How Did You Meet Your Spouse?

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of Scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the

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Thank you. I'm Dylan Hamilton and with me are Michael Dear and Chris Kiesler.

We had a fun question sent in to us that we wanted to answer. It's not as well it might be theologically fraught, who knows, but we we had one that we thought would be make for a good interesting podcast and we are going to go ahead and tell how we met our spouses.

The question reads, how did you each meet your spouse and how did you know she was the one? What's your best advice when looking for a spouse?

Michael? So I think we should go around each one tell our story about how we met our spouse and how we knew that she was the one, but then we can go kind of go back around and talk about some biblical advice when looking for a spouse.

Well I met Becca at Grace Way Baptist Church when I think it was in my freshman year of college.

My dad was pastoring in Guthrie Oklahoma church plant up there. We had planted a church and he was running a

Christian school and my freshman year I was going back every weekend to you know free laundry and get some food and participate in the life of Grace Covenant Church there and we learned that mom and dad they're gonna be moving to Kansas to a different church, new ministry opportunity and so dad told me so you gotta find a church down there local somewhere.

I was like okay and so I started looking around for a church and the first place I went to I walked in and people kind of looked at me like I was an alien and no one talked to me, no one came up to me, no one gave me a bulletin, nothing and so I was like well enough of that so and again

I'm like you know all of sophisticated 19 year old you know so well I'm not gonna do that and I had seen on a church sign, on a church in the general area where the college was here in the

Oklahoma City area that something about basketball like I like basketball so I went to Grace Way Baptist Church which is on the providence of God.

I got three handshakes, a hug and a bulletin before I got in the front door. And his name was Tom McGarry? And the hug came from my future father -in -law

Tom McGarry and when I participated in the worship service

I felt comfortable with the preaching, it felt like I was kind of home and the pastor was an old friend of my father's.

They pastored together in the same association up in northeast Oklahoma. I thought that was great and the folks there just made me feel welcome, they were glad to see me,

I was therefore glad to be there and I quickly noticed that there was a young woman bouncing around the auditorium and the whole church, big smile on her face all the time and she caught my eye but I'd like to get to know her better and so over time

I just tried to be where she was and she was still in the youth, I think she was a senior junior or senior in high school and I was a freshman in college you know so I quickly found out how to become a member of the church and then become a volunteer in the youth because that's where she was and just kind of being around her and hanging out.

So her parents invited me over because they were just trying to be kind so they invited me over for you know meals, hey come use our washer and dryer and they didn't have much but they just freely offered it.

So I took them up on every invitation that I could and so I wanted to be around Becca and she happened to be somewhat engaged to another young man at the time so I did a lot of praying and eventually that got set right and we just started spending a lot of time talking to each other and we would park and near each other and in church parking lots we'd always have a reason to walk together to the cars and talk and so on and eventually one time the youth pastor of the church took me out to lunch and he said so what's this thing with you and Becca and I'm trying to explain about how

I'm supposed to really wait and observe her character and really learn and you know be really really sure

I'm trying to apply all the loads of wisdom that had been poured down my throat for I don't know how many years.

He's like that's all well and good but sometimes a young woman aren't as patient about these things. I'm like what?

And she had been making plans to move to Ada and go to college down there and get a teacher's degree and all of this and I thought oh so anyway not too long after that she made sure to mention that she hadn't been to the

Arts Festival that year yet and just waited and then so I said well do you want to go?

So I always tease her that she asked me out and I said yes but it was it was very it was very winsome.

She gave me every opportunity to to take some initiative finally and so we hit it off our first our first time out the

Arts Festival closed early and was like well now what do we do and so we went and grabbed some coffee and we immediately began to talk about how we did not want any kind of casual dating relationship that this was really entirely in the hands of the

Lord but we were going to be seeing whether or not he that God wanted us to get married so we were going to be very intentional in how we conducted the relationship to think about is this going to work well?

