HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY PREPARE FOR MARRIAGE

Your spouse is either going to be your greatest asset or your biggest liability. Who you marry should be a good decision. This is not to be judgmental at all. This is just to be honest. And if someone is clearly living in an abusive lifestyle, then they're not good for you. Like, they're not. You want me to welcome them back? Baby, would you please do the honor of welcoming back the distinguished and esteemed guest? Well, hello, you guys. Welcome back to our channel. Welcome back to the channel, everyone. Welcome back to a video that you didn't know you needed. There you go. How's that for an intro? Oh my goodness. Well, y'all, we just got back from another exo marriage conference a couple days ago. And every time we get back, we feel like we've just been poured into so much. And y'all probably know this, but one of the biggest questions we always ask when we leave is like, why did we not know this before we got married? And obviously, it blesses our marriage on a daily basis to learn all of these things. But I feel like it would have been so good to know to prepare beforehand. And so when we were talking about what video we wanted to do, we were like, we should do one on how to successfully prepare for marriage. And so we're going to give you a lot of tips and things that we gained from the conference. I got a notebook. You know it's going to be real when my wife has a notebook. Because I haven't read the notes yet. I'm typically the prepared one. And she's the ad lib one. And she just likes to run off. And I like that too. But I like to know what we're talking about. So I don't know what we're talking about. We're switching roles. So we'll do the best we can. We are. A couple little prefaces. The lighting keeps changing. We're in Florida. Clouds keep flying over. This mirror got hung up on the wall thanks to my sweet mom. If you're new here, feel free to subscribe. Hello, I'm Chad. This is my sweet wife, Tori. Feel free to like the video if you want. If you don't want to, that's totally okay too. No pressure. And see the creepy face? See the lights changing. Sorry, guys. Zach, just make fun of it. And we're going to keep rolling. The show must go on. Tip number one. I don't want to do tip number one when they literally can't see anything. It's kind of funny. Lord, let this light change, please. In your son's holy name. Amen. What if it just, Chad's getting brighter. Okay, guys. So I feel like this sounds really simple. But I can't stress the importance of this. Number one is prayer. Like I said, I know that sounds simple. But strategic prayer over your future spouse, over your marriage, over the way y'all are going to handle communication, how you're going to handle finances, how you're going to handle boundaries and in-laws and holidays and everything else. Like specifically praying over that and having an intimate prayer life in the season leading up to marriage is only going to benefit your marriage more than you know. Yeah, it's only going to help, right? It's only going to help. Yeah. Because I feel like your marriage will be such a mirror and reflection of your intimacy with the Lord and your relationship with the Lord. And I mean, I can attest to that. When I feel the closest to the Lord, I feel like I operate the best as a wife. And so building that before marriage is just so important. And really in prayer, asking God like, what is your vision for my future marriage? Like what do you desire for my marriage in the future? And having that dialogue with the Lord, I think is super, super sweet and helpful. Yeah. For me, I had this big... That was a weird way to stop, a weird place to stop. I had this really big realization after we got married. This is a process. It's not like, okay, I'm married. I checked the box. Now you just live the rest of your life together in a rocking chair. Like, no, you now experience every single day with your second other. Every single day, you go through everything together. You go through your highest highs and your lowest lows. And so learning how to navigate that new oneness that you have together, learning how to help each other during hard times and celebrate each other during good times. And prayer is the key to that. It's absolutely the key. Remember, there's a big difference between knowing you need to pray and knowing you need to pray. Yeah. This is going to require a desire to prayer, not just like a, oh, I know. It's kind of like going to the gym. Yeah. We all know that we should work out in some capacity, whether it's hiking, whatever, stretching. We all know that we need to work out in some capacity. It's good for us to get our heart rate up. It's good. But we don't always practice it like we know it. We know it here, but we don't know it here. In prayer, we need to know it here. Yeah. It should be our first response, not our last resort. I wish I could take credit for that. I'm sure I heard that somewhere else. Okay. But anyways, okay. Number two