Gospel Prism

I was listening to Family Life this morning and Alistair Begg was speaking. He gives some good pointers on what he looks for in men that would make them suitable as a mate. My only caveat to what he and Dennis Rainey say is that there is something to the process of sanctification, where a young man will not necessarily have all of these traits glowing in their lives currently, and yet can reveal them later as God shapes him.

Alistair Begg

Number one, what should I look for in a husband? The man should be committed to growing in his relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ – committed to growing in his relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do not take on a fellow as a discipleship project. Don’t take on a husband who has merely mastered Bible trivia. Look for a husband who is serious about growing in grace and in a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Imagine that he is going to be, in part, your shepherd and your guide; that he is going to be the spiritual leader of your home; that he is going to be the nurturer of your children together, and think about that long and hard before you sell out for anything else.

Secondly, a husband should be an individual of obvious integrity. If he cheats on the golf course, beware. Anyone that cheats on the golf course has the potential for cheating anywhere. If you find him in an employee/employer situation fudging the issue in his sales calls, telling somebody that he can get the product to them in two weeks when he comes afterwards and tells you that actually he knew that he couldn’t get it there for four weeks, but he said that because he didn’t want to lose the sale – on the day he tells you that, you need to have a long, serious conversation with him, and if he seeks to undergird his deceptiveness with argumentation, you should probably kiss him goodbye. You need a husband who is honest to the core, to a fault.

Thirdly, you need to look for a husband who is able to lead boldly, to lead boldly – not everyone is going to marry the high school quarterback or the class president. That’s not the kind of leadership to which I am referring. But every girl needs to look for the kind of man who can think for himself, who can weigh options, and who can make good decisions.

In thinking of a man who is able to lead boldly, we ought to say very quickly that a girl should never settle for leadership that is selfish, bombastic, and domineering. The leadership of the Lord Jesus Christ, the leadership as espoused by the Apostles, is a leadership that is marked by an attitude of servanthood, an attitude that submits to the leadership of others, and that is of vital importance. The flip side of it, of course, is simply that a young woman should be more than a little concerned if the fellow that she’s dating has to check with his mother all the time – “Well, I need to phone my mom about that,” and all he’s trying to decide is where he should buy the large or the medium t-shirt in Gap – you know you’ve got a problem there.

In fact, while he’s choosing, just slip off ever so quietly into the mall and don’t ever come back.

If he doesn’t have wherewithal to decide between the medium and the large in the navy blue t-shirt, you’ve got a problem, trust me. Let somebody else fix it, forget the project, it’s a bad idea. You heard it from our Uncle Allie, okay?

Fourthly, you need to look for a husband who displays the ability to love sacrificially – to love sacrificially. Seek out men who display a self-sacrificial dimension not a person who says, “Well, one of the things I’d like to mention to you is that I’m a very self-sacrificing person – no, no, no, no, no, no, no – sorry, take that one off your resume. Self-sacrifice is detect in subtle ways that vary from person to person.

For example, watch, at the end of an evening with friends, to see if this character is quick to organize and spearhead the cleanup, or whether he waits for everybody else to clean up. Listen carefully to his elderly aunt when she tells you whether her nephew has ever been faithful in visiting her in the nursing home.

Observe the way he relates to children and to strangers. See if he possesses a willingness to hold doors for passersby with full arms. Watch his attitude to waitresses and to other people who are involved in serving the public. Watch his eyes as he sits in a café and observes the obvious ravages of AIDS in the body of the young man behind the counter, and in these things you’ll begin to find out what you’re dealing with.

And, incidentally, and in passing, gentlemen, married gentlemen, when is the last time that any one of us did anything for our wives that would fit clearly, solidly under the category of self-abnegation?

Fifthly, a husband should be able to laugh heartily. Humor is a vital element in preventing marital failure. The ability to laugh doesn’t mean that he’s the class clown or even a joke-teller. In fact, he may be hopeless at telling jokes. That may be the funniest part about him. Constantly turning to you and saying, “What was that punch line again?” Finishing his jokes just to be met by vacant stares.

But it is important that he likes to laugh, and a key trait to look for is his willingness to laugh at himself. If he takes himself too seriously, look out. Listen carefully to him, not necessarily when he’s on show, but can he tell us a story where someone else is obviously the hero where he comes off looking foolish? Is he willing to reveal pictures to you of the time when he was less handsome, with his teeth protruding and his ears sticking out? Actually, as you think about it, very similar to what he is right now.

