We have already covered the subject of choosing a mate. That word was for the young brothers and sisters. However, not everyone among us is young. In the future some new believers among us will be married ones. The Bible has clear teachings for those who are married. Some portions of the Word contain teachings for husbands, and some portions contain teachings for wives. Before a person is married, he should do his best to choose someone with the fewest number of weaknesses. However, after a person is married, he or she has to learn to behave in a way that avoids causing problems to the family or the church.
The first thing a married person must realize is that it is a serious matter to be a husband or a wife. Everyone needs a certain amount of preparation before taking a job. For example, a doctor needs five, six, or seven years of training before he can practice medicine. A teacher has to spend a few years in a teaching college before starting to teach. An engineer also needs to spend four years in the university before launching his career. Even a nurse needs to study for three years in preparation for her career. But the interesting thing is that no one spends a day learning how to be a husband or a wife. It is no wonder that there are so many bad husbands and wives. They have never sat down to consider how to be a proper husband or a proper wife. I would be very hesitant and uneasy about asking someone to treat my illness if he had never studied medicine. Likewise, I would be very hesitant and uneasy about using a nurse who had never studied nursing before. I would be fearful and uneasy about hiring a teacher who had never been trained. If I wanted to build a house, I would only want to hire a civil engineer. I would worry and be afraid if he were not a trained civil engineer. Similarly, I have doubts about those who have become husbands or wives without ever being trained.
Our parents never taught us to be husbands or wives. When we grow up, we find a job. When we have the ability to support a family, we find a partner and get married. Please remember that many difficulties arise between the husband and the wife because neither has undergone any preparation. When two persons are drawn into a marriage unprepared and suddenly find themselves husband and wife, how can they expect anything but problems for the family? Everything we do with our life requires training; we dare not jump into anything rashly. We prepare for our work and try to learn something about it before we plunge into it.
We must see that no job is more difficult than the job of being a husband or a wife. All jobs have fixed working hours. This is the only job that takes up all twenty-four hours of the day. Every job has a retirement age except this one. This is a very serious vocation and a very important one.
For now we will put the past behind us. Even though you were not prepared when you became a husband or a wife, you have nevertheless become one. You are already married and have reached this point in your life. Perhaps your looseness in the past has ruined your family. Today you have to see that the family is a very serious matter. You have to go back and learn your lessons all over again. The husbands need to go back to learn how to be husbands, and the wives need to go back to learn how to be wives.
It may not work for a person to try to apply the same earnestness he adopts in his job to his family. The truth, however, is that many people are far more careless toward their family than they are toward their jobs. This invites inevitable failure into their family. We have to pour all of our energy into building our family. We have to be more conscientious with it than with our jobs. If we behave carelessly and do not consider being a husband or a wife a serious occupation, our family will end up with nothing but failure. If we want our family to be a successful family, we have to cherish it as a job and spend time with it. We have to try our best to make it work. This is serious business, and we have to make it work at all costs. Those who are careless about their marriage and have no intention of making it a success will never have a successful marriage.
All married brothers and sisters must learn this lesson. We must spend time before the Lord to deal with this matter in a responsible way. This is a more difficult job than any other job. We need to spend time before the Lord to learn our lesson well. I hope that we will start learning it today.