Taboos in the selection of a mate

1. Do not marry an unbeliever. If you are born again you are a member of the family of God, you are not to consort with darkness. You have no right under any circumstance to ever marry an unbeliever.

2. If you are positive toward Bible doctrine do not marry a believer who is negative toward doctrine. Compatibility cannot exist between a growing believer and a reversionistic believer.

3. Do not marry as a teenager. Marriage demands mental and spiritual maturity as well as capacity for life. There is no such thing as a teenager who has it. Sexual and physical maturity always precedes mental and spiritual maturity, and a teenager may have physical maturity and sexual maturity but definitely not mental or spiritual.

4. Do not marry on a wave of libido. A common failure of teenagers is to assume that libido or sex desire is love. There is a vast difference between libido and love — until you catch up with the right one.

5. Do not marry because of social pressures. For example, an unhappy home life and you want to escape. An escape hatch often becomes a source of slavery. Or panic. You are now 21, all of your friends are married and this is your “last chance”! Or heard instinct: all my friends are getting married, I must get married. Do not marry under social pressure of the type called prestige. That is, don’t marry someone because they are well thought of, is famous in the papers, etc. Do not marry because of a mistake plus a sin. In other words, shotgun weddings are the worst kind of weddings because you rarely get right man or right woman.

6. Do not marry with the idea of solving your problems. A lot of people think that all they have to do is get married and all of their problems are solved. That is naive. People do not get married and live happily ever after, except in cases of right man, right woman, and even then they have a few problems of adjustment from time to time. Marriage merely intensifies problems.

7. Do not marry a status symbol. a) The man is handsome, a physically attractive creature. b) The good personality type — a salesman type. The personality is designed for selling, it is not necessarily designed for marriage. c) The husband is attractive in other ways — he has a deep voice, he has beauty in some physical feature which is important to you: eyes, hair, face, body, muscles, whatever. These things may be all right as a basis for original attraction but girls don’t want to live the rest of their life with a set of muscles. d) The successful type. The smart girls are the ones always looking for the successful type. In this case success may be wealth, a good job, or some status symbol type of success but you marry a status symbol instead of the right man. e) Marry because a man travels, has a good social life. So for the rest of your life you are miserable having a good social life and watching the sea gulls as they attack the ferry at Istanbul! f) The husband represents security because he has wealth and success, but then isn’t it nice to be miserable all of your life in security.

8. Do not marry a man unless you can submit to him body, soul, and spirit. This is the importance of u(potassw in our passage. In marriage the woman should have her divinely-designed right man. Her husband has to be the right man because he is the shepherd and the bishop of her soul — 1 Peter 2:25 cf. 1 Peter 3:1.

9. Do not marry because you love children or dogs or station wagons! In compatibility or desires do not make good marriages. There is no substitute for love.

10. Do not marry a divorced man except under the following circumstances dictated by the Word of God. a) The divorce occurred before salvation, in which case any sin or every sin is blotted out. The believer is never held accountable for sins committed before salvation. Psalm 103:12; Isaiah 42:25; 44:22. b) The man was the innocent party in an adultery divorce — Matthew 5:32. c) His divorce involved desertion of his wife — 1 Corinthians 7:15. d) The man was the victim of a divorce gimmick — Deuteronomy 24:1,2. In this case he has the right of remarriage. e) The man’s former wife has remarried. In other words, if a man is divorced after salvation from a woman and then finds his right woman, and in the meantime the first woman has married, he is free — Deuteronomy 24:3,4.

An extra set of taboos belong to the divorcee

She is also a(i gunaikej, she has been divorced and the following taboos are for divorcees only.

1. If your ex-husband was your right man, do not marry another man — 1 Corinthians 7:11.

2. If your former husband was not the right man, and if you qualify from the five reasons previously given, there is still a right man for you. However, do not jump into marriage again without an intense period of studying the Word of God on a daily basis. GAP it daily for a year, preferably two years, before you ever begin to think in terms of males again.

