Featured Devotional
Important Advice for Finding the Right Person to Marry
There are four words I want you to remember: complete honesty, unselfish humility.
There are great privileges, possibilities, and opportunities in this wonderful time of life.
I would like to share a few thoughts with those of you who are not married but are in the exciting, thrilling, wonderful, and sometimes frightening and intimidating process of finding the person with whom you will ultimately spend the rest of your mortality and all of eternity. This can be a very sacred and deeply satisfying experience in your life.
Be Courageous
My first advice to you is to be courageous. Push yourself to develop one-on-one friendships. You don’t need to think every friendship will necessarily develop into romance, but much will be discovered in the one-on-one interaction.
Some years ago, President Dallin H. Oaks, First Counselor in the First Presidency, made this comment: “We counsel you to channel your associations with the opposite sex into dating patterns that have the potential to mature into marriage.”
Elder Robert D. Hales (1932–2017) later added: “When you date, learn everything you can about each other. Get to know each other’s families when possible. Are your goals compatible? Do you share the same feelings about the commandments, the Savior, the priesthood, the temple, parenting, callings in the Church, and serving others? Have you observed one another under stress, responding to success and failure, resisting anger, and dealing with setbacks? Does the person you are dating tear others down or build them up? Is his or her attitude and language and conduct what you would like to live with every day?”
Obey the Laws of Purity, Discipline, and Chastity
When you desire to expand a relationship beyond friendship into romance, it is so important that the laws of purity, discipline, and chastity are obeyed.
You know that you have strong physical emotions and passions that must be controlled and carefully governed to avoid excessive kissing or any kind of inappropriate touching.
I assure you as an Apostle of the Lord that excusing yourself because you feel you care so much for one another and moving inappropriately close to breaking the law of chastity will not help you in the very important spiritual choice you are hoping to make. Your mind, your heart, and your spiritual senses will be clouded.
Set your limits. Plant those limits deep into all you do together so that they cannot be run over or moved aside as you feel strong emotion for each other.
Take a Chance
Next, don’t be afraid to take a chance with someone who might not be an obvious choice. When Kathy and I began to know one another, to me she was not only a person of very deep faith and intelligence, but she was also a Florida princess. She wore nice clothes and had a certain sophistication. I was a farm boy. I came from a small dairy farm.
So Kathy took a chance on me. I am sure my background was different from what she thought her potential husband would have. We don’t have to meet only those who come from backgrounds just like our own. We look deeper and further into who they are and who they will become.
I love this quote by President David O. McKay (1873–1970), who was the Lord’s prophet upon the earth when I entered my first year at the university. Speaking to the men, he said:
“If you meet a girl in whose presence you feel a desire to achieve, who inspires you to do your best, and to make the most of yourself, such a young woman is worthy of your love. …
“… In her presence you do not attempt to take advantage of her; in her presence you feel that you would like to be everything that [you] should become, for she will inspire you to that ideal.”
Commit to Honesty and Humility
There are four words I want you to remember: complete honesty, unselfish humility.
President Jeffrey R. Holland, Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, has said, “True love blooms when we care more about another person than we care about ourselves.”
As you progress in your dating to seriously considering sharing your lives together, you share your most private thoughts, your dreams, and your fears. You share who you are, who you have been, and who you want to become. Complete honesty and unselfish humility.
If you struggle with pornography or have struggled in the past, a person considering you as an eternal companion deserves to know about your challenge and how you have faced it. If you have had difficulty with other addictions, keeping the law of chastity, lying, or stealing, humility and honesty urges that you give to the person you love the opportunity to spiritually and prayerfully weigh the choices of going forward, before a proposal is accepted and announced.
Does everything that has ever happened have to be said? You use your wisdom and good judgment. If you took Nancy’s bubblegum out of her desk in the sixth grade without her permission, the subject can probably be forgotten. But if you had a two-year struggle with pornography, then that is more important.
A thoughtful approach is to ask yourself what you would want to know if you were in the place of your companion, prayerfully preparing to spend your life with someone you love.
Something from years in the past might be quickly understood and create no obstacle at all. If the problem or weakness or sin is more recent, it may cause the other to slow down the relationship and allow for more time and more experience in judging whether he or she is ready to move forward. It may require more prayer, discussions with parents or trusted leaders, and more experience with the person you hope to have with you forever.
We should remember that no one is perfect. All of us have made mistakes. As the person you love speaks honestly to you, respect the courage that he or she is showing. If something is clearly in the past, keep this scripture in your heart: “He who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more” (Doctrine and Covenants 58:42).
I quote once again from President Holland: “No serious courtship or engagement or marriage is worth the name if we do not fully invest all that we have in it and in so doing trust ourselves totally to the one we love.”
Complete honesty, unselfish humility.