Do we have the same values convictions direction in life? Does she want to be the wife of a pastor because I've been on that track since I was seven years old same changing now and she was very amenable to that she and she was very warm to that and she didn't know much about homeschooling but figured it was it was an okay thing she didn't make a she wasn't overly concerned about it at the time we just talked about some some distinctives and some characteristics and so on and so there wasn't much drama

I wouldn't say in the process though there were lots of people who said things like well you both are the youngest in your family so you shouldn't get married because your birth order is out of whack and people told

Becca's parents they shouldn't spend too much money on our first wedding because the first one never lasts and we were too young because she was 20 and I was 22 and you shouldn't get married to your 30s so you had your career in housing established and I hate this so much right now we were we were told all kinds of things like that and and very much we realized that we were we didn't realize we were at the time but over at the initial moment we didn't realize it but over time we realized that we were bucking the trend we were going against the flow we were doing something that people thought was a bad idea and we just kind of shrugged just like well this is what we want to do and we're provided and he answered so many prayers for us to get married when we did and he is just sustained us and we have never ever regretted getting married young and having children at a young age and we just praise the

Lord for it amen so we've been married a little over 20 years now Chris so after high school

I went down to college in Ada to go to the college down there for music

I just kind of fell into it I didn't know music what am I gonna do with my life my music teacher said well you can major in music

I like music I guess I'll do that so I got a scholarship and went down there and then she was also doing music but I was not as fast as her some might say slow so I was put in a different class than her like we had music theory so she was put in like the real class and I was put in like you know remedial theory class so we were in the same class but I remember seeing her whenever we started out and they had us in a big group and they start separating people and I wanted to go to that class but I couldn't

I didn't qualify so I was in my class a friend of mine from high school came with me to college and so we were roommates at the college well he started dating her which

I didn't really care for because I had my eye on her it was also odd because the summer before we went he came out of the closet and then started dating her so I tried to explain this to her and she did not believe me she thought

I was just trying to break them up to which I said yes that's right it's it is what it is okay but that wasn't a thing so nothing was happening and and you know she had a boyfriend then

I started seeing somebody else and I was planning on getting engaged I was saving up for a ring and things went south on that and it just it was clear that that's not the route that God had for me there was not a good path there's not a good relationship as far as us being together and me following God and I had a buddy that kind of stepped in and was there for me and and kind of corrected me and corrected her on some of the things she was doing so that fell apart and then quickly afterwards

I was like well I like Brooke a lot I still like her so she's available we were doing theater both of us you know we're taking our music classes we're working towards our major we're also doing theater on the side and I was pretty fickle because I I would had my

I just interested in this girl and then interested in that girl and and then in theater things get muddled because you're playing love interests and plays and everything so then you confuse oh we've got this dialogue and and we've got these scenes and then oh there's a kiss and all this stuff so it gets pretty muddled pretty quickly and since then

I'm like I don't want to do that anymore that's not my interest so it gets pretty confusing Brooke and I were together for a period of time and then we broke up because I didn't know what

I wanted I was confused and I thought there's a different girl that I was interested in but then going back to the question how do you know she's the one it really did come down to there were several that I was interested in but I was like I'm I don't want to lose my friendship with Brooke that was like the most important I can see my life without these other girls

I'm interested in them they're pretty or whatever but really kept coming back to Brooke I can't see going on without her graduating talking to her daily it's like I can't continue this friendship with her if I'm pursuing someone else oh that's what that's what that is

I need to be serious with her and so I asked her we we'd already been talking and she knew

I was interested and so we prayed about it and we weren't engaged for very long we kind of knew this is the direction we're going and so we got married and we'll be married in March it'll be 16 years we married and talking about children and them coming along I was kind of boneheaded and wanted to wait longer than she did because like well we're married we need to get to know each other more marriage having kids you'll get to know each other pretty quickly by having kids so don't worry about that yeah but I'm I'm glad that God set things up the way that he did because it's all marriage is sanctifying having children is sanctifying that's the plan amen to that well

I'm not going to go too deep into the history so let's just say

I ended up at the University of Oklahoma and I was in my senior year when I had my third birth as it's known in Calvinistic circles

I started reading a lot of Bunyan Calvin Owen and a lot of Spurgeon apparently later on in that year my senior year and a lot of wild stuff was going on by the time

I graduated and or by the time I was about to graduate so I joined Barry Road Baptist down the road in Norman as it was

Barry Road at the time and then we were in an election cycle and Trump got elected for the first time that year and there's just a bunch of stuff kind of going on in the world in my world and at school as well but I started going to Barry Road and Heather was kind of going back and forth between church and OBU so I would see her on Sundays and you know the rest of her sisters and brother which she has for the audience she has seven sisters and and sorry six sisters and one brother eight in total so I had met everybody in the

Horner circle at least a few times by the time Heather and I started interacting and talking to one another mostly just as peers because I wasn't really involved in anything at church yet I had a

Southern Baptist background but we were there you know some Sundays that we weren't either playing ball or doing something different and I didn't know how to integrate into church life

I did not know how to be a part of the body that was foreign to my existence so as I start reading through my

Reformation study Bible and the confessions and all this other material I'm like I need to be there