3. If you have children by your former marriage the situation is more complicated. So remember the five principles related to that problem. a) If the children are still young and must live at home but a parent right man will not accept them, then do not marry him. If there is non-compatibility between your young children and the man you desire to marry, forget the man even if he is your right man, until your children are adults. b) If the children are still young and must live at home and the right man will accept them, and does, then marry him. c) If your children do not respond to the man you propose to marry it does not signify that he is the wrong man, it merely signifies that he is not their father. It means that you have made a mistake in your previous marriage. d) If your children by the previous marriage are adults and no hindrance you can marry your right man without anticipating too many complications. e) If you are one of those mothers completely occupied with adult children do not remarry under any circumstances. You are not a woman, you are a frustrated mother with a guilt complex, and probably emotional problems of a very serious nature. There are some women who never get untangled from their children when their children become adults. A woman’s obsessions with failures and successes of her adult children will destroy not only her second marriage but will destroy most of her relationships in life, unless she finds the small group of people who will lie to her about how great her children are; in which case she is living in a dream world.

4. The short-circuit or jealousy problem. Before you remarry make sure that your intended husband is not jealous or short-circuited by your former marriage. You are not coming to him as an alleged or real virgin, therefore some males might have this problem without a lot of doctrine. You must not marry because you are lonely and want a legal sex partner. If you enter the second marriage having had a great deal of sex experience the chances are that unless you have married a great spiritual giant and supergrace hero the things that you thought you were going to have in marriage will never materialise, because your past has already short-circuited him so that he can neither perform sexually nor take the place of a man in his soul knowing that you are occasionally or many times thinking about other men in your life.

5. As the number of marriages increase the possibility of happiness in marriage decreases. This means that happiness in marriage, even to the right man, is severely tested. However, two supergrace believers as right man and right woman have the best chance to work out a second or third marriage. Doctrine in the soul makes the difference.

Six taboos for widows, in contrast to divorcees

1. If you are an older widow married to the right man now deceased, do not marry again — 1 Corinthians 7:8; 1 Timothy 5:5.

2. If you are an older widow married to the wrong man now deceased you can marry again, but only under very stringent conditions where it is obvious that your right man has now arrived.

3. If you are a younger widow you can remarry, according to 1 Timothy 5:14. This verse indicates that there is still a right man for you if you are a younger widow.

4. Young widows must beware of becoming troublemakers in the congregation. The Bible says that the most troublesome people in any congregation are women who are either divorced or widowed, relatively young, still having strong libido. They become maligners, gossipers, judgers, they are filled with mental attitude sins — horsey females.

5. Young widows are prone to reversionism — 1 Timothy 5:12.

6. Young widows are prone to marry on a wave of libido — 1 Timothy 5:11.

Marriage principles

1. Marriages fail because believers are failures as human beings.

2. Most people try to solve their marital problems by changing partners.

3. Changing partners means divorce, and generally for the wrong reason.

4. You cannot change your partner in marriage and solve anything. You can only change yourself.

5. Counselling is a waste of time. All it does is provide individual attention, stimulate arrogance, and give an excuse to drop someone you can’t stand.

6. You cannot go through marriage walking on crutches, depending on the counselling of someone else.

7. IMPORTANT: Most people approach marital problems from the standpoint of subjectivity. They want to justify themselves.

It never occurs to people that no solution to marital problems will be permanent because they are failures as believers.

Many marriages fail for a lot of different reasons

1. Bad decision in the selection of a mate — getting married for the wrong reason: sex, security, etc.

2. Inability to handle your personal problems. If you cannot handle your personal problems in single status quo you will never handle them in marriage.

3. Taking one’s frustrations out on the other partner in marriage - result of #2. If you can’t handle your personal problems you’re frustrated. And who is the closest person to take out your frustrations on? Your mate!

4. You think you have found a better deal and you want to get rid of the present spouse.

5. No woman can be successful in marriage until she has learned to entertain herself. It is inevitable that the man is not always going to be there and the woman who can’t entertain herself is possessive.

6. No man can be successful in marriage and as the lover of his wife and at the same time live in the arrogance of self-love.

7. People fail in marriage because of that inflated self-image.