4 Things Christian Marriage Requires of Us Beyond Love

“Are you called to marry this person?” I ask whenever I counsel premarital couples. After their eyebrows return to their resting place, they usually stammer, “Uh, yes. I think so.” You think so? Marriage is a commitment, but it is also a calling. Not everyone is called to be married. I’m sure your mind is filling up with examples from your extended family who fit the bill. 

In their book and premarital program Called Together, Steve and Mary Prokopchak explain that premarital counseling “helps to build a couple’s faith, or it will reveal to the couple that they are, in fact, not called together.” More Christians need to stop asking if their future spouse is “the one for me” and start asking if their future spouse is “the one I am called to be with.” When you know that the Lord has called you together with your spouse, arguments, different values, and even tragedies won’t tear you apart. This is why marriage must be a communal decision. Far too many lovestruck twenty-somethings (and fifty-somethings, for that matter) marry without seeking honest input from their family, pastors, and friends. When you’re called to marry a person, your faith community will know it, too. 

Now we’re cooking. We have our essential ingredients blended together to make a beautiful marriage: connection, communication, commitment, and calling. Colossians 3:14 sums it up like this, And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. 

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