Are you thinking about getting married? Then the advice that Pastor Tommy Nelson has for you can be a very valuable thing to pay attention to.

Pastor Nelson was interviewed a while back on the radio broadcast for the ministry of Family Life Today www.familylife.com, aired in with Dennis Rainey. It was a terrific interview —very helpful for those who are considering marriage. Below we’ve glean the five main points Tommy gave in his talk to a group of unmarried students and adults.

This will give you a little “flavor” for what Tommy has to say. But he had to say a whole lot more that we didn’t include in this short article. So at the bottom of the page we have the links set up, for you to click into, which will take you to the web site for the ministry of Family Life Today so you can make the choice to either listen to the rest of the interview (if your computer has sound capability) and/or to read the transcripts from the interview.

We really encourage you to do so because we think you’ll both enjoy listening to (or reading) what Tommy Nelson has to say and will learn at the same time. Here’s a preview of the interview:

I’m going to give you five things. I have watched marriages, I have counseled them, I’ve taught the Song of Solomon for years, I’ve worked in the pastorate now for almost 30 years, and I’ve seen them come, and I’ve seen them go. …If I was an atheist, I’d still give you these same five things, because I’ve watched them take place in couples.

Number one: there has to be a theological unity. You and your future husband, you and your future wife, have to be on the same page on who God is, because He is your reference point for how you act, for how you perceive the universe, for how you perceive man, children, everything is your perception of God. They don’t simply have to be a Christian, but they have to line up on the major particulars.

If you are an evangelical, and you see it in a certain way, and you marry a charismatic, you’re going to have some struggles, but major league, if you marry a non-believer, you do not even interpret the universe the same — marriage or morality.

Number two: there has to be a moral unity, meaning that they can’t merely both be just Christians. They both must be under the auspices of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. If you have a man that takes his dictum’s from his flesh — even though he can recite the Gospel and give the time of his testimony, we’ve got a problem. There has to be a moral unity, a North Star that doesn’t move.

Women, some men are men can never be husbands until they have been brides, until they have been the bride of Christ, they can’t be your husband or any woman’s husband. Because the qualities that you want in a man are going to be qualities of love, kindness, tenderness, gentleness, and honesty — those are qualities that are in God visited upon men.

Men, watch that girl. If that girl has a problem with her authority of her parents, if she has a problem with her teachers, why do you think you will put [a wedding ring] on, and she will look to you and say, “My head and my sovereign.” Do you really think that will happen? Don’t you do it!

There are some women who can never, ever be married because of that very thing. Whenever you get a man, whenever you get a woman that is resistant to Genesis, chapter 1, who God is, you can’t have Genesis, chapter 2 — marriage. First, Adam sees God; first, Eve sees God; then they see each other.

Number three: there has to be a ministerial unity. You have to be going approximately the same direction. If I’ve got this girl over here — and I’ve seen it happen — this committed Christian woman that loves the Lord, loves His Word, loves to see people come to faith, and she’s attracted to this guy who simply wants to make a million before he’s 30. They’re pulling two different directions. She has heavenly values; he has temporal physical values. We’re going to have a division in that home.

Number four: get someone that is on the same page as you; someone that socially you could hold hands with, and you could go with together in things. I’m a great believer in social compatibility. If you’re a guy that loves to work out and to run, and this woman can’t stand to sweat, we may have a problem right here. If you’re a woman that loves to read, this guy can’t stand reading, we may have a problem. Now, do opposites attract? Yes, they do. You know what the problem with that is, is that opposites attract.

And what will drive you crazy about your mate are the things that attracted you to them at the outset, and you have been careful of that. I’ll make you a statement — to the degree that you and your future mate are socially opposite, you had better balance it out with an equal amount of flexibility and holiness.

Couples that are real, real close in everything that they like, if they don’t watch it, they can get bored in life because it’s easy just to go together. But if you’re really at a disparity, that’s okay.

But if you’ve got 30 pounds of difference, there had better be 30 pounds of flexibility. If you’ve got 100 pounds of difference with you and your mate, there had better be 100 pounds of holiness and godliness with each other. You’ve got to be able to enjoy the same things.

Number five: there needs to be legitimate passion. It had better be there. I’m believer in this. When I say to a couple, “Do you love the Lord?” “Yeah.” “Are you walking with God? Are you all heading to do great things?” “Yes.” “Tell me about your physical purity. Are you all staying pure?” That guy says to me, “We have no real temptation.” I say, “We’ve got a problem.”