I need to be with these people I need to be with my people and the more that I'm doing that we're having kind of a bleeding of members at Barry Road so the more

I'm getting involved the more people are like like moving away and I'm like what is going on so my my entry into actual church membership like functioning church membership is watching just like just everything dissipate hmm so it was weird to do that but it was also like as they as people leave now

I have to take more responsibility even if it's just minor here there here there do something I like every time

I'm showing up I can put my hands at something so that was actually really good for me because I couldn't just jet out the door after services over which was my natural inclination at the time being the navel -gazing introverted in quotes kid that I was at the time

I wanted to get the theology go home digest it on my own not interact with anybody even even though I knew

I needed to be there so they were like kind of those conflicting interests there but we had sort of a similar thing that we have like flock groups here small groups and we show up to an elders house or a deacon's house and I was the pastor took an interest in me because I was a younger guy and there wasn't a lot of younger guys at the church and there wasn't a lot of younger guys coming in at the church we shared the building with a different church as well and they had a bunch of college -aged men

I would call them women of the other sex but they were males and so they had a lot of that and I know there was a lot of tension in the fact that we were a aging it felt like there's a lot of tension in him that there we were an aging group of people and not a growing group of people and they were just kind of and it was very it seemed very seeker sensitive skinny jeans fawning over that sort of a thing and so he had that in one building right they had it on the other side of the building we had it on I had the other one on our side so it was really all this was a weird dynamic now

I'm talking about it but I'm in his flock group and Heather's in there as well and there is like a very diverse group of people there especially when we're talking about like where they're coming from on how they read the word how they think about the word and I am a baby

Christian but I was voraciously I read quite a bit I listened to a lot of things so I was voraciously eating up content and quickly picking up kind of what he was putting down in a lot of cases and Heather realized that from across the room and she started to gravitate towards me more and more she would say that it's the looks

I still don't see it but she does apparently and she was gravitating towards me more and more as we started talking about theology and how

I was really warming toward specifically a Calvinistic view and such a teary ology on how

I was trying to be at least measured and the way I was going into other places in theology and what

I was reading and so she was always wanting to know what I was reading listening to what I was thinking so we kind of naturally were able to grow close because she is just not she

I wouldn't call her forward but she is extremely warm woman and when she finds somebody that is like -minded she's like I need to attach to them because they are both virtuous and they love the

Lord and that's what she thought she was seeing and that's what I the Lord was growing me into she started we started to grow closer as more people left because I had to start getting involved in audio and music and visual stuff which

I'm still not good at even though I had to run it for I don't know two years towards the end with her and I mean we literally were when

I showed up I think we were running like 150 members by the time we were done we were down to like eight or ten yeah like so it was a it was just like a

I'm not gonna say demoralizing but it was a humbling thing to have like happen and to think what you because what you start doing to yourself which is not humbling in my opinion but you start doing this well what did

I do what could I have done better and you're you start putting a lot of that on yourself and I think that in a way is a selfish way of thinking about it rather than the

Lord the Lord took that lampstand away for whatever reason that was his that was his plan it's it's not what you did but that was kind of how it was feeling and as we're going through this process of all this happening

Heather and I start to grow closer as we're back in the booth she's doing a lot of the visual stuff and setting up kind of the electronic side of the service she starts hanging out with me and my brother and like it kind of felt like the

Horner's kind of descend on you in a certain type of a way they they show up as a group they just descend on you and Heather for whatever reason was she was the spearhead to all of that and she was just driving at me the whole time and being completely honest

I knew what she was after and I did enjoy her as a friend but I was keeping her at bay for selfish reasons for and a lot of the baggage that I held over myself where I knew what

I had done in the past I knew what I had been and I knew this woman was too good for that you know that's what you have in your mind right like I have been this it would sully her to be with someone like me and that's what

I had in my head and I also I also was prideful enough to think that I had done so bad that I didn't deserve marriage anymore you know we were talking about you're talking about how you thought you were people thought you were too young I thought

I was past the point of no return right like I think I was like when we first started kind of hanging I was like 25 and had all the public school what all the baggage of public school relationships all the baggage of junior college baseball relationships and then for your college relationships and I mean

I wasn't like a womanizer by any means like I think I think I dated like four girls total but I was a product of that arena and everything that came along with it so I knew what

I was and I felt terrible in a way just associating with her and being good friends with her because it was just such a it seemed like a mismatch right but the

Lord had done something to me and I was not taking that into account the Lord had cleansed me from a lot of those things had cleansed me and delivered me so but we're chugging along and we're getting to know each other more and more people are leaving the pastor ends up leaving

