How should a young man prepare for marriage? In this podcast, Scott Brown and Jason Dohm address this question with special guest Hayden Ford who was married a year ago. Hayden credits his parents’ commitment to teach God’s Word daily and to model a godly husband-wife relationship in the home as giving him a great foundation in preparing him for marriage—but young men need more than this to be ready. 

 

Key lessons from Hayden: Be disciplined students of the Scriptures yourselves, learning God’s attributes and knowing what His Word says about the important issues of life. Purpose to have a consistent income and ample savings. Honor the authorities God has placed in your life, humbly getting their opinion on your readiness for matrimony. And stop seeking marriage as your driving aim, but strive to be more like Christ each day. 

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Today we've got the privilege of a young man who just got married a few months ago and he's going to talk to us about the different ways God prepared him to be married. I hope you enjoy the conversation. So, Jason, you know, it's really important that young people get prepared for marriage. It's the biggest thing that you do in your life.

You don't want to start it unprepared. Yeah, you want to have a lot of things set before you go into marriage. And those are the things that get set are the things that you learned before you got married. Now, there's a lot to learn once you get married, but it's really good to hit the ground running. Hear, hear.

Yeah. So we've got Hayden Ford to talk about just the different ways that God used to prepare him for marriage. We've loved the Ford family for a long time. This is actually family to family friendships. There are a lot of domes who are friends with a lot of Fords and vice versa and Browns.

This is special. And that guy's dad is one of the dearest friends, Tom Ford. So now I, I'm pretty sure I met Hayden when he was about four feet tall. He's not four feet tall anymore. And he got married.

How long you've been married? I've been married a little over a year, a little over 11 months, I mean 30 months, a little over 30 months. That's so great. Yeah. I was so delighted to be at your wedding.

What a joy that was. Jason and I had been married a cumulative around 75 years. That's a lot more than me. Yeah, hey, you got it. There's a lot of good things ahead for sure.

So we're just going to throw some questions at you. The first question has to do with just your home and your parents. What did your parents do that was helpful in preparing you to get married? I think probably the thing that my parents did that was most helpful for preparing to get married was really the priority that they set upon the Word of God in our home, letting it be something that we spent time in every day and taught us the truths of God's Word and how it applies to the way we live life in general, kind of gave that foundation that's important for marriage. That was probably the most helpful thing that they did for me.

And then also the example that they set as a godly marriage, a picture of that for me to see is not perfect, but they did it humbly and were a good example for me going into marriage. Hayden, that makes me think of two different things when you talk about the Word of God every day. One is the Word of God has all sorts of things that we need to know that we wouldn't know if we didn't have Bibles. So you're getting this steady drip, drip, drip, drip deposit of things that the Word of God teaches that are invaluable to you. The second is actually just the overarching principle that our home centers around the Word of God.

So even aside from anything that the Word of God teaches in particular is this orientation of the whole family that whatever happens in the day, we're making sure this thing happens. That's so valuable, you know, that you go into the marriage knowing that it's your job to center this new home around the word of God is so valuable. Yeah, hey, and the Word of God prepares you for everything, everything. So, you know, that is the greatest foundation. And I know that's how your parents wanted to conduct your family life where scripture was sufficient.

And now, you know, in your own heart, you say the same thing. Your word, O Lord, is a lamp unto my feet. But to have that as a word of God as the runway to a marriage is the most powerful thing. How do you prepare for marriage? The Word of God will prepare you for everything, and it'll prepare you for everything that'll ever happen in your marriage as well.

So you have this remarkable testimony of wisdom. Scott, you and I have both spent a considerable amount of time in the home that Hayden grew up in. It's such a fun place. But it is, as he described it, I don't think I've ever been there where Tom and Lee didn't bring out the Bible and we consider something that it said. But alongside that is so much laughing and cutting up.

So anyway, it's this wonderful mixture that we've had the opportunity to experience ourselves. So we know exactly what you're coming out of. It's great. No kidding. When you're talking about preparing for marriage, really it's about preparing for life in the scripture.

