When you were young, what were you looking for in a husband?
My girls are both teens, and they’re constantly getting into conversations with friends about what they want in husbands. And some of the things the girls and their friends come up with are quite funny. They have to be good looking. They have to be musical. They have to be funny.
Thinking back to when I was 18 or 19, the things that I wanted in a husband ended up not really being that important. I wanted someone who could sing with me. I wanted someone very athletic.
But really all this is beside the point, because after being married for almost 10 years, and after reading email upon email upon email from women really struggling in their marriages, I have decided that I really only needed 1 thing in a husband to make him husband material.
Everything else is extra, and aren’t really the criteria for finding a good husband. And what is that one thing? A Godly husband!
He who finds a wife finds a good thing And obtains favor from the LORD. – Proverbs 18:22
So what are the qualities to look for in a Godly man?
Here are three qualities that will separate a Godly husband from a worldly husband…
1. He must love God and be totally and utterly committed to Him.
When someone loves God, they’ll love marriage.
They’ll make the marriage a priority. And when you do have disagreements, you know that he’ll take those disagreements to God.
Ironically, I believe it is more important to marry someone who loves God than to marry someone who loves you (though obviously you want both).
If you marry someone who loves you, but doesn’t love God, then when fights happen or struggles come and that feeling of love goes, he may go, too.
Marry someone who loves God, and the commitment to the marriage will be rock solid.
2. You can talk about God with him and pray with him.
It isn’t enough to love God; that love has to evidence itself in your ability to talk about God as a couple and to pray as a couple.
If you can bring God into conversation naturally, then God is an important part of both of your lives, and you’ll be okay.
If he goes to church but never really talks to God or about God, then you have to wonder if that commitment to God is true.
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. – Matthew 18:20
3. He brings you closer to God.
Lots of people marry someone because they are in awe of them.
It’s almost a case of idol worship. He is just so amazing. He is so talented. He is so smart. He is so handsome.
I dated some men like that before I met my husband. I was so enthralled with them, and they loved the fact that I was enthralled with them.
For a marriage to work, you both need to be able to encourage each other in the gifts that God has given them. You both need to be able to recognize each other’s strengths, and gifts, and dreams, and encourage the other to go for it!
Marriage should not be about one person completely serving the other at the expense of him or herself. It should be about you both becoming who God made you to be.
Lots of girls fall into this trap of putting a guy up on a pedestal and marrying him because “I’m just so amazed that someone so wonderful could be interested in little ‘ole me!”. But that’s not a recipe for a good marriage.
That’s a recipe for a lonely marriage.
It’s not that the marriage won’t last; it’s that it won’t be fulfilling, and it will be hard for God to do what He wants to with you.
You need to be able to share what God is doing in your heart, and not just support what God is doing in his. It needs to be a marriage centered around God.
That’s it. Marry someone who loves God, that you can talk to about God. Marry someone who will bring you closer to God, while you do the same for him.