You don’t just marry your best friend. There is an intimacy, a passion, an excitement that has to be there. Maybe you can turn on the switch at the altar, I doubt it. There had better be some sort of passion, because where there isn’t, that gets really old really quick. See, the marriage bed is the follow-through on all of the spiritual, emotional, social love that you have.

All of the delight that you feel in that woman that has given herself and loved you, the delight of it is shown in a physical expression on the marital bed. When a woman has such appreciation for that man who goes out in that pit and works and struggles, the follow-through is in the marital bed, and when that isn’t there, there is a problem.

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The above script was just a portion of the advice that Pastor Tommy Nelson had to give, which comes from a 2-part radio broadcast offered through the ministry of Family Life Today.

Currently they are re-constructing the web site for the ministry of Family Life Today so they don’t have as many options open to you as they have and will in the future. In the meantime, we will copy below the transcript they previously made available for you to read. When they have the web site completed, we will provide links to that which they offer.

Meanwhile, below is a copy of the transcripts for the 2-part radio program:

Five Guidelines for a Successful Marriage
Part 1 of 2: Essentials Broadcast Date: 09/07/06
This is a condensed version of the FamilyLife Today Transcript

Bob: If you’re single, and you’ve been thinking about getting married to a special someone, there are some non-negotiables you need to consider.

This is FamilyLife Today for September 7th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I’m Bob Lepine. What are some of the other non-negotiables when you’re thinking about getting married? If you’re single, or if you know someone who is, and if you’ve ever thought, “Gee, I wonder if I’ll get married,” “I wonder what it takes to make a marriage work?” Well, today and tomorrow we’ve got a guy who has got the answers for you to that question.

Dennis: A straight-shooter. He is a great friend of this ministry. His name is Tommy Nelson. He’s the senior pastor at Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas.

Bob: I’ve been listening to his tapes on Ecclesiastes. He taught through the book of Ecclesiastes, and I was teaching through it in Sunday school and so I was listening to his tapes as part of my study to get ready for my Sunday school class, and he just tells it like it is. He just doesn’t mince words. He’s just an ol’ Texas boy from Waco, Texas, who just kind of says it plain and moves on.

Dennis: He does, and he’s a man after my own heart. He had an opportunity to speak to a number of collegians, over 2,000, and, Bob, if I was given the same shot to speak at 2,000 collegians, I would pick the same topic — how do you decide who you marry? Five guidelines for a successful marriage. And over the next couple of days, you’re going to get a chance to listen in to this straight shooter from Texas.

Dennis: I’m going to tell you something — all singles are interested in this, and even those who are outside the church and may not have a relationship with Christ, well, this is one way we can kind of ease them toward God and His plan for their lives. Let’s listen to Tommy Nelson.

Tommy: [from audiotape]. Marriage — being loved, romance, passion, affection. There’s not a one of you here that hasn’t thought of it, hasn’t dreamed about it, planned about it, yea, schemed about it. Many of us have been hurt, and those relationships, dating, whatever, that lead up to it, it’s the fireplace of life. You know, a home is a nice place to be, the fireplace is the place of warmth, the place of tenderness, the place of affection take place around that fireplace. And life, marriage, the romance, the passion of marriage, that’s the spice, that’s the beauty of living.

God is trinity — Father, Son, Holy Spirit. He has never been alone. He has eternally been communicable. That’s why the idea of a monotheistic deity that is not Trinity as in Allah, that will leave you with a dictatorship, a god who is sovereign, infinite, eternal, but you’re fuzzy on the tenderness and what we’d call the — those mannish qualities that He — or eternally in God that He visits on us in the image of God in man — of tenderness and love and communication and the desire to be loved.

Those are the marvelous ideas of God — God is Trinity. Rightly did Francis Shaeffer say that if the Bible didn’t teach Trinity, he would still have been an agnostic because you wouldn’t have had a reference point for the beauties of God, which are found in the tri-unity of His Person.

And He makes us in His image, and we long to love, and we long to be loved from the moment that we are born, we are reaching outward, we are not natural hermits. We long for someone to reach out and touch us. It is not good for that man to be alone, and the most intimate of all relationships you can have are in the differences of a man and a woman that mesh in all ways. It is marvelous that two become one flesh.