Julian takes over as the only other elder that was there at the church at the time he starts preaching

Julian being Heather's father he starts offering counseling and discussion time after lunch on Sundays who's the only guy to show up me inside we so we basically start making this is like a meeting a weekly meeting where I'm visiting with him about theological stuff things that I'm seeing that frustrate me or that I'm not understanding not from him but just kind of out in the world

I mean we're talking about like right in the smack dab middle of the rise of woke ism and it just made me livid and I just did not want to deal with it in a measured way whatsoever and he wanted to measure it out to like the nth degree so we were just on opposite poles but I loved him

I love the counsel that he gave and I loved the time that we had together and at that time I was probably doing a deacon's job the entire time

I mentioned my friend Robert to you guys before he was he had

MS and couldn't do a lot of things on his own so I was getting him out of bed and putting him to bed quite often because I had a job that kind of allowed there a couple jobs that allow me to do that and so and it was you know it was deacon work it was it was kind of like home care service work but just doing it as a functioning deacon without the title and through that process of growing in friendship with Robert growing in friendship with Julian growing in friendship with Heather Heather and I were starting to hang out more and more and more like to the point to where it was like just get married guys just get engaged and get married and everybody thought so and I wasn't

I just wasn't just put my my hands up and denying the reality of it all and really forcing myself not to like this girl even though I was doing everything that a man would if he liked a girl so she got to the point where and she had come and talked to me a couple times like what is this and I like you and I think we would be good and I think we should get married and like she'd like she just lays it out on the line just like it like point by point bullet points me and I held her off held her off and then finally she's like we can't hang out anymore we can go to church we can do all this stuff we can't hang out anymore so I made it two weeks of that and Daryl my brother looks at me and says you're miserable you like Heather just date

Heather I think it was like two or three days after that Julian preaches on communion with the

Spirit and I am going through Owen on communion with the Spirit and I'm starting to realize things about how the

Lord has cleansed me and he has given me the Holy Spirit as a helper and has as a guide as some as a constant help and comfort all the time and I had a lot of stuff kind of just lift off of me that were burdens a lot about my past that were as that were the walls that were keep that I was keeping up to pursue this and so that goes away three preaches that and she didn't want to text and meanwhile like this wasn't just hanging out like we can't talk we can't text she's had enough of me because it was making her miserable to be around me all the time and have nothing no real tangible movement towards what you're supposed to be doing so I was denying what we were supposed to be doing

Heather was wanting to take it all on he preaches that Daryl talks to me a lot of things came together and by you know

Wednesday of that that week I texted her I said hey you should come hang out and then I'm warm I'm myself

I'm like being warm with her and I so everything in our life had happened on a Sunday together right and I'm like I want to ask her forgiveness right now for everything that I've done and then ask her to date toward marriage

I'm like no gotta wait till Sunday you gotta wait till Sunday I'm just like and I know that's like just weird a way to do it but I was like no this is we're doing this we're gonna wait till Sunday and so by Sunday I'm like hey can

I talk to you after church and like she kind of goes white like cuz she doesn't know what to think all this has been a whirlwind for we were we weren't talking we were hanging out he wants to talk to me now after he's hung out with me on Wednesday and been way more warm than he's ever been what is going on so she's frustrated when we go into this meeting and so I talked to her on Sunday afternoon and I said please forgive me for everything that I've done for the ways that I put all this off and if you can forgive me would you date me looking toward a future marriage and she just like it was like a probably an emotion of like I want to like well not not choke but like I want to like grab hug like bear hug him and also like she had a bunch going on and so she said yes and try to control herself and you can tell you can tell when

Heather's trying to like control herself before she like just explodes out and then she goes can I hug you and that we we hugged and we were able to cheat like she she hugged me and I don't know if she like let go of me the rest of the evening as we were in service but it was extremely sweet I'm glad I waited till Sunday and didn't do it that Wednesday night even though it probably gave her a little bit of grief through the weekend but that's okay she can have that every now and then but that's how we met that's how

I reconciled with her after being an idiot and we were engaged probably a month after that and I'm thinking you know like the public school kid or like like just the normal American that I am like oh about a year and then we can get married type of a thing and Julian's like so as we go into the next

Sunday meeting so so when when you guys gonna do the or I guess that's what it was

I had like plans for a little while to wait to get engaged and then married by about a year and he's like so what are we thinking like oh what

I don't know you tell me and so he he very kindly nudged that along and Heather and I talked about it and we got engaged in August and we were married by November so we had a two -month engagement and that's all we needed because we had known each other for two years and you didn't have to know more than that yeah but yeah that's how we met and how we were married well that's awesome