that we feel like is so important is premarital counseling. So if you're in a relationship or engaged, premarital counseling, even counseling into your marriage is so important because it gives you that safe place to communicate and talk about points of conflict or what you're going through in the, what am I trying to say? The presence of wise counsel. And so I think sometimes if you're still trying to navigate, like your communication skills or like your communication languages, I don't know. I just loved having those conversations around Pastor Josh. Yeah. That was one of the most interesting things for me at XO. Whenever we get to meet people backstage, like the speakers, the authors, the pastors, we're getting advice from them and they're like, oh yeah, so I was praying with my pastor. And I'm like, you're a pastor. Yeah. And they're like, oh yeah, but I have a pastor too. I'm like, yeah, you have leadership. Like you have people lead. And like, it was such a cool thing to say. And I feel like it breaks that stigma of like counseling. Right. And it's like, no, like this is a good thing. Counsel is a good thing and we should seek it. I mean, even like here in the United States, whenever you want to pass your driver's test, you have to take a test. You have to get your permit for a whole year and you drive for a year with an adult who's teaching you how to do this. And with something as intense and powerful as marriage, we should have coaches. Like this is, this is not like a weird thing. This is a good thing. We should have people coaching us and teaching us good tips for marriage. Yeah. I wish I knew the verse off the top of my head, but it says something like in the presence of wise counsel, there is safety. Probably Proverbs something. It sounds like that. Just make up some Proverbs. Yeah, but it's so true. When you have counsel around you, when you have another couple that's ahead of you, another married couple that you can look up to, that you admire, that are doing it God's way, that you see fruit in their life that can pour into you and you can look up to and seek advice from, like that's going to be so important for your relationship, no matter what stage you're in. And two, if you're not married yet, something really good about having those kinds of people in your life is they can point out red flags in your relationship because a lot of times we can be blinded by love. We can be blinded by our feelings and our emotions. And so having people from the outside look in that you trust is really, really important. Yeah, I love that part. Yeah. Okay. So the next one is marriage is about service. I think that that's the most interesting switch from going from a life of being single, where everything really kind of revolves around you and your wants and your needs and what you want to do. And then you get to marriage and you're like, oh, it's about us and I want to serve you and I want to make sure that your desires are met and I want to make sure that you're living out, you know, what God has for you. And it just is a different dynamic. So I feel like as you're preparing for marriage, getting your mind ready and saying like, I want to become the best like servant leader in my life, whether that's in my church community or my friend group, like how can I go out and serve? Because that's going to be so beneficial in your marriage. Yeah, I just wrote a blog for XO. I'm a sassy blogger now, apparently. Yeah, he needs a wig and some... And I may get something like that. And I wrote in the blog, I can't remember which blog it was. If I can find it, I'll link it below. But essentially I'd said, show me a time where selfishness helped the marriage. It was like, and I'll wait. And it was just something so simple that when my best friend Anthony told me, you guys probably heard it before, but marriage isn't for you. And for me being a single guy, I was like, no, no, no, it's definitely for me. And he's like, no, no, you don't hear me. Marriage isn't for you. And he said, you don't marry someone for the way they make you feel. You marry someone for the way you want to make them feel. Because if you're only with this person based off of things that you're getting, what happens if they stop giving you those things? Now, can you now unlove them? And whenever Christ says, husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church, he gave his life up for the church. And it was a selfless love. It was unconditional love. It didn't have to do with her. It had to do with his lovingness of her. So it's so important for us to remember that if we're just with people under these conditions, that's not love. That's just like getting what we want from somebody. I think Jimmy, Pastor Jimmy Evans, he actually said something like the most painful life that you could live is one governed by your emotions. And it's true. Like, y'all, we can't be led by our emotions. We can't be led by our feelings. We have to be led by truth. Because I mean, I've had some feelings, y'all. When you get in