But it follows that anything that is that intimate is also something that can be the most deadly, painful, frightening relationship in your entire existence. As a matter of fact, you can implode a society by the implosion of a marriage and of a home. Breakups — aren’t those a joy? To be going with somebody and then to be told, “You’re not the person. I don’t want it to continue.” That is painful. Being done wrong, being defrauded, divorce, abuse, alienation within marriage — that’s a heartbreaking thing, and it filters down to the kids.

Now, marriage is a deadly, horrific privilege that God gives us. It can be the charm of your life, or it can be the bane of your entire existence. And, students, when your marriage is in trouble, you don’t cordon it off into a little area, which means it doesn’t matter that if you have a high grade point, if you have a great job, if you make great money, if you’ve got great talents, if you’re marvelously successful in what you do, when you come into a home that is rent and is in pain, I mean, it’s red dye, it floods your entire existence.

I want to ask you a question, and I want you to be honest. How many of you desperately want to have a marriage that is better than your parents? Would you raise your hand – if you want a marriage better than your parents’? That’s pretty good. How many of you, if your marriage is no better than your parents’ it was good enough that if your marriage is no better than your parents’ you will be wonderfully satisfied, it it’s only as good as your parents’. Well, that’s pretty good.

I’m going to give you five things. I have watched marriages, I have counseled them, I’ve taught the Song of Solomon for years, I’ve worked in the pastorate now for almost 30 years, and I’ve seen them come, and I’ve seen them go, and I have a marriage that is more good than bad, all right? Which is a great compliment to a marriage. I’ve got a wonderful union with a wonderful woman. I’m going to give you five things. When these are resident in you, you’re going to have a good marriage.

I’m going to give you five things that have to take place between you and your future husband, you and your future wife. You have to be alerted to them right now, all right? I don’t want to be dogmatic on this, but I’m the only one right. [Laughter]

Because I have counseled the heartache that arises from the lack thereof, I don’t give these to you merely because of a priori reasoning from the Bible; I give them to you out of a posteriori observation of pain. If I was an atheist, I’d still give you these same five things, because I’ve watched them take place in couples.

Number one, there has to be a theological unity. You and your future husband, you and your future wife, have to be on the same page on who God is, because He is your reference point for how you act, for how you perceive the universe, for how you perceive man, children, everything is your perception of God. They don’t simply have to be a Christian, but they have to line up on the major particulars. If you are an evangelical, and you see it in a certain way, and you marry a charismatic, you’re going to have some struggles, but major league, if you marry a non-believer, you do not even interpret the universe the same — marriage or morality.

In Genesis 24, that’s one of the longest chapters in the Book of Genesis, and it’s finding a mate for Isaac, and when Abraham sends out Eliazar, his servant, he says, “You swear to me, by God, you will not take a Canaanite woman. You’ll go back to that little pocket of monotheism. That woman has to believe in God and be willing to follow Him.”

Now, God provided a woman that was beautiful of form and face, which is usually at the top of a man’s prayer list, but she better be someone that is on the same page theologically as to who God is, because that is the fountain, the matrix, out of which you interpret the universe, man, male, female, kids, marriage, and morality.

Am I right? That’s why in Exodus 34, Deuteronomy 7, it is part of the covenant of God with Israel. You do not take an unbeliever. That’s why Ezra and Nehemiah, at the end of the Old Testament canon had to do mass putting away of pagan wives, because Israel fell into it.

As a matter of fact, the taking of a pagan mate is considered, Malachi, chapter 2, and “act of,” and I quote, “treachery.” So the Apostle Paul says be married to whomever you wish only in the Lord. They’re on the same page.

Now, can a Christian student do this? Listen — girls get nervous. I can’t tell you how many girls I’ve seen that hit into their mid-20s and feel their biological clock running, their emotional needs reaching out, and the guy isn’t there, and here comes a non-Christian, and a girl simply says, “I’ve got to take what I can get,” and will drop her standards. Christian men get antsy.

Now, they can still reproduce into their 60s, they’re not worried about being fathers, but they’ve got this sex drive that’s beating within them and so here comes that girl, and she looks good, she feels good, don’t think that a man can’t become like Ulysses approaching the sirens’ island over here and not have to strap himself to the mast. We can do strange injurious things.