I loved hearing your stories on that and the follow -up on that question is what kind of advice right what kind of advice would you give to someone who is looking for a spouse what's your best advice well

I think our best advice would be the biblical advice I hope that our listeners would be fairly aware of that you shouldn't be unequally yoked how can two walk together unless they are agreed there should be some time spent in understanding in with wisdom and also our first affinity and loyalty is to Christ so can it is our relationship with Christ my relationship with Christ and this woman's relationship with Christ is that bringing us together is that unifying us are we in agreement about in general agreement about what marriage ought to be what family ought to be how to raise children if I'm a

Lutheran and she's a Pentecostal it may not work well what what are our expectations concerning the church there's all sorts of things to consider there is a necessary time to get to know one another and see where each other's convictions are and so on I think it's important there's going to be some changes but the man needs to be able to lead his wife and I've seen just too many stagnant kinds of marriages that are not growing in the

Lord because the man just says well whatever she says you know whatever she believes

I'll just go with that and that's a pretty sad affair so he doesn't need to be able to lead his wife spiritually is that what she wants does she want to be led spiritually and that's that's a big question so some people have worked through that some people are ready

I remember that in going to Grace Way Baptist Church once a month they would have somebody in they have a breakfast and they would do discipleship for men and they would talk about how to be a husband how to be a father how to be spiritual leader in your home and they would pour into and I was

I would just soak it all up I was there for everything you're having a discipleship meeting I'm there and usually there was food that was great and I just wanted to learn everything

I could and at a certain point I realized like you know I'm ready for this I want to be married and what does that what does that entail what do

I need to do I need a better job do I need to work harder do I need to change some things about me whatever that is you know

I want to be married and of course I had my eye on Becca but I wanted to follow the

Lord's will in that but I needed to be not like Dylan kind of what you talked about it's like not to have my head looking at me there's not a lot there why am

I staring at myself all the time that isn't that is not a good idea and and no woman wants to be in a relationship with a man who is staring at himself all the time that is ridiculous the man needs to be settled in Christ not arrogant but settled in Christ so there can be some confidence there and he just needs to get his head up and look at the horizon so all right

Lord I kind of know where I'm going help me get there I want to work I want to labor I want to serve and I want to be a man

I want to lead and that's a good place to be and it could be a very simple expression but I think that in the more self -focused you are and trying to work on you that's not a great way to get ready for marriage do you need to be sensitive to rebuke and to the conviction of the

Holy Spirit and repentance you know and so on yeah but do not make your main subject matter yourself

I think with that so you can get caught up in the navel gazing and self -reflecting and I've got to fix all these things first you can also get caught up in playing games so if you weren't brought up with an eye towards marriage and it's just the dating scene which is what

I got caught up in and it was just well we're just having fun we're hanging out marriage is you know it's out there it's something that I'll get around to versus don't get involved with people if you're not interested in marriage if that's not what you're trying to do if you are interested in marriage then find out what those steps are and take those steps instead of focusing on yourself or getting distracted by other things

I would say have counselors have people that can pour into your life that you can ask them do you think

I'm ready what needs to be improved that you can say I'm interested in this person people that you can go to and talk to about that but yeah the the focusing on self and thinking

I've got to get myself ready or fix myself before I get there that's what a lot of marriage is marriage is the means towards sanctification

I found in a lot of that yes sure there's things that you need to have ready before going into marriage but a lot of the like character type things you're gonna be working on that your whole life and God says that the wife is a helpmate he calls her a helpmate for a reason because she's your helper and he provides the

Holy Spirit to you and hopefully if you're thinking about marriage then you should be moving in that direction so that God would he who finds a wife finds a good thing so I've heard someone say find out her name and ask if she wants to marry you don't make it a huge thing obviously you want to get to know her character talk to the people around her her father now right the people who are over her but don't don't prolong it because again don't get caught up in the dating scene and doing all these other things it's if you have a desire to get married then take those steps and and don't prolong it if you in this the thing you'd be praying the

Lord will show you an opportunity to pursue a wife and if there is none that you that you see that is available you need to talk to your spiritual leaders about that and how to go about doing that there's gonna be some unique opportunities and some connections you know

I have pastor friends who have young ladies in their church or young men in their church that they need they need to make a connection of families need to get go out and have dinner together they need to invite people over to their homes this is something that needs to happen between small churches or within the same church and as a young man you need to talk you need to state your intentions concerning a young woman to her father and he's going to have some things that he thinks would be important for you to consider and to think about about you know and how he would like this to go forward and you need to talk to your elder now if you're gonna be efficient about it like Dylan your elder and her father are the same person

