Dating to Find Out if you are Compatible?

First, I stand strongly against dating as a method to find someone to marry. In my view, Christians should never date with the idea that they want to find out who they are compatible with. This is the way the world does it, and the fruit is many broken hearts.

So you may be thinking if dating is out how does a Christian brother go about finding a wife? First a brother should seek the Lord on whether they are ready for marriage. If so, they should continue to seek the Lord whether they should get married now or if God wants them to stay single for some reason. To be marriage material, they need to be living a victorious (sin-free) saved life, be able to support a family with their current income, and be responsible enough to be able to raise a family.

After they are clear that they are ready for marriage, and have God’s go ahead to be married, they should look to God to lead them to find a godly partner (Pro 3:5).

There are a number of different ways for the brother to ask the sister to pray regarding the Lord’s will for their life. The following is what I consider one of the better ways:

A brother may know of a sister who is a shining example of godliness in the congregation and he feels like she would make a good wife. He would find out her spiritual status from the leading minster in the congregation. If she is not doing well in her soul, or is having problems with sin (2Cor 6:14), she should not even be a consideration – regardless what her family name is, how attractive he finds her, or how much money she has.

If the sister is doing well, the brother should pray through in order to get the mind of the Lord. Next, he should ask the leading minister to approach her to see if she would consider praying to seek the Lord’s will as to whether they should be married. Then, the minister would contact her parents to ask how their daughter is doing spiritually and see if they would have any objections to him approaching her with the idea of praying about marrying the brother who is expressing interest in her.

If the parents don’t have any objections, the minister would talk to the sister. If she is open to that, the brother would go to her and ask her to pray whether it would be the Lord’s will for them to be married. If she gets clarity in her mind that it is the Lord’s will, they should set a date within three months to be married. Long engagements give the devil more time to harass the engaged couple and cause them to lose spiritual ground.

While the sister is praying about whether it is the Lord’s will for her to marry the brother, no one in the congregation should know this is going on. If she decides to decline, it should be kept between the brother, the sister, the minister, and parents, so that it will not become a source of embarrassment to the brother or gossip in the congregation.

When they get engaged to be married, they should spend limited time with each other and certainly never be alone together. There will be lots of time to talk about the things that they want to know about each other after they get married. What they need to do during their time of engagement is spend extra time with the Lord in prayer and reading the scriptures, and make sure they keep complete victory over their flesh and their mind. They both need to be very careful to make sure that they don’t lose ground during their engagement.

They should make a commitment to have no physical contact whatsoever during the engagement (1Cor 7:1). If a couple never hold hands, they will not have to deal with the flesh’s pleas for more contact. If the flesh is given an inch, it will plea for a mile. Once a week would be fine to get together and go somewhere with another spiritual couple and do things together.