It has everything we need for life and godliness. So when you kind of look at it that way, that's gotta be your foundation. You know, I got up in front of one of our singles conferences at Ridgecrest one year and I said, you know, stop preparing for marriage. Become like Jesus Christ. Now, you know, that's a little bit of an overstatement, right?

But that's so critical. So what kinds of things did you self-consciously do to prepare yourself just on your own? Yeah. Really more than anything, I think God prepared me, in the circumstances that He brought into my life. I made it a goal to read and to study and try to get a theological foundation, But then as you learn and grow and know who God is, his attributes and study those, the more you can learn to trust him in life and the difficulties that God sends your way, it builds your faith.

And really all that together kind of prepared me as far as like specific things that I set goals to do. You know, I feel like when if you're going to take on a life that's a big responsibility and it's a it's a commitment for life and it's your time. I was in school and one of my goals was to finish my undergrad and make sure I had that behind me because I wanted to have more time. I did my masters after I got married, but I did it more low-key, just kind of like one class of a semester and not as high-paced as it was before. Another thing I wanted to do before I got married was read Waingridham systematic theology, kind of get a doctrinal foundation more systematically than just simply reading the Word of God.

Having someone kind of explain that for me, That was something that I did that was really helpful. And then financially, I had a couple goals that I wanted to meet in order before I took the next step toward marriage. Is this Hayden's bucket list before marriage? You know, people have such shallow, ridiculous, unprofitable bucket list. And I like your bucket list.

I think you probably find mine more shallow and unprofitable. There you go. So we can be more like Hagen. Yeah, I think there are things that you set to tell yourself that you're married, that you're ready to be married. Did you have particular financial goals?

I did. I wanted to be sure I had a consistent income. I was growing up, I did a lot of different things and all of it was not necessarily consistent. As far as a specific goal, I had set that I wanted to have a hundred thousand before I got married so that I could have a place to live. That was kind of one of my goals.

So my wife and I bought a house together, maybe like eight days before we got married. That's called counting the chickens before they hatch, I think. You're pretty safe eight days out. Yeah. Oh, that's neat.

That's really neat. Did you have sort of personal maturity goals or did you think like that at all? Yes, I think as a kid, It was something that I was kind of convicted of. I think it's a verse in Proverbs. I don't remember the exact quote, but it's, in the gate, the fool has nothing to say.

I felt like oftentimes, anytime there was a conversation centered around meaningful things that I didn't really have much to say. And I knew that it was just a lack of my discipline to study the Word of God and be filled with it so that it overflows. And so I really set some goals to really dig into the Word of God personally, spend considerable time daily and time also praying and the Lord used that faithfulness to stay disciplined to create a lot of fruit in my life that it wasn't necessarily just immediate or that it just you know, I could trace it necessarily to it, but I could see God using that to change my life and to mature me and to prepare me. And so that was kind of a goal. I think another thing that I felt was helpful as far as maturity goes, being a judge of your own maturity, even preparing for marriage, sometimes it's hard to judge ourselves.

Especially when we're young, we might think more highly than we ought of ourselves. I found it was helpful to talk to people that I loved and knew cared for me and were wiser than me and asked them, am I ready? Am I mature? And Honestly, my wife, I was interested in her for about five years before we got married. And I did talk to actually one of my sisters about that and she didn't think I was ready.

And so I just continued to wait and wait and wait. Before I got married, she said she did think I was ready. So that was good. I hate one of the things that you said I think is so important. And when When young men in our congregation or the congregation I'm serving express an interest to move into this phase of life, one of the things I almost always tell them is you need to establish yourself as a man in our congregation Because little boys grow up in our congregations, and people are slow to make the transition.

They actually have become men. But we're used to seeing them as little boys. And so my counsel to them is when we meet to pray, you pray. Let your voice be heard. Come ready to pray for something that will be substantial and that is needed in our congregation and just sort of make yourself a man in our congregation so that when people hear you're pursