be hated by many on account of the word of God and would be away from my home a lot ministering and probably would have to make do with very little money.

I told her if that isn’t a life you can imagine yourself being part of, then let’s just stay friends. 

Because I want to married someone who would happily support and help me in this work. 

I thought that was going to be the end of the relationship but she gave me a big hug. 

After a few dates, I talked to her father and blessed the relationship and gave us some ground rules. Not long afterwards, I introduced her to my parents.

We dated through high school and we married a year after she graduated.

When we were married…

I had never seen internet porn.

Neither us had any social media. It really didn’t exist yet.

I had just gotten a cell phone and computer for the first time a few months before we married.

My wife was a virgin.

Our parents were involved in varying degrees in our relationship, especially Emily’s father. 

We were in an evangelical church that was pro-male headship, pro-children, and pro-women as homemakers.

So to review:

- the internet played no role in our relationship
- we married young (Emily was only 19, me just a few years older)
- we had little to no fornication in our past
- we had the support of our local church
- And the general approval of our parents

This sort of relationship is not common today. Almost unheard of.

So I want to be very clear I don’t think my relationship is the prototypical model. I don’t think it’s the pattern that everyone should and even can follow. 

Matter of fact, I think a lot of really bad advice comes from the anecdotal relationship wisdom of older couples who haven’t factored in just how much the relational landscape has changed.

And it has massively changed. 

Tsunamis 

I think the metaphor of tsunamis is very helpful. 

Tsunamis are giant waves caused by earthquakes or volcanic eruptions under the ocean.

The waves get bigger as they approach landfall. 

The 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami waves reached nearly 100 feet in height and at times moved as fast as 500 mph. Its waters pushed several miles inland. 

The Indonesian province of Aceh (A-Cha) was hit by a series of waves. Each wave destroys structures as moves inland but it also destroys and reshapes everything as the water recedes back out into the ocean.

Landscapes are forever changed by the eroding power of the water. 

That’s what has happened to our society over the last 150 years. 

Several waves of feminism. 
The sexual revolution. 
No-fault divorce laws. 
The creation of hormonal birth control.
The legalization of abortion.

A lot of that happened in the late 60s and early 70s and didn’t have a widespread effect until the 80s and 90s. 

Then in the 90s and 00s, we were hit by repeated waves of technological advancement and change. 

High-Speed Internet changed everything. 

Personal cell phones with cameras on them became common. 

In time, the internet gave birth to social media.

Then there was the creation of smartphones and apps. 

This changed things is massive ways. Some good, some neutral, some bad, and some downright ugly. 

The Landscape Has Changed 

Let me connect this to our text in Proverbs 18:22

“He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the LORD.”

This implies three things: 

First, finding a “high-quality” spouse is a blessing

Charles Bridges says:

“This is obviously to be taken with limitation. Manoah found a good thing in his wife. Job did not. Some find "a crown to their head;" others "rottenness to their bones." That which alone deserves the name is indeed a good thing. If in a state of innocence "it was not good for man to be alone;" much more in a world of care and trouble "two are better than one," for mutual support, helpfulness and sympathy. The good thing implies godliness, and suitable fitness.”

Second, there is an aspect of searching in “he who finds.”

Compare it to Proverb 31:10, “An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.”

Jewel must be mined for… you must search for them. 

Martin Luther said:

“To sum the matter up: whoever finds himself unsuited to the celibate life should see to it right away that he has something to do and to work at; then let him strike out in God's name and get married.”

I like that. “Strike out!” Go get it!

Third, if it’s good to find a quality wife, it’s good to be found by a quality husband. 

A quality, gem-like spouse, is difficult to find. There is a level of searching involved.

Where do you look for gems? Where do you not look? How do you identify them? How do you then extract them?

The answers to those questions are mixed with timeless truth but also time-bound circumstances. 

We live in a particular age. A lot of counsel doesn’t factor in the changes that have occurred in our culture. The Tsunami has changed the landscape. 

So what I want to do is give you (3) major challenges you navigate and (1) a mindset that will help you do it. My goal isn’t GPS step-by-step instructions. But rather to provide a topographical map and compass to help you navigate this difficult landscape. 

Let’s get to it…

Challenge 1 - You must navigate the twin dangers of undue delaying of marriage and rushed marriage.

Undue Delay of Marriage

Singleness is not only not bad but it has a good and necessary purpose in everyone’s life.

Everyone is single for a portion of their life. By single, I simply mean never married.

We all start single. Just as you crawl before you walk or run, you must mature relationally as a single person before entering into marriage.

And marriage is a normative part of life. 

Marriage is God‘s design for man and woman and has been from the beginning.

God gave a creation mandate to mankind and at the core of it was a command to be fruitful and multiply. 

That’s not just a biological reality but a liturgical reality. 

Mankind was to fill the world with the image of God buy and large through having and raising covenant children who bear the image and serve and worship God.

Marriage, while a gift to both individual spouses, always had a greater purpose: namely, to establish biblical households from which all institutions and society would spring forth.

It’s a big job. It’s not a one-person job. And it’s exactly why it’s not good that man be alone. 

Not merely because he would be lonely but because he would be alone in this work that requires both man and woman.

This aspect of the creation mandate is restated to Noah both post-fall and post-flood. It’s an enduring part of God‘s plan. Some think the great commission replaces it but no one can be born again who hasn’t been born. 

It’s also telling that in the requirements for Church officers marriage and children are assumed as part of the norm of life. 

Yes, some indeed have a gift of celibacy which allows them to stay focused on parts of God’s mission without being distracted by their normal sexual desires. According to Matthew 19, that is a gift only given to some and experience and the testimony of history tells us that it’s very few.

There is nothing normal about widespread prolonged singleness. And yet it is becoming common. 

There is a trend towards delaying of marriage to much later in life.

For comparison, here is the U.S. census data showing the median age of marriage for selected years in the more recent past: 

1900 Women: 21.9; Men: 25.9 
1950 Women: 20.3; Men: 22.8 
1975 Women: 21.1; Men: 23.5 
2000 Women: 25.1; Men: 26.8 
2013 Women: 26.6; Men: 29.0 

New data from 2021 statistics, show women getting married at 28.6 years. For men, the average age of marriage is 30.4 years.

And overall marriage rates have significantly declined in the last 70 years: 

In 1960, only about one-in-ten adults (9%) in that age range had never been married.

In 2012, one in five adults ages 25 and older (about 42 million people) had never been married, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of census data.

So in a nutshell, fewer people are getting married and those that are getting married do so later in life. That doesn’t mean people are living a sexually chaste life.

The use of pornography is widespread. Let me give you some very conservative stats that demonstrate this: 

12 percent of all Internet websites are pornographic.
25 percent of all online search engine requests are related to sex. That’s about 68 million requests per day.
35 percent of all Internet downloads are pornographic.
40 million Americans are regular visitors (in their estimation) to porn sites.
70 percent of men aged 18 to 24 visit a porn site at least once per month.
The average age of first exposure to Internet porn is 11.
The largest consumer group of Internet porn is men aged 35 to 49.
One-third of all Internet porn users are female. 

Here’s nutty one… 

By the 2010s, only 5 percent of new brides were virgins. At the other end of the distribution, the number of future wives who had ten or more sex partners increased from 2 percent in the 1970s to 14 percent in the 2000s, and then to 18 percent in the 2010s. 

That was 12 years ago. Before Only Fans, TikTok, and so forth. 

The trends are discouraging. But, maybe, you think, “Well, that’s the world.”

This has, without a doubt, seeped into the church. It’s not the same intensity, thank God, but it’s there… even in our circles.

Look, sex is fire. Proverbs 6 asks:

Can a man carry fire next to his chest

    and his clothes not be burned?

Or can one walk on hot coals

    and his feet not be scorched?

So is he who goes in to his neighbor's wife;

    none who touches her will go unpunished.

Sex, like fire, is dangerous when it is not contained. Fire in a fireplace safely provides heat and light too. But if it gets out of it, it’ll burn an entire house down and everyone in it. 

Sex is meant to be contained in the covenant of marriage. 

In 1 Corinthians 7:9, Paul tells us, “For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”

That’s why, according to the WLC, delaying marriage can be a sin. But delaying marriage doesn’t me we should rush marriage. 

There’s a myth that marrying in your teens was normal before the last century. 

Not so. Here are a few stats I pulled:

England, 1700s; Women: 25-26; Men: 30
New England, early 1600s; Women: Teens; Men: 26 
New England, late 1600s; Women: 20; Men: 25 
Pennsylvania Quakers, 1600s; Women: 22; Men: 26 
Pennsylvania Quakers, 1700s; Women: 23; Men: 26 
Rural South Carolina, 1700s; Women: 19; Men: 22

Marrying age is elastic. It’s generally tied to economic factors and societal stability.

As far as I can tell, going back centuries in the West…

Women tend to get married in the very late teens to the early 20s. 
Men tend to get married in their mid to late 20s.

You might say but not in Scripture. Are you sure? Good look up and see how old the patriarchs were when they got married. Isaac was 40.  