traffic, some of the feelings you feel towards people, if you were to act upon those feelings, you'd be in jail. And so straight to jail. And it is a true thing. It's a joke. But we can't just live our life based off of our feelings. Yeah. So I'm going to combine two of these. So the next one is lose your pride, be willing to be humbled, and figure out a graceful way to take feedback and critique. Because I feel like growing up as a dancer, like I always was taking critique. Like I could do that when it came to performance. But in marriage, sometimes we need critical feedback and critique. And sometimes that can be really hard because it feels like, oh, I don't like that. That feels more like me and not my performance, you know? It's almost like you're too close, you know, to say that. Yeah. But I think it's really important to be able, because pride comes before the fall. And I have seen it happen up close and personal. It is a part of, honestly, my testimony in a way. And I am telling you, pride is going to get you nowhere in relationships. And so being able to forgive quickly, to drop the pride, to remember, I'm not fighting against this person. I'm fighting for this person. I'm fighting for this person's heart. I'm fighting for this relationship. It's so important. And I think I'm going to another thing that's later on. But I think you can't do any of those things if you have pride blocking you. And pride is going to block your prayer life. Truly being able to release pride over to the Lord and asking him to humble you. It's a hard prayer to pray because being humbled never feels good. But it is so beneficial for your relationships. I think what you're just saying touches on a lot of the purpose of marriage, where it's a sanctifying process. You've heard people say it. It's meant to make you more holy than happy. And I think we sometimes walk into a relationship thinking that we're a finished product and they're a finished product and we're never going to have an issue in our life and everything's going to be fine. And no, that's not the case. You, like, yes, you are a work in progress. And that person you're interested in or that person that you're going to be with in the future is a work in progress. And you're going to have to show them grace and they're going to have to show you grace. And you're going to have to lay down your pride during an argument. And these things will happen. And if you can start practicing that now and start to realize that, wow, like what I'm actually attracted to in someone is actually someone who can handle some criticism. Someone who's not afraid to hurt my feelings, not in a mean way, but they're not afraid to be real with me. And what that tells me is that they're not afraid to look out for my best interest because sometimes I don't know what's best for me. Tori knows what's best for me sometimes and I don't. So she has to be willing to upset me in order to get real with me. But if you only have yes, yes man is what they call them. If you only have yes people around you, then you're never going to really grow because people are only like around you for the coattail. And marriage is arm and arm. You're helping each other. You're lifting each other up. And yeah. Yeah. It's iron sharpening iron. And like, if you think about that process, that's not like a fun process. There's friction there. You know? And so you have to be willing to endure some friction in order to be sharpened. That's when it gets hot. Okay. Next thing I put is start creating habits now that will benefit your marriage in the future. Like you should be living in the way that you're praying that your future spouse is living, you know, because if you're crossing different boundaries now in your single life, the person that's going to hurt the most is your future spouse. You know, like, you're going to work through that with your future spouse. And so making sure that you're creating habits and not like, well, we have a whole entire boundary series. If you want to go watch the boundary series before I like go off on another 20 minutes of what boundaries you shouldn't be crossing in your singleness. But it's so true. Like, I feel like you always kind of talk about how you created new habits before marriage. And I feel like it was so beneficial to our marriage. It's funny. So many of us think that once we get married, everything's going to change. Like I'll no longer watch pornography. I'll no longer struggle with that. I'll no longer speak negatively. I'll no longer yell. You know, it's like, all of a sudden you're just going to hit the cap and like, great, I got it. It's kind of like what I was just talking about how we're works in progress. But if you can start practicing those things that help a marriage thrive now, before you're married, umbeso, like let's go, chest kiss. This is going to help you so dramatically because then you're going to be able to preserve your relationship in tough times where like, just being honest, we had terrible ways of communicating when we first