Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Which Comes First: The College or the Wedding?

I mentioned in a recent blog post that the concept of waiting to have kids until you've been married several years is a crock. It's selfishness; it has nothing to do with creating a strong foundation. Children make us holy, because they strip away our selfishness. That's a good thing.
But let's back up to the wedding. I have seen so many young Christians in love who are told to wait until they have finished college before they get married. What do we communicate to our children when we say that? We are letting them know that we place more value on their careers than their marriages. I've been listening to this fantastic sermon by Voddie Baucham. He gives a great analogy for the temptation we put our children in when we devalue marriage. King Solomon fell into sexual sin; King David fell into sexual sin; and Samson fell into sexual sin. Do we really expect our children to stay in a commited relationship for a couple of years while they finish college, when it will require them to be wiser than Solomon , more godly than King David, and stronger than Samson??
The Bible says, "He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord." (Proverbs 18:22) The same favor is not promised to those who postpone marriage to pursue a college degree. Do we teach our children to be temporally-minded when we communicate to them that their degrees are more important than their marriages?

11 comments:

MommaofMany said...

Good post, Ginger! My children are expecting to be married when the Lord has presented them with their spouse. There are no reasons for LONG engagements after you are assured that this is the person you will marry. I wish my husband and I were married at 18 rather than 23. We met when we were 15.

SeƱora Smith said...

I completely agree. When we got engaged, we intended to be engaged 2 years and then get married after we'd finished college. A wise Bible Study leader encouraged us to get married as soon as possible, and 10 months later we did. Sure that first year of marriage we were poor college students, but that was part of the fun :o)

Unknown said...

Great post Ginger, and now I'm off to listen to that sermon. My dh and I had the pleasure of getting to hear Voddie preach two different sermons at the VA homeschool convention. He's even better in person if you can believe it! I hope you are feeling well!
Ashley

Julia said...

Good topic! And I completely agree!

ASHTON said...

awesome sermon, Ginger. Thanks for posting about it.

Laura said...

very nice post!

ASHTON said...

Ginger, have you read family driven faith? Did you like it?

Ginger said...

E,

Yep! :) And now my pastor and his wife are fighting over it. (I loaned it to them.)

ASHTON said...

are you in the mood to do a post with books (family/parenting) that you reccomend? Pretty please? or you can email me at ecrawfor80@yahoo.com if you have time!

Jenni said...

That is funny! When I got Family Driven Faith, we had two bookmarks in it because after hearing how much I was getting out of it and enjoying it, my husband wanted to read it too. He didn't want to wait until I was finished, LOL!

Grace said...

100% agree with you!! You hit the nail on the head!