Bible Pointers on Marriage
A nine-lesson guide for The Well Shrewsbury
All scripture quotations are from the New King James Version (NKJV) unless otherwise indicated.
Please begin by answering this question honestly in your own words.
Before you commit to something significant — a job, a major purchase, a move — what kind of preparation do you normally do? And honestly, how much of that preparation do you think people typically do before marriage?
Luke 14:28
"For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it?"
Jesus said this about discipleship, but the principle is universal: serious commitments require honest preparation. Marriage is the most serious commitment most people will ever make.
The central idea of this lesson
Marriage is a covenant, not a contract. Entering it well requires more than strong feelings — it requires honest self-knowledge, biblical understanding and deliberate preparation. People who are pure, godly and in love still fail in marriage when they have not counted the cost.
The source material behind this lesson opens with an illustration that is both realistic and sobering. A young couple — homeschooled, raised in church, pure and chaste — got married with every reason to expect it to work. They were believers. They were virgins. They oozed naivete, as the source puts it. Six months later, the marriage was in serious trouble.
Being morally pure before marriage is right and important. But it is not the same as being prepared for marriage. Preparation requires understanding what you are entering into — its demands, its nature, its purposes, its cost. People who have done everything right morally can still fail in marriage if they have approached it with unrealistic expectations, incomplete understanding and untested character.
Jesus' instruction in Luke 14:28 is about discipleship, but the logic is direct: before you begin building, sit down and count the cost. Do not begin what you cannot finish. The person who begins a tower without counting the cost becomes an object lesson — unfinished and visible to everyone. Marriage entered without honest counting of the cost follows the same pattern.
Note
Counting the cost is not the same as looking for reasons not to marry. It is not pessimism or a lack of faith. It is what wisdom looks like before a major, permanent commitment. The book of Proverbs consistently describes wisdom as the person who looks ahead — who considers where a path leads before walking it — and folly as the person who acts without considering consequences. Entering marriage without honest self-examination and preparation is not faith; it is presumption. Faith sees the cost clearly and trusts God to provide for it. Presumption does not look.
Previous lessons in this series established that God's kind of love is a decision of the will, not primarily an emotion. That principle becomes urgently practical before marriage. The source material behind this lesson makes the point directly from Titus 2:4 — older women are instructed to teach younger women to love their husbands. You cannot teach someone to feel something. You can teach someone to choose something and to act on it.
This means that the emotional intensity of the pre-marriage period is not a reliable indicator of the love that marriage will require. The feelings of early romance — powerful, consuming, effortless — are real, but they are not the love covenant marriage is built on. That love is built later, through daily decision, through forgiveness, through service and through choice. A person who does not understand this going in will be unprepared when the emotional intensity of early marriage begins to settle into the ordinary rhythm of shared life.
Titus 2:4
"…that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children."
The practical implication is significant: before saying yes to marriage, a person needs to understand that what they are committing to is not a relationship that runs on feeling. They are committing to a daily decision to love someone unconditionally, in the same way and on the same terms that God loves them — regardless of how they feel on any particular day.
Going Deeper
The statistics around second and third marriages are instructive. Remarriage after divorce has a higher failure rate than first marriage — not lower, despite the common expectation that experience would help. The source material behind this lesson explains why: the person who ends a marriage and starts again is usually looking for a better spouse. But the issue is almost never the wrong spouse; it is an unrenewed mind, untested character and unexamined assumptions that go into each marriage carrying the same patterns. The rate of divorce in subsequent marriages goes up precisely because those patterns — not just the spouse — are the problem. Preparation matters more than finding the right person.
Counting the cost before marriage involves honest examination in several areas. These are not exhaustive — a good premarital course with your church will address many others — but they represent the most significant areas where people enter marriage underprepared.
Your own character, not just your partner's. The most important question before marriage is not "is this the right person?" It is "am I the right person?" Are you someone who can sustain a covenant? Are you capable of forgiveness when it is not easy? Can you prioritise another person's flourishing above your own comfort? These qualities are developed through the disciplines of discipleship, not through the experience of marriage itself. Marriage will test and reveal character, but it does not produce it.
Your family of origin. Every person brings patterns, expectations and wounds from the family they grew up in into the family they marry into. These are not disqualifying — everyone has them — but they need to be identified honestly before they become the unconscious furniture of a new marriage. What did love look like in the home you grew up in? What was handled well, and what was handled badly? What do you expect a marriage to look like based on what you saw? Those expectations will shape your marriage whether or not you are aware of them.
Your relationship with God as the foundation. John 15:5 says without Christ you can do nothing. The same applies to marriage. A marriage cannot be built on two people's love for each other alone. It requires a third party — God — at the centre. Before marriage, the honest question is: is your relationship with God deep enough and real enough to be the actual foundation of a shared life, not just a background feature of it?