There’s not a one of you here that, under the heat of being young and the longing for marriage can set aside what you know to be true and marry a non-believer. I can give you names, events, and dates where I’ve seen it happen.

Being single and being alone is a struggle. I was married at 24. I knew what it was to be out of college longing for a wife and not to have one. It’s tough to be single, to be lonely. I’ll tell you what’s tougher is to be married and be lonely. To be lonely in a king-size bed with a person there that you cannot relate to in the major issues. When you are single, there is light at the end of your tunnel but it’s the providence and the timing of God.

“There is a time and procedure for every delight,” Solomon said, “when a man’s trouble is heavy upon him.” Times will get better; you just keep trusting. But when you are in a king-size bed with a mate you can’t relate to, now you are into some major-league troubles on beseeching God to change, at the very heart level, this person.

Number two — there has to be a moral unity, meaning that they can’t merely both be Christians. They both must be under the auspices of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. If you have a man that takes his dictum’s from his flesh — even though he can recite the Gospel and give the time of his testimony, we’ve got a problem. There has to be a moral unity, a North Star that doesn’t move. My wife has changed in her appearance, she has changed in a lot of things since we were married in 1974, but my wife has not changed, she has only grown in her relationship to God.

Girls, my wife and I made a vow that we’d never spend a day out of the Bible before we got married, because we knew that what attracted us to us was character, and that character was because of the person of God and His Word. And if we got away from Him, we lost essentially what attracted us.

Women, some men are men can never be husbands until they have been brides, until they have been the bride of Christ, they can’t be your husband or any woman’s husband. Because the qualities that you want in a man are going to be qualities of love, kindness, tenderness, gentleness, honesty — those are qualities that are in God visited upon men. So if that man is superficial with God, you have no guarantee that that man is going to maintain those qualities.

And there are some men who can simply never, ever be married. They can have dogs and cats, but they can’t have a human in that house with them because when a man isn’t submitted to the Lordship of Christ, he will become irresponsible or abusive, and both of those will drive you crazy. And so you check that man for his faithfulness in church, his faithfulness in the Bible, his faithfulness to his mother and his father, his commitment to moral purity. Look for those things in him, because that’s the North Star that gives you a reasonable assurance of his character. That’s the fountain out of which will grow your affection is the continuity of that character.

Men, watch that girl. If that girl has a problem with her authority of her parents, if she has a problem with her teachers, why do you think you will put one of these on, and she will look to you and say, “My head and my sovereign.” Do you really think that will happen? Don’t you do it. There are some women who can never, ever be married because of that very thing. And whenever you get a man, whenever you get a woman that is resistant to Genesis, chapter 1, who God is, you can’t have Genesis, chapter 2 — marriage. First, Adam sees God; first, Eve sees God; then they see each other — amen?

Now, if they don’t have this, they’re still going to have the longing to be married, and this is what a carnal, fleshly kind of person must do. They must create an illusion of spiritually or they must create a diversion. The illusion means that you know the songs, you attend the functions, but in the quiet of the home, you show who you are. Diversion means that you take the glance away from the heart to the car, the clothes, and all the paraphernalia. Can human beings be diverted by things like that? They can be.

Number three – there has to be a ministerial unity. You have to be going approximately the same direction. If I’ve got this girl over here — and I’ve seen it happen — this committed Christian woman that loves the Lord, loves His Word, loves to see people come to faith, and she’s attracted to this guy who simply wants to make a million before he’s 30. They’re pulling two different directions. She has heavenly values; he has temporal physical values. We’re going to have a division in that home.

Let me tell you where I met my wife and I share some of this in the Song of Solomon conference. It was at a Campus Crusade. That’s where I was discipled in college, and I remember seeing her as the girl that was the go-to girl of Campus Crusade. When anything needed to be done, they went to my wife-to-be.

I remember sitting at conferences and watching her taking — I can still see her sitting at the back taking notes. My wife was always at the back. She was always serving. That’s what made me fall in love with her. This woman wanted to serve God. I wanted to serve God. We just kind of came together running the same direction, and there was love, there was passion, but we have helped each other.

She has two ministries that she runs. She takes the wives of international students. North Texas University has 2,000 international students. Their wives, a lot of times, are the most lonely of people because they’re out of step in this foreign culture. My wife says, “You come to me, and I’ll show you how to keep a checkbook, how to shop at Tom Thumb. I’ll show you how to drive without killing people,” if you know any international students.