I really nailed multiple birds with one stone you did you did well not not only that I was gonna you guys are doing a really good job of laying out the theological side of things beforehand but I was gonna try and talk about practical things if you're wanting to expand your generations further on look look for twins each

Hamilton boy apparently figured this out because I married a twin and then you know my brother happens to marry her twin our little brother is marrying a twin as well so we we have a decent shot of twins in the future for Hamilton children all joking aside yeah no

I think this goes to a point about having Titus two counselors on both sides and I'm so thankful that the

Lord has given us this text to say older men teach younger men older women teach the younger women in doing so you have surrounded yourself as a young person with many counselors who can help you in sometimes like out of left field practical counseling that you would not have considered yourself or even that you've ever heard before but it is extremely extremely helpful especially maybe even to your personal situation because these people know you these people know her most the time you know if you're in the same church which we were so they knew both of us they knew which signals were being given off by either person and they also knew where each one of our spiritual lives were at when we were with each other or when we were away from each other and they were looking at our own personal happinesses as well

I think having a wealth of counsel and at that point you know we were a dwindling church so the wealth of counsel is like two or three guys but man was it indispensable for me for picking the woman that I'm gonna be with the rest of my life you know they they talk about the two biggest decisions you make in your life is accepting that call from Christ to bow the knee to him and repent and believe and then which spouse you're gonna marry and I don't see any lies there it has been extremely important who

I have married and counsel has been a major side of that and because what

I had done I don't know about you guys but what had happened to me was counts counselors that used to be counselors for me had faded away and hurry because I didn't have coaches anymore

I was not under my dad's household there's a lot lacking in male counsel for me and so going there and and honestly having the church do what it did

I was kind of just under the pastor's wing at the time sort of but I was

I kind of could float but when we had more and more people leave I couldn't float anymore I had to do things how to be around people and you know thank the

Lord that those guys saw this text and said I got a council this young man even though he doesn't want to hear the council most the time

I have to counsel this young man and you know from Robert I don't know how much we even ever agreed on anything theologically at all like I mean he could find a way to argue with me on every point that I tried to make and he had he had a bigger bookcase to back it up than I did so I mean

I I just I struggled with him all the time and it was great and it was fun but I had you know those two men that were able to to push me where I needed to be pushed and like Michael said eventually take some initiative yeah because I wasn't seeing it

I think you're talking like counselors and men that can pour into your life I think we can we can set our own parameters or come up with our own rules on how it needs to be done you might have the dating culture or the courting culture and everyone's got these rules and don't walk a girl to her car by yourself or you know whatever people come up with but if you've got people around you that can guide you and that are talking to both of you and say you're trying to lay down signals and she's not picking them up well she's got someone to tell her he's interested that's what he's doing or vice versa that people know you've expressed your interest to someone that's not her and they're able to tell it to her and she's like oh well

I'm not interested and then it's not a confrontation because you've got other people that are involved in the process it's not just you in a bubble trying to figure it out yeah if there were any regrets for me on like any of this in life this this side of stuff where you're trying to look for a spouse it would have been that I didn't have counselors earlier right like we you were kind of expected in the dating culture that we grew up in public school dating culture you were expected to figure it out kid you know get after it yeah yeah even if I had someone older to talk to me about the will of God is she the one how do

I know if it's God's will that she's the one it was some guys talking about like John MacArthur and different stuff and it's like be in the word he tells you what he wants you to do he tells you to pray to you know go to church he tells you to follow him repent all these different things he tells you to do he doesn't tell you where to go to college what church to go to what woman to marry if you're following after him those other things will fall into place because you're in his will and then having those counselors around you to help with some of that pragmatic stuff practical stuff you're in his will he's gonna take care of that so it's not like I've got to get this right or I've missed missed everything and part of that desire to that God would through a vision you know part heaven come down and drop you her jersey here's her name and number mm -hmm you know she's the one go find her yeah part of that is part of this pendulum swing against the whole dating scene in the in the casual misuse of these relationships the pendulum swing against that is to say okay well

I'm only ever going to pursue a woman in thinking about marriage and seeking a wife

I'm only gonna do that once and it's gonna be only the one girl so it's gonna be a hundred percent success right now tied into this are all manner of temptations of I don't want to risk myself

I don't want to humiliate myself I don't want to get it wrong I always want to be right I don't want anybody to come and say you did that wrong

I don't want to embarrass myself all these protective things are hiding behind this super spiritual wall of I'm waiting for God to reveal his will okay