started fighting. We did. And like, I want to make myself big and I want to like raise my voice and she wants to shut herself off. And so both of those are unhealthy. Yeah. And we both had to work with each other. She had to help me learn how to calm down and I had to help her learn how to handle like an actual constructive conflict. Right? Yeah. And not just like wall off. Yeah. And so, but we, if I would have been practicing that stuff earlier and working on like anger earlier, that would have been so helpful. Yeah. But there are so many things, but it's just keeping in mind, like give yourself a sober look. Like what about my habits in my life is actually going to be healthy in a marriage? Yeah. And if you don't know, ask a married couple like, Hey, here's my life. What about this is maybe contrary to the life I want if I desire to be married? It's that whole concept of like becoming the person that the person you're looking for is looking for. Okay. So the next thing is, especially if you're already dating or engaged, discuss your expectations. And I would love to say drop expectations, don't have any expectations, but I'm going to be real. The majority of arguments come from unmet expectations. So you probably have expectations that you don't even know you have. And it's important to talk about them. Chad's expectation is that I am going to do the dishes because he cooks the meal. So if I didn't know that he expected that for me, and I just assumed that he was going to do the dishes, then he's going to be kind of upset because he's going to be like, well, I just cooked. Yeah. You know, like I was kind of expecting this teamwork vibe, you know? And I didn't really think that was an expectation at the beginning. Yeah. But it was more kind of like, Hey, I just spent an hour plus serving you by cooking. And I hope that you would want to help me. And it was probably like an unhealthy expectation, but I should have... I don't even think it's unhealthy. I think any expectation that is expressed... Yes, it has to be expressed. As long as it's expressed and it's communicated, that's okay. It's the expectations that are not expressed, yet expected that cause issues. It makes people bitter. Yeah. Makes people just, you know, they sweep things underneath the rug. And a lot... This is so funny. A lot of the things that I've done wrong in marriage, I don't even know. Like if she would just tell me early, you know, because that's sometimes the issue is a lot of people, they expect someone to just know. Yeah. But especially, I'll speak for us guys for a quick sec. Yeah. We don't always know. And we don't, surprise, surprise. And so it's actually helpful whenever you communicate those things. Yeah. Because I'll just keep living my life. Yeah. Like I'm going to just like... Yeah, yeah. And then until someone tells me, I don't know. But if you just see them living their life and they're all happy and they're like, I can't believe they didn't know that. That day was important to me. And they didn't react or respond the way I wanted them to. This is the day of my cat's 12th birthday. How did they forget that? I'm just teasing. That ran off. But it's so true. I feel like unmet expectations really are such a crutch in relationships. And so just making sure that you like, feel comfortable and confident communicating those expectations. I think it's gonna be really important. And I'll just like throw a little wrench in that real quick. Yeah. I think I would do your best to drop expectations and keep standards, hopes and desires. Like I have a standard that I wanted a woman who was going to help me. Who was genuinely, we're going to be a team. Like we're in this together. It's not one-sided where she does everything or I do everything. We work as a team. That's a standard that I have, that I have for my spouse. Yeah. And I had hopes and desires that she would step up in certain times. But if there's ever a time where she can't. Yeah. That's not a deal breaker. Yeah. It's absolutely not a deal breaker. Yeah. I love the teamwork. But if she can't for whatever reason, then hey, I'm here. Yeah. So. Do I have something in my eye? You got a kiss. Okay, next I think is really important is understanding a biblical perspective of marriage and the parallel between what marriage looks like and what Christ's relationship to the church. Like his bride and that marriage looks like. Spend time reading the word. Read books about the meaning of marriage. I think that's by Tim Keller. Right? Like learning what a biblical marriage actually looks like. Go to an XO marriage conference. Whether you're single or not. When we were in Pittsburgh, Krista was there. She was single and she said that she gained so much from that. Krista, if you're watching. Shout out. We love you. And I was so impressed by her. By going, by learning, by taking in all this content and truly preparing for marriage. I think it's really, really important. Yeah, I think that... How do I say this lovingly? What I just heard from Dave and