Very young marriage isn’t the norm people imagine.

J.C. Ryle warned, “It is only too true, that thoughtlessly entering into marriage is one of the most fertile causes of unhappiness, and too often, it may be feared, of sin.

We must avoid the undue delaying of marriage but we can’t allow the world’s abuses to get us to overreact into another error. 

Getting married before you possess the basic marks of maturity is the pathway to a miserable marriage and, potentially, divorce. 

Yes, some get married way before they are ready and make it. This is what one calls an exception to a rule. 

For example, getting shot in the head isn't always fatal but it's to be discouraged

Challenge 2 - You must navigate the twin dangers of having no standards at all and a rigid idealism. 

I think dating apps and porn have fetishized the things we find desirable.

We are granular in our wants, desires, and standards for our spouses.

We’ve allowed ourselves to be trained to filter by very specific variables.

She must be a redhead.
He must be over 6 feet.

She must be no older than 24.
He must make over 6 figures.

Each variable exponentially shrinks your pool of options. It doesn’t take too many of these variables to empty the pool.

Have your desires and standards.

But…

Maybe a brunette 27-year-old woman who loves the Lord would be a great wife for you.

Maybe a 5’ 10” jr. salesman making 50k will be a wonderful husband, and father, and grow into the provider you hoped for.

Many are too particular to even explore the possibility. 

And things like dating give the impression that there are plenty of fish in the sea and can encourage people to hold out for someone that meets their requirements. This is largely an illusion, especially for high-performing women.

Be flexible.

Start here:

Ladies, at least consider him if he is a God-fearing church-attending masculine man whom you respect. 

Fellas, at least consider her if she is a God-fearing church-attending feminine woman

Challenge 3 - Navigate the twin dangers of gnostic Christianity and man as a biological machine. 

Biblical anthropology always keeps body and spirit together and in doing so undermines two prevalent anthropological errors. 

Man as a Body-Trapped Spirit - This is where our human nature is divorced from our biological nature. I’d argue that this is an assumption that runs deep in modern Christianity and has contributed to the current sexual chaos being experienced across all denominations. This is the modern version of the Greeks (think the Gnostics). It sees matter, and physicality, as intrinsically evil or somehow lesser than the spirit. 

Man as a Biological Machine - This is where our human nature is reduced to our biological nature… To our appetites and impulses. Man is just a machine programmed by evolution to have certain desires. It only follows then that there is nothing wrong with embracing our natural inclinations. This error doesn’t deny the body but the spirit. All man is, is a body. It’s not corrupted. Freedom in this system is surrendering to your nature. Therefore, if it feels good… if serves your desire… then do it. This is the modern version of the Sadducees

Both are wrong. Both are an attack on biblical anthropology. Both must be rejected.

We should care about the spiritual and physical. 

Let's apply this briefly to finding a spouse… 

Ladies, it’s okay to want to marry a physically fit man who can bring home the bacon and command the respect of others.

Men, it’s okay to want to marry an attractive woman who cooks the bacon and follows your lead. 

Calvin says, “I do not belong to that foolish group of lovers, who are willing to cover even the shortcomings of a woman with kisses, as soon as they have fallen for her external appearance. The only beauty that charms me is that she is virtuous, obedient, not arrogant, thrifty, and patient and that I can expect her to care for my health.”

He isn’t saying that beauty doesn’t matter but just emphasizing the importance of character and ability. Both are true. 

An able spouse is a great blessing. Truly, “He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the LORD.”

Calvin married at 31. His wife died some 9 years later. 

After her death, He wrote to a friend:

“I do what I can that I may not be altogether consumed with grief. I have been bereaved of the best companion of my life; she was the faithful helper of my ministry. . . . My friends leave nothing undone to lighten, in some degree, the sorrow of my soul. . . . May the Lord Jesus confirm you by His Spirit, and me also under this great affliction, which certainly would have crushed me had not He whose office it is to raise up the prostrate, to strengthen the weak, and to revive the faint, extended help to me from heaven.”

To find a good wife only to lose her a few years later. That’s pain. What sustained Calvin? 

A heavenly mindset. That’s the mindset you need to navigate these difficult times. 

You need an eternal perspective on life and marriage. Marriage and children are a blessing. But they mustn’t be what defines your life. Remember Jesus said, “Unless you hate father and mother.” I love being married but I love Christ more. 

We all will experience the ultimate glory and purpose of marriage in the world to come. 

This eternal mindset will replace that ugly desperate anxious neediness with an attractive joyful peaceful swagger.

Search knowing you are secure in Christ.