Walking with the Wise #471: Choose Your Mate Wisely

“It’s better to live alone in the corner of an attic

than with a quarrelsome wife in a lovely home.”
—Proverbs 25:24 (NLT)

Marriage can be a wonderful thing, but it takes work, patience, perseverance, forgiveness, compassion, communication, understanding, and love. Before a marriage ever happens, however, we must be careful in choosing our mate. We can get caught up in the infatuation stage, when our feelings are at an all-time high, thus keeping us from thinking clearly. We may overlook glaring problems, excusing them and failing to see them for what they are. Choosing your mate is half the battle—choose wisely and you will be blessed for it. Choose poorly and life may well become a living hell.

Today’s proverb is largely about the marriage selection process. Marriage has a tendency to magnify both good and bad character traits. If you select a person who is petty, argumentative, sarcastic, and selfish then you will find those characteristics magnified even more in marriage. Select someone who is patient, loving, forgiving, etc., and the same will probably occur. The Bible warns us about how we select a mate, noting that it is better to live alone in the corner of an attic than to live in a nice house with a person who is quarrelsome. You can have great stuff, but if your marriage partner is always trying to pick a fight, then it doesn’t matter how much, nice, or great your stuff is—your life is still going to be a great pain.

Marriage experts usually recommend that you date someone a year to a year and a half before you get married. A person may be able to hide who they really are for a period of time, but aren’t usually able to hide it for a year. Also, it gives you the opportunity to watch and evaluate them as they go through the seasons of life, and how they interact with your family, their family, your friends, and their friends. If those areas don’t line up, then that is not the relationship for you.

Choose your mate wisely, use the Bible as your compass, the Spirit as your guide, and use the mind God has given you to evaluate and discern the person God has for you. Amen.