God has described what a good woman is in the in the Bible he didn't make that a mystery okay and if you and if you don't know how to find those passages talk to your spiritual leader okay okay so you can profile what a good woman is then get your head up look around and find yourself a good woman now she available okay start talking with her be around her okay as if she's a young lady you're gonna go talk to her father at some point about the potential of you getting to know her a little bit better okay and you can be forthright and say

I don't have any particular designs on your daughter I I'm a young man I'm trying to follow the

Lord and I have an ardent desire to be married and I've noticed some excellent qualities in your daughter I like to get it know her a little bit better and to see if there's some potential here you know her far better than I do and what she needs and I respect you as her spiritual authority but I was wondering what you thought about that okay how can you how can you go wrong if you're talking to your elder and you're talking to her father and you're looking to progress in a way that is fully in submission to the proper authority and doing so in a biblical way you're not toying with her heart you're not doing something illegitimate right right right well and like oh

I have to think of an of an opportunity or a way to to be around her we've already involved your pastor her father they can find ways to get you two around each other without it seeming like a rigged thing where she has to commit to something or or say no to your face you could they can they know what to do to get you two together it's a podcast survives four or five years and young man that doing some research on my daughter's

I'm telling you how to go about it so we wait are we against rigged or arrange things or no okay okay no no but I know a lot of young women who got into situations where their fathers didn't weren't involved there were no other men so they were stuck in the position of having to tell this guy off tell him no instead of there were other people that were involved ahead of time that were aware of the situation and it could let the daughter down gently or let the man down gently say

I don't think she's really interested and then it's not a rejection by her it's just we don't think so and then you pray and you continue with the council so one of the things

I'm pretty appreciative about here at Sunnyside is that we are thinking about these things rather frequently and we all have kids growing up together interacting with one another because if you did what

Michael just suggested you do in your run -of -the -mill SPC church that dad's gonna look at you like you're crazy that does not happen and if it did happen he wouldn't know how to react he might not know how to respond or move forward you know going forward he probably had his patriarchy card revoked well yeah

I mean but that's like 80 % of households right now in America so what we're talking about is rather rare and I'm thankful that we're here because it's not as rare here amongst the group of believers that we have here at Sunnyside yeah so I was talking about I had dated someone else before Brooke and that father was pretty belligerent towards me

Brooke's father even after I had kind of stepped back from her because I didn't know what

I wanted in life I didn't know what I was doing he spoke to me counselor as an as an elderly

Christian man and he said this is what it means to live like a Christian putting the daughter aside are you a

Christian man are you following after Christ that's that's what's important right now you seem confused let me walk beside you and help you in that regardless of the outcome of all of this let me help you in that and just to have a you know a man who's like this is bigger than that this is a huge decision but I see you're a young man struggling you know and I'm glad to be a church with other men that are like that and I hope to be you know that way to be able to see young men and young women and say hey let's get you with someone that can help you someone older that can give you counsel amen well we really enjoyed talking about our wives meeting our wives and how you might meet yours one day but we're gonna move on to recommendations

Michael my recommendation is a little book by Graham Goldsworthy called homeward bound I may have recommended it before but I think it's a it's an excellent example of biblical theology and as Graham Goldsworthy take you through the

Old Testament into the New Testament and talks about the themes of rest the theme of rest and how it's connected to the theme of land in the

Old Testament how rest and land go together in the theme of the Sabbath and then how this theme is fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ and how he is given to us as our rest as our inheritance and it's an excellent little book homeward bound

Chris I would recommend a book called love and respect by Emmerich I think it's his name dr.

Emmerich and he goes through biblical texts on love and respect obviously the command husbands love your wives wives respect your husbands and how that plays out he breaks it down and there's some psychology in there but ultimately he gets to the point of we do this unto the

Lord if you start feeling like you're part of the crazy cycle and things are spinning in the wrong direction instead of focusing on what they're doing wrong or what you're doing wrong look to the word look to other counselors and ultimately you're doing this unto the

Lord and you're loving her unto the Lord you're respecting him unto the

Lord so I thought that book was very helpful amen I don't have any content recommendations this week which is no abnormal for me and I could but they're so niche that I would feel sorry for you having to listen to the pitch so I'm gonna go ahead and recommend if you are a young man and you are navel -gazing as I was or if you're not but you lack male counselors in your life a multitude of male counselors in your life do what you can whether you're married or unmarried to find older men to teach you they have gone through many of the things that you have gone through they have been in the word longer than you have they have a richness that you not only can draw from but you are meant to draw from it is there it is the older man's responsibility to teach you it is your responsibility to be taught by the older man so do not neglect an opportunity to not only just be around peers who love the