She’ll show them how to drive, she’ll show them how to shop, she’ll show them how to take care of their children, and as she goes along, the basis by which she teaches them is, guess what? The Bible. And so every Thursday morning my home was displaced, because my wife had 30 international women in there doing ministry. Now, that’s the kind of woman that I married — theological, moral, and ministerial unity.

Bob: We’ve been listening to the pastor of Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas. Tommy Nelson talking about how to build a successful marriage. There are some married folks listening to this and going, “I wish I’d heard some of this before I got married because it would have helped at least just to know on the front end — that maybe we were out of sync in some of these areas.” If you find you’re out of sync in some of these areas, it doesn’t mean you quit and find someone else.

It just means that you may have some adjustments you’ve got to make that are a little harder than other people have to make.

Dennis: Bob, have you ever been to a vacation area where you’ve seen tandem bicycles.

Bob: Yeah, the bicycle built for two, sure.

Dennis: There you go, you have usually the guy in the front who is steering and directing and having to pull more on the pedals, and his wife behind him.

Bob: She’s helping to keep the thing going as well.

Dennis: That’s right, and she’s providing balance, and they’re talking, and they’re having fun as they’re going in the same direction. It wasn’t designed for two people to go in two different directions. One person wasn’t meant to break off and take a right-hand fork.

Bob: Take the mountain route while the other one takes the low road, right?

Dennis: Yeah, that’s where you run into trouble, and so that’s why this advice that Tommy Nelson is giving young people is so important. Spiritually speaking, it is so important that a couple, as they begin their marriage relationship, have theological agreement, moral agreement, and a spiritual direction in terms of their focus and their ministry direction together as a couple.

Bob: And there are other non-negotiables that Tommy talks about in this message, and tomorrow we’re going to hear Part 2 of his message on the five guidelines for a successful marriage. Of course, Tommy knows something about relationships, he’s been teaching from the book, the Song of Solomon for years.

We have featured some of those messages on FamilyLife Today, and anytime we have listeners have contacted us and said, “How can I get a copy of those CDs,” we have them in our FamilyLife Resource Center. Tommy originally taught the material from the Song of Solomon to a singles Bible study in the Dallas area, in the Metroplex, and there were a couple of thousand singles who showed up to hear him teach through this material.

We’ve got audio samples on our website from the Song of Solomon messages, so if our listeners want to hear a portion of Tommy’s teaching from that series, they can go to FamilyLife.com, and any of our listeners who are interested in getting the six-CD set from the Song of Solomon, we’ll be happy to send along at no additional cost the audio we’ve been listening to this week on the 5 Guidelines for a Successful Marriage, and Family Life’s “Preparing for Marriage” workbook, which is designed for couples who are moving in the direction of marriage. It’s a pre-marriage workbook for a young man and woman to go through together, either with a mentor couple or on their own.

Again, get more information about all of these resources on our website at FamilyLife.com. Click the red “Go” button you see right in the center of the screen, and that will take you to the page where you’ll find more information about the resources that are available from us here at FamilyLife. Or call 1-800-FLTODAY. That’s 1-800-F-as-in-family, L-as-in-life, and then the word TODAY, and someone can let you know how you can have these resources sent out to you.

Tomorrow Tommy Nelson is back with more non-negotiables as you think about the person you might marry. I hope you can be here for Part 2 of this message tomorrow.

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Unity Broadcast Date: 09/08/06 -
This is a FamilyLife Today Transcript

Bob: If you’re thinking about marriage, is there that spark, the desire, for passion? That can be dangerous for singles. But getting married without it can be dangerous as well.

This is FamilyLife Today for September 8th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I’m Bob Lepine. Passion in the marriage is a non-negotiable. I’ve talked to singles who have put their checklist together, you know what I’m talking about – what they’re looking for from a potential partner, whether it’s a male or a female, it’s all of the things that you hoped the other person will be.

Dennis: I actually saw one single man’s bathroom completely wallpapered with his checklist.

Bob: He had quite a list?

Dennis: It was a long list.

Bob: I find that as singles get older, either the list gets longer, or it gets a whole lot shorter, you know? I’m just looking for somebody with a pulse, is he breathing at a regular point. Yesterday and today we are listening to a message that deals with an appropriate checklist; the kinds of issues you ought to be considering if you’re single, and you’re looking around and asking yourself, “Is this someone I could spend the rest of my life with?”

Dennis: That’s right and, Bob, frankly, today in this culture, it’s sad that we have to feature radio programs to do what families ought to be doing for their sons and daughters as they grow up into their single years. And I would just say to a mom and a dad who are raising a junior high, high school, or a college-age son or daughter, the topics that Tommy Nelson is talking about, both on yesterday’s broadcast and today, are very important for you to consider as you equip the next generation to make this choice of selecting a life mate.

Bob: Tommy Nelson is the pastor at Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas. He’s written a book called “The Book of Romance,” another book called “The Problem of Life with God,” that’s based on Ecclesiastes, and not long ago he spoke to students at Cedarville College and talked about the five things that make up a successful marriage.

And yesterday he talked about the need for couples to be in theological agreement. He also talked about the need for them to have moral agreement, and he talked about the need for them to both have a ministry mindset. And today he’s going to talk about two additional areas of compatibility. This is just fatherly advice to young men and young women about things you ought to consider long and hard before you say “I do.”

Tommy: [from audiotape]. If I was your father, and I wanted to fix up your future, I’d look for, obviously, a believer that loved the Lord, a girl that was heading where you were heading, but do you know what I’d look for, guys, if you were a young man that loved opera, I wouldn’t find necessarily a girl that loved camping, all right? I’d get someone that was on the same page as you; someone that socially you could hold hands, and you could go together in things. I’m a great believer in social compatibility.

If you’re a guy that loves to work out and to run, and this woman can’t stand to sweat, we may have a problem right here. If you’re a woman that loves to read, this guy can’t stand reading, we may have a problem. Now, do opposites attract? Yes, they do. You know what the problem with that is, is that opposites attract. [laughter]

And what will drive you crazy about your mate are the things that attracted you to them at the outset, and you have been careful of that. I’ll make you a statement – to the degree that you and your future mate are socially opposite, you had better balance it out with an equal amount of flexibility and holiness. Couples that are real, real close in everything that they like, if they don’t watch it, they can get bored in life because it’s easy just to go together. But if you’re really at a disparity, that’s okay. But if you’ve got 30 pounds of difference, there had better be 30 pounds of flexibility. If you’ve got 100 pounds of difference with you and your mate, there had better be 100 pounds of holiness and godliness with each other. You’ve got to be able to enjoy the same things.

I did a wedding one time of the number-one draft choice in all the United States in professional baseball. He married Miss Texas, and she was — still is — beautiful. And this girl loved to dress up, she loved to go out, she loved evening gowns, she loved long, extended evenings at elegant restaurants enjoying good company. This guy, when baseball season was over, he had a Ram pickup with a couple of guns, decoys, and he had him a knife so he could field dress whatever he ran over or shot. [laughter]

And eat it on the side of the road. [laughter]

This guy was rustic. He also happened to be handsome, and she was beautiful, and they got attracted — both were Christians, and they were attracted to each other. Well, the season would end, and he would do what he had always done. He said, “Honey, we’re heading to the woods.” “I don’t think I will.” “Well, I am.” Well, I got a phone call, and it go so problematic that she did the last thing that a woman will do sometimes to get a husband’s attention — she fired the flare.

She said, “I’m outta here.” I don’t think she meant to do it, but that’s the only way she could get this kid that all of his life he had done what pleased him. Well, all of a sudden, your marriage is a wake-up call, and you have to do, 1 Corinthians 7, what pleases your mate.

See, if you’ve got a selfish problem as a single, it’s like one hand clapping — you never find out. All of a sudden, you get married, and we’ve got some problems here. Life gets real complicated. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 7, exhorted single people to stay — he exhorted single people to stay single, and his argument was when you’re married, “such will have trouble in this world.” You know what the Greek word “trouble” is? Trouble. And that’s what you’re going to have when you get married, you now have somebody to bounce your fleshliness off of, and you have trouble, and you have to be willing to live with that, to work through that. So there has to be some sort of compatibility.