When he laughs at the comic misfortunes of others, is he able to laugh without being crude and unkind and cruel? Humor is vital. It’s way up on the top of my list.

Sixthly, and there are only six, a husband should model genuine humility. Simply put, a good husband shouldn’t be stuck on himself. Genuine humility keeps its focus on others. You need to watch and see if the other person can share the joy of a competitor’s success. I wonder, do you remember – it’s hard for me to say do you remember – now the movie is 20 years old. Some of you weren’t born. A staggering thought to be this old. But go get it from the theater and watch “Chariots of Fire,” and in the fictitious scene that is created between – the race between Eric Little and Abrams – a race that never, ever happened, but it was good for the story.

Remember, Eric falls, and then when the Vangelis music kicks in, that spurs him on, and he gets up again …

… and – oh, no, that music wasn’t playing – yeah – anyway, and eventually he runs to victory, and it cuts from the victory to the bleachers, and in the bleachers Abrams sits and out comes his girlfriend very pretty looking and all in white, as I remember, with a large hat, I think. And she sits down beside him, and he’s morose. And she says to him, “Well, you came second.” He said, “I don’t want to come second.” And then he says, “If I can’t win, I won’t run,” to which she replies, “If you don’t run, you can’t win.”

And if you find yourself in the company of somebody who cannot be an understudy, who can’t sit in the second chair, who has always got to be the theme of the story, the joke of the party, the success of the event, I want to suggest to you, girls, that you might want to take a long, hard look at whether you’re in the company of the person with whom you want to spend the rest of your life.

Dennis Rainey

Well, the Proverbs say “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” it’s the beginning of knowledge. I think it’s the beginning point in the Bible of where God starts us. It’s from the fear of God ultimately that we learn to love God.

A second thing that I would encourage a young lady to look for is a man who is not afraid to love. Now, that may sound kind of like a no-brainer, but a lot of young men today are afraid of commitment, and it’s the young lady who is chasing the young man. And what we need today are more young men who are not afraid of being real, of being authentic, and of being committed to a young lady in a relationship. We don’t need any more young men who are hedging their bets. We need men who are not afraid to love.

Third, I think you need to look for a young man who can admit his faults and can admit when he’s made a mistake and admit when he’s hurt you. Ruth Bell Graham made this statement – “A good marriage is the union of two forgivers.” Now, why would she say something like that? Because you’re going to hurt one another a jillion times over a lifetime together, and if you don’t know how to ask for forgiveness and give forgiveness and grace, you’re never going to have a great marriage. Your marriage is going to stall out and be stunted in terms of growth, early on.

Fourth, I would want my daughters to look for a young man who is in control of his passions. We live in an age that has been invaded by pornography, by messages of telling people you can have it all, and you can satisfy yourself, and I would want my daughters to date a young man who is fully in charge of his passion – that he can control his desire for the opposite sex.

Marriage is built upon trust, and if you can’t trust a young man before marriage to control his passions, what makes you think you can trust him after marriage?

Fifth, I’d want my daughters to find out if a young man honors his parents. Now, that may sound old-fashioned, but if it’s good enough for God to put in the Ten Commandments to honor your parents “that your life may be long and it may be well with you,” wouldn’t you want your daughter to select a man whose life has a sense of well being in God’s favor?

There have been those who have said if you want to see how a young man will treat you, see how he treats his mother. And I think I’d want to take it a step further – how does he honor both his mother and his father? Does he speak well of them or is he angry with them? Or does he refuse to speak about them at all? What’s going on between a young man and his parents is very important.

And the last one – and I had six just because Alistair did, and that makes a cheap dozen for the broadcast today. I’d want to know if the young man is in the process of becoming a leader who knows how to serve.

All of the male leadership position in the home – that of being the head of your home, that lofty position that seems to have so much authority and so much responsibility – I think, from a Christian’s perspective, demands self-denial. It demands a servant spirit, and if a young man doesn’t know how to deny himself on behalf of another person and give up his rights and give up his objectives and give up his goals and his dreams on behalf of another, I would question whether he would know how to take my daughter off and create a family over a lifetime.