Ashley, who are speakers with XO, the tone of your voice will set the tone of your marriage. So I want to watch my tone with how I say this to you all. With how many resources there are out there on how to have happy and healthy marriages, we don't really have an excuse not to have one. And I don't mean that in a mean way because you probably came from a hard family. Maybe, you know, different things happen. And we want you to know that. I want to be sensitive when I say that. But there are so many good resources between books, events, speakers, counseling, curriculums, everything. We don't have an excuse not to really be able to work on this. Yeah, I think Jimmy Evans, he says, we have a 100% chance of success in marriage when we do it God's way. Yes. It's the best success rate possible when we do it God's way. And so we got to know God's way to be able to operate inside of that. Amen. So this is like a side note, but a lot of y'all, I did a little poll on Instagram and a lot of y'all said, do the 100 questions before you get engaged together. Like there's a devotional. I'm not sure who wrote it, but I'll try to look it up and put it on Amazon and put it below. But if you are dating, I think that could be really fun to go through those 100 questions with your person just to spark conversations and get to know each other. And I think it brings up a lot of like, how would we want to raise kids and different conversations that potentially could hold conflict, but you can work on that together. So anyways, that wasn't like a point, but that was just something I wrote down because a lot of y'all said that. It's a half of a point. It was a half of a point. Next page. Oh, there's multiple pages. Yeah, but these are more just like little things. Okay, next is, and I kind of touched on this before, but always remember that your connection with your person is bigger than the problem that y'all are facing. Yes. Like we fight for each other. We fight for our marriage. We fight for our future. We fight for peace. Like those are the things that we fight for. We fight the what, not the who. Like we are married and there are problems that we might have, but that is a problem that we're going to fix. It's outside of who we are as people. We address it as a problem. And that was something that I think Nairoof was talking about at XO. He was talking about having a defiant marriage and it was fantastic. Y'all, by the way, if y'all ever want to go back and watch any of these sermons that we're talking about, they're all on XO now. We will link that below. Y'all ever want to go back because like Chad said, there's so many resources. There's so much stuff. It is like drinking out of a fire hose, but if you subscribe to XO now or if you want to get their app, you can go back. There's sermon notes. There's so much stuff for you guys to glean from. And then next, I love this. Actually, one of you sent this in. You said, and start the healing journey now. I think that is one of the most important things, whether you're single, dating, engaged, married, whatever, take responsibility for your life and for your heart. Going to the Lord for healing and making sure that you are the best version of yourself for your loved ones is so important. And it's going to be so good especially if you're single. If y'all know Chad and I's love story, when we first met, I was not in a healthy place. I had not healed from a past relationship and it didn't get us on the best start. And so we didn't start dating then. I was not healthy then. And when we actually started dating, we had both healed from past relationships and we felt so much healthier when we actually moved forward into our relationship. And just as like a weird analogy, for those of you who like science, I've broken a lot of bones. I've probably broken, gosh, over 20. I've never broken a bone. Yeah, you haven't lived. So whenever you break a bone, sometimes they have to do a thing called setting your bone. Because say it takes you a few days to get into the hospital or the doctor's office and your bone will start to heal itself a little bit. But what if it heals wrong? So if you break your arm and it starts to heal this way because it wasn't appropriately attached for it to grow back together, then that's not a good look. And so we all experience brokenness from our relationships, from trauma and different things we've gone through, different heartbreaks. We all experience those types of things. And sometimes we have to dig down in there and actually have those broken parts of us rebroken to grow back healthier. And so if we just allow things to grow on their own and try to heal on their own, that could lead us down a kind of a bad path. And things just don't always heal over time. It heals whenever you get it healed. So I love this. I can't remember who at XO said this. I think it was Jimmy. But he said, Satan's tactic is for you to give up someone for something. Yeah, he said that. And I think remembering that no matter what stage you are in a relationship, that