Lord but also among those who are older than you who are more seasoned than you have more gray hair than you that is one of the reasons we ended up at Sunnyside we had bounced around to other churches we knew that most of the reformed churches in the area had a younger demographic

Michael was preaching we had listened to a few past sermons about soteriology and a few other things that we thought we needed to be at the church that we were going to so we were on board with that we showed up I saw the the gray hair

I saw multiple families with multiple generations had been introduced to these families and and then the cherry on top was

Michael teaching through his post -millennial view in class and I was like oh okay this is it so that getting in a place where you have the opportunity to be taught by older men it's extremely important if I could piggyback off of yours a little bit younger men finding older men

I would say if you're an older man listening to this in podcast I would encourage you to find a younger man because they're looking and they may not know how to approach you the

Bible says older men teach younger men the command is is to you to go find them and because of our culture and all of that and masculinity is trashed and all this and it can be easy to feel like you don't have a role but you do have a role and the

Bible tells you what it is you may feel awkward you may feel like well I don't have anything to teach them but that's just simply not true you have experience if you've been walking with the

Lord you've been walking with him longer than that young man has been so find a younger man to to pour into and you are gonna learn from each other

I think one of the one of the bigger issues right now that we're coming across that hasn't really proliferated throughout most other churches is a generational strife occurring right now between especially in theological circles between older men and younger men if you are in your local church you do not treat young men you do not treat older men like you would other older men on the internet you do not do that at all and older men you also do not treat younger men like you would younger men on the internet there's a lot of respect lacking on the internet and it can be this to where we're just lobbing grenades over the wall at each other constantly one of the dampening effects in my life to all that nonsense because I can get just as worked up as anybody else about all this stuff for varying reasons that are usually not theological but I have them still and one of the dampening effects has been coming to church interacting with older men learning from older men and trying to let that shape me more than anything else in my my days during the week especially everything online that's not as I mean it's it's a real place it's a real forum but it's not dealing with people it's not loving one another it's not being with one another and that has to be taken into account too but we'll move on to what are we thankful for Michael I'm thankful for reflection on the providence of God I think it was

Thomas Watson said that providence is a Hebrew word best read backwards and when we reflect on the faithfulness of God the long -suffering of God and reflect upon the success the inexorable continual success of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ not only in the personal life not just to me but in my wife and my children and in the church we just see a record of the faithfulness of God we see a record of how well

Jesus saves and I am I'm thankful for those reflections

Chris speaking of older men my dad came over today and we knocked out a cabinet so that we could fit in a dishwasher that's been sitting in my garage for weeks

I took today off I I knew the weather was going to be nice and I wanted to get some stuff done so I said hey are you off work today he's retired can you come over and do some work with me and he did he came over and I just like I don't even know what tools

I'm supposed to use to get this thing out of here I don't know if this outlet is working and so we had several things

I had a back door that wasn't working five minutes there and he's pulled this hinge out of his back door and he's like well it won't close because this is this way and so five minutes there he's got the back door fixed and then we we work on knocking out this cabinet and sawing things up and pulling things out and pushing things in and it's just really nice to be with him and to learn from him and then just he's in a different stage of life he just got done with back surgery and so he's healing from that but just to have those conversations that are different than when you're a child and that you're still learning and so I'm very grateful to have my father and to be able to do those things with him amen well

I am thankful for just simply the weather that we've had recently today specifically it's the

Sun's come out it's warmed up and my dad would light me up for saying that because he just doesn't like the warm weather and I traditionally haven't either but I've learned to love all the weather that the

Lord throws at us but particularly Sun coming out and warming up my wife sends me I don't know 500 % more photos and videos of all the kids being outside and you can only take so many pictures inside that are like fun for her to take there's great stuff that happens during the day inside when it's cold and icy or snowy or whatever but man whenever the

Sun's out and you can turn the kids loose stuff just happens like today we had a

Muscovy duck that either used to be ours and wasn't for a while come back and it's just sitting out there on a clothesline t -post right at the top and then

Heather's sending me a video of this and I said that looks a lot like her old duck I said I don't know if that is or not

I said let's see if it I said throw some food over there you know across and she's like I already did he hasn't or she hasn't moved she texts me back and it's another video and that ducks in the cage the duck was in the cage when she left today so I was like well the

Lord gave us a duck today and if it's laying my goodness have what a blessing that is but yeah it was just the weather and the warm -up and kind of the getting going into spring and I'm slightly dreading it because that means