Number five — there needs to be legitimate passion. It had better be there. I’m believer in this. When I say to a couple, “Do you love the Lord?” “Yeah.” “Are you walking with God? Are you all heading to do great things?” “Yes.” “Tell me about your physical purity. Are you all staying pure?” That guy says to me, “We have no real temptation.” I say, “We’ve got a problem.” [laughter]

You don’t just marry your best friend. There is an intimacy, a passion, an excitement that has to be there. Maybe you can turn on the switch at the altar, I doubt it. There had better be some sort of passion, because where there isn’t, that gets really old really quick. See, the marriage bed is the follow-through on all of the spiritual, emotional, social love that you have. All of the delight that you feel in that woman that has given herself and loved you, the delight of it is shown in a physical expression on the marital bed. When a woman has such appreciation for that man who goes out in that pit and works and struggles, the follow-through is in the marital bed, and when that isn’t there, there is a problem.

In Song of Solomon they’re not married until Chapter 4. There are things said in Chapter 2 and in Chapter 3 by this single woman that are exciting, indeed. She longs for him. That has to be there.

Incidentally, let me throw a little note in here — when these things aren’t there, when you have a couple that is getting married simply on shallow reasons and the impulse of just longing to be — this primitive desire that we have to be married, you’re going to start running into problems in communication, problems in keeping the excitement going. What happens a lot of times is a couple will go to this kind of panacea, there’s a salve that you can rub on a problem relationship, and it will give it immediate relief for about a 24-hour period. It’s called premarital sex.

In the midst of premarital sex, the worst of couples feels like it’s a great relationship, and that’s one of the great problems with premarital sex. It’s not just that it’s sin, but it creates a deception, and it retards the real development of the deeper things. The reason that a couple falls into premarital sex a lot of times is just the pure novelty of eroticism, and on a scale of sexuality, on a 1 to 10, premarital sex that occurs in spontaneity, in combustion, just goes off in an apartment on a eroticism scale of 1 to 10, that’s about a 12. And you can’t maintain that in marriage.

When you get married, it’s not going to be this explosive kind of thing that takes off. Oh, every once in a while things happen, but generally it’s going to be the expression of character, it’s going to come out of this fountain of character. Now, when you get into premarital sex, you just go around the character. What happens, though, when you get into marriage, is that premarital stuff doesn’t happen like it used to, and now sex takes place at the end of the day when the man comes in, he’s working, the woman is caring for that home, she’s doing her deal, they put those kids down, they shower up, brush your teeth, clean up, psych yourself up — “all right, time for sex, here we go.” [laughter] It’s an act of the will. You say, “You’re kidding.” Trust me. [laughter]

Trust me. If that fountain is not there, of the fear of God, love, servanthood, kindness, courtesy, helping each other, taking out the trash — if all of those expressions of piety, theology, and Christ-likeness aren’t there, sex ain’t gonna happen. It won’t. You’re going to go frigid. And that’s why couples that get into premarital sex create a deception, they retard the building of what it takes to really develop a relationship, and they build that thing, they cross that bridge on a bridge of balsa. It’s on Styrofoam. They get into marriage, the fountain of piety isn’t there, and now it just becomes frustration, manipulation, the attempt to kick in the eroticism, and it doesn’t work, and you end up just busting it up.

Tony Evans says what was a great deal becomes an ordeal goes to a new deal, and you just try a new mate and get out of it. So if I was just an atheist, just on the counseling that I’ve done, I would say “Beware premarital sex.”

I’ll go so far as to seeing some of the bad marriages that I have seen, I can ask the question, “Did you all fall into premarital sex?” Usually, the answer is yes, and I tell them, “Your relationship probably wouldn’t have endured to the altar if you hadn’t had premarital sex. You just kept spraying lighter fluid on this thing.” But the real coals and embers weren’t there.

I want to share one other thing here — the phenomena of a premarital relationship, the phenomena of a date — there’s a lot of confusion, a lot of talk right now on dating.

Listen, and let me give you, like Paul says, “One who, by the grace of God is trustworthy,” that’s seen this. A date is a time of enjoyment and of pure recreation of people of the opposite sex at a common event. That’s all that a date is. It’s responsible people enjoying a common event. There is no escalation, there is no continuation, there are no expectations that you put on it; everybody kind of dogs dating.

I’ll be honest with you — you know, if it came down to me hanging out with Michael and Darrell, I’d rather hang out with Sally, you know what I’m saying? I just really enjoyed the presence of just neat girls, and the opposite way of men and women. And I had 3 brothers; I had no sisters. I have two sons; I have no daughter. I’ve got a dog named Sammy and Buddy, all right? I had no women in my life. But I just really enjoyed the presence of — just — the delight of a time with a woman. And that’s no problem, okay?