the world is going to tempt you and taunt you with things to get you to not want to attach to someone, to your person, to your marriage. There's going to be distractions. There's going to be temptations that are going to try to pull you away. And you have to remember that that trade is not worth it. You choosing your person is such a better investment than anything that the world tempts you and tells you that you need. Even if it's like, you need to do X before you get married. You need to experience this before you need to get married. If the world is pushing it to you, you should be questioning it. That's a bad deal. Close the case. A bad deal. So just remember that like, anything that the world is pushing you and telling you, you need this before this. Make sure that it actually aligns with scripture and God's character and his word before you take that as truth. Yeah, because I mean, honestly, if you look out in the world and if you're happy with where the world's heading, then you know, that's one thing. But we definitely need to have that defiant marriage, like what Nairobi was saying. Because we are fed so many things subconsciously through music, through TV shows, through media, through whatever we see out in the world. And it's typically in constant confrontation. That was Tourman Pilots. With what the world wants and what God wants. That's good. Yeah, that's all I got for you. Can I share one quick one for the peeps? Sure, man. Just a little small pro tip, a 0.25 tip. Really look at the person that you're interested in. Like take away the sunflower in their hair, take away the big muscles, take away all the stuff, right? Take it all away. Who are they really? Strip away the fig leaves, the metaphorical fig leaves, not their clothes, the fig leaves. Who are they really? How do they treat you? How do they handle hardship? How do they care about you? Do they go out of their way for you? Do you want to go out of your way for them? Because a lot of what we just talked about was a lot of like introspecting about ourselves. But I also just want to encourage you to like make a good choice whenever you're, like what we say, like sizing somebody up. This is not to be judgmental at all. This is just to be honest. And if someone is clearly living in an abusive lifestyle, then they're not good for you. Like they're not. But like what Tori said earlier in the video, it's so easy to get blinded by our desire for connection and relationship and intimacy that we'll like overlook some stuff. And that's not good. And so I think just as a nice little reminder, I'm not saying don't get excited. What I'm saying is, is don't let your excitement outweigh the realities of who you should- Your discernment. Yeah, your discernment and the worth of yourself and what you should deserve in a relationship. Yeah, and we'll end on this quote that we always, we've said this so many times on our channel. We got it from Rich and Dawn Cherie Wilkerson. But they say, your spouse is either going to be your greatest asset or your biggest liability. Who you marry should be a good decision. He literally laughed. He was like, I hate to say it this way, but it should be a good decision. It should be. It's the rest of your life, you know? And so make a good decision. Prepare. Get excited. It's not a scary thing. Just because marriage takes work, it doesn't feel like work. It shouldn't feel like work. And so it should be something that you're genuinely thrilled. I just want people to be excited about marriage. I don't want people to be like, oh, it feels like so much. No, it's the best decision we ever made. Yeah, and it's just, it's an incredible responsibility. And if you don't want that type of responsibility, then things may be a little easier. But the excavating of my heart and her heart that we've done together and breaking up hardness of hearts and the way we've just connected and done life together is so fulfilling and it's so sweet. And yeah, there was hard moments. But also like so much joy. Yeah, we, yeah. It's the joy, joy beyond. It's incredible. I think that's it, y'all. So a couple of quick things. Number two, let us know if you want more videos like this. We love the topic of relationships. So if you want like a part two of how to prepare for marriage, we can get more specific, less idealistic. And number two, XO Marriage. All right, y'all. We have our code that we have with them. It's called MastersFam. You get 50% off XO now or the conferences. We're gearing up for the fall conferences and we would love it to see you all. That'd be so fun. But you can also stream online with that code and you can also sign up for XO now, which is where you just get the monthly resources that they send out, so. Yeah, they're absolutely incredible. We love them so much. They're like family, truly. And we just believe in them and what they're putting out. And so anyways, if y'all check it out, let us know what you think. And I think that's all, y'all. That's all, folks. That's all, y'all. That's all, folks.