The Man at the Healing Pool In John 5:2 of the Bible, Jesus is wandering around during a Jewish Festival. He comes to a pool by the sheepgate where people needing healing would lay all day waiting for the water to stir. (Image: JesusWalk.com) " 5 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda [ a ] and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. [4] [ b ] 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” 7 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” I was pondering this verse, not for
Someone asked how long they should date before getting engaged, and be engaged before getting married. I had a few thoughts about it.
My mentor told me several things about dating, engagement, marriage that helped a lot.
"God' doesn't interfere with free will". Which means you can do it however you want to. It also means, that when someone leaves, God isn't going to bring them back just because you desire him too.
"There are many, 'the ones'." He said this to me, because three different times I thought I had met "the one", but they left. I'd bought into the Disney idea taught in my church based on the story of how God brought a wife for Abraham's son Isaac, I spent 40 years expecting God to do the same for me. Never happened.
Here is the Apostle Paul in the Bibles idea.
1 Corinthians 7:8-9 "Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion."
1 Corinthians 7: 28 "But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this."
1 Corinthians 7:36-38 " If anyone is worried that he might not be acting honorably toward the virgin he is engaged to, and if his passions are too strong[b] and he feels he ought to marry, he should do as he wants. He is not sinning. They should get married. But the man who has settled the matter in his own mind, who is under no compulsion but has control over his own will, and who has made up his mind not to marry the virgin—this man also does the right thing. So then, he who marries the virgin does right, but he who does not marry her does better.
So bottom line is you have a lot of freedom.
Best personal advice I have is to ask yourself these questions:
- What do you have to offer him that will benefit him as his wife? A man can do for himself anything a wife could do with the exception of bearing children. Here in the 2000's a man who might want children could get a surrogate and donated embryo the same way a woman can get artificially inseminated. We truly have reached an age where a level of equality exists both for men and women.
- If you see things you think that he needs you to help him improve in, change, or become a better person. Don't marry him, leave the guy alone, get a puppy. Anything you don't like about him before you get married, just becomes something you'll end up hating if you marry him. No man gets married with the idea of desiring a woman trying to change him or control him. Most men have already mothers who exerted control, manipulation or in other ways attempted to change their sons. Few men are looking for a younger non-related version of their mother to marry.
- Do you already know who you are? Do you have any plans or things you'd like to accomplish in your life? (having kids and being a wife is not one of them, because kids grow up and leave and being a wife is merely an exalted friendship with legal and social obligations. Women who try to live through their husbands usually end up dissatisfied.) Find out who you are first, on your own, before you get married.
- Have you ignored first impression things about him that bug you? Is he rude, does he gossip, does he spend his free time playing video games, does he talk down to others, does he tell white lies, etc. All those things you see while dating or engaged, after marriage become bigger issues. Only a fool goes into a marriage expecting they'll be able to mold or retrain their spouse into someone or something they're not. Better to walk away early if they're deal breakers.
- Does he have a stable job, debt, his own place, realistic goals and visions?
Few men are probably going to have obtained your fantasy level of career or financial requirements when you meet them. - What are you bringing into a marriage? Do you have a stable job, debt, your own place, realistic goals and visions? Long gone all the day most men can bring in the sole income. If you intend to have a career and work after marriage then your contribution financially, provisionally, should be mutual. Why should your money be your money, but his money be our money? The bible talks about being equally yoked.
- Do you believe in him? Some men are waiting for someone who believes in them, not the way you believe in God, but that you will stand with them no matter what life brings his way.
- Repeating what my mentor told me, "There are lots of "the ones" out there". So if "this one" is a deal breaker, there are lots of other "the one's" waiting and looking.