Caution
This lesson is not designed to produce anxiety or to make marriage feel impossible. The goal is honest preparation, not discouragement. Every person who enters marriage has areas of immaturity, unresolved wounds and character still being formed. The question is not whether you are perfect — no one is — but whether you are being honest about what needs to grow, and whether you are doing the work to grow it. A person who enters marriage aware of their own areas of immaturity and actively working on them is in a far better position than a person who is unaware of those areas or who expects the marriage itself to resolve them.
Practical Tip
Whether you are preparing for marriage or wanting to strengthen the one you are in, identify one specific area from this lesson where you need to do more honest work: your understanding of what love actually requires; your awareness of patterns you brought from your family of origin; or the depth and reality of your relationship with God as the actual foundation of your life. Write it down. Then take one specific step this week — a conversation with a trusted person, a prayer commitment, or a decision to begin premarital or marriage preparation with your church leaders.
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| Question | My Answer | Group Discussion Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Read Luke 14:28. Jesus says count the cost before you begin. What specific costs of marriage do you think people most commonly fail to count before they enter it? What do they discover only after they have begun? | ||
| Read Titus 2:4. The lesson argues that the emotional intensity of early romance is not the same love that covenant marriage is built on. Do you agree? And if that is true, what is the love that covenant marriage is built on — and how do you develop it? | ||
| The lesson identifies three areas of honest preparation: your own character, your family of origin, and your relationship with God. Which of the three do you think receives the least attention in how people typically prepare for marriage? Why? | ||
| Read John 15:5. The lesson says a marriage cannot be built on two people's love alone — God has to be the actual foundation, not just a background feature. What is the difference between those two things in practice? What does each look like in a real marriage? | ||
| The most important question before marriage, this lesson argues, is not "is this the right person?" but "am I the right person?" Honestly and privately: how would you answer that question about yourself right now? |
Open questions for any level of experience. No right or wrong answers.
Counting the cost is an act of courage and honesty, not pessimism. These applications ask you to do it in three specific areas.
| Context | How I Apply This |
|---|---|
| Your own character | Identify one specific character quality that covenant marriage will demand of you that you know is underdeveloped. Not a general area — a specific one. Then identify one specific practice that would develop it. For example: if you know you struggle to forgive quickly, begin practising forgiveness in smaller daily relationships now. Character is not formed in a moment of commitment; it is built through repeated choices in ordinary life. |
| Your family patterns | If you have not done so, take time this week to write down three things you observed in your family of origin about how conflict was handled, how love was expressed, and what role God played in the home. Which of those patterns do you want to carry into the marriage you are building or preparing for? Which do you need to deliberately leave behind? This is best done with a trusted mentor or church leader who can help you see what you may not be able to see alone. |
| Formal preparation | If you are seriously considering marriage, speak with your church leaders about what premarital preparation they offer or recommend. Good preparation addresses the areas that most commonly cause problems in marriage before they become crises. It is not a sign of doubt or weakness; it is what counting the cost looks like in practice. If you are already married, consider whether a marriage course or pastoral conversation would strengthen what you are building. |
Tap each card to reveal the answer.
What does Luke 14:28 teach about entering a major commitment?
Luke 14:28
"Which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost?"
Luke 14:28. Serious commitments require honest preparation. Beginning without counting the cost produces an unfinished, visible failure.
Why is purity before marriage not the same as preparation for marriage?
Purity is moral obedience. Preparation is understanding what you are entering — its demands, nature, cost and the character required to sustain it. Pure, godly, believing people still fail in marriage when they have not understood or prepared for what covenant requires.
What does Titus 2:4 reveal about the love required in marriage?
Titus 2:4
"…that they admonish the young women to love their husbands."
Titus 2:4. Love can be taught — it is a decision, not just a feeling. Covenant marriage is not built on emotional intensity but on daily, chosen, self-giving love.
What are the three areas of honest preparation identified in this lesson?
1. Your own character — am I the right person? 2. Your family of origin — what patterns am I bringing in? 3. Your relationship with God — is God the actual foundation, not just a background feature?
Why do second and third marriages statistically fail at higher rates than first marriages?
Because the patterns, assumptions and unrenewed mind that caused the first marriage to fail go into the next one unchanged. The person changed the spouse but not themselves. Preparation matters more than finding the right person.
What is the difference between faith and presumption in entering marriage?
Faith sees the cost clearly and trusts God to provide for it. Presumption does not look at the cost at all. Entering marriage without honest self-examination and preparation is presumption, not faith — however sincere the person may be.