Whenever that noun, a “date,” becomes a process — “dating” — you’re continually seeing the same person over and over and over. When that happens, escalation, expectations, and temptation are going to happen, that’s a fact, and that’s okay for the heat to build. But when you start seeing the same person over and over, what you’re getting into is preparation for courtship.

The problem we have in our culture is we don’t have a fearfulness of dating. Call it what you want — “going steady” — when the same people keep seeing each other, it’s going to escalate, there’s going to be expectations, there’s going to be temptations, and that’s okay if you have a man and a woman that are theologically, morally, philosophically solid.

If that man, financially, can take on where dating is going to go into courtship, it’s going to go into marriage, if that man is in place, if you have two people who are solid, who are sound, that process that leads into courtship that goes to the altar, that’s okay. But if you don’t, if you’re not there socially, you’re going to have to put off that wedding for years and years, and that becomes a frustration and a temptation.

And if you’re not there spiritually, then there are temptations that will come by that continual kind of relationship. Immature people in the continual same social context are — I mean — it’s striking matches knee deep in kerosene. There are problems that will come. Dating is a thing all of you are going to do with the same person, but it demands a great deal of trepidation.

Bob: That is Tommy Nelson, the pastor at Denton Bible Church. He was speaking to college students at Cedarville University about what to look for and what to be. If you want to be a married person someday, and I’ll tell you, there had to be a wake-up call in that chapel that day for a lot of those college students who kind of thought, “Okay, maybe I’ve been approaching this thing a little too casually. Maybe I need to approach it with a little more earnest, not only who I’m looking for but who I am, whether I’m the right kind of person to even be looking in the first place.”

Dennis: And, Bob, I think that’s extremely important. When a single person is in the process of becoming God’s man and God’s woman, and they do have what Tommy was talking about, that edge to their lives, it’s so much easier to balance that tandem bicycle when it’s moving, and it’s moving in a direction. And spiritually speaking, I think what God wants from all of us, is He wants us moving toward Him and moving in the direction of what His mission is for our lives.

Bob: That’s back to what Tommy said in this message — “If you’re single, and you want to know who to marry, run as hard and as fast toward Jesus as you can and if, out of the corner of your eye, you see somebody running in the same direction, take a second look.”

Dennis: And, Bob, you’ve hit on something there that a single person can’t begin to appreciate unless they experience it, and that’s why they need to take our word for it here. You want to be in the process of becoming God’s man and God’s woman, totally sold out to Jesus Christ, not having to battle over the issue of whose you are. Are you Jesus Christ’s bond slave? Is He your Master? Have you written over the title deed of your life to Him?

Once those issues have been settled, I’m telling you, the other issues that come your way are going to be much easier to deal with if you’ve settled the issue of who is going to be your Lord and your Master.

Bob: Tommy addresses that same issue in the series that he’s done on the Song of Solomon, which he actually did first for a group of singles, several thousand singles in the Dallas area, and we’ve featured portions of those messages on FamilyLife Today in past years, and listeners have called us to say, “How can we get copies of those CDs?” But, you’re right, that is at the center of what is going to make a marriage go the distance. That shared commitment to the Lordship of Christ in your life, in your relationship, in your marriage.

I think there are a lot of couples who recognize that’s central, but what they don’t recognize is that there are other issues that kind of spin off of that that have to be acknowledged as well. At our Weekend to Remember conference we talk about those issues — communication and sexual intimacy and resolving conflict and our responsibilities as husbands, our responsibilities as wives.

If you want more information about the upcoming Weekend to Remember conferences, go to our website at FamilyLife.com. There’s information available there. There’s also information about the CD series on the Song of Solomon by Tommy Nelson which, as I mentioned, we featured here on FamilyLife Today in the past, and many of you have requested those CDs. They are available from us here at FamilyLife.

In fact, if you call to get the six-CD series on the Song of Solomon, we’ll be happy to add at no additional cost the CD of the message we’ve been hearing this week from Tommy on the Five Guidelines for a Successful Marriage, and we’ll include a copy of our “Preparing for Marriage” workbook so that those of you who are single and thinking about marriage and the future will have a workbook you can go through together with your fiancé or have another couple take you through as a part of your pre-marriage preparation.

Get all the details about these resources when you go to our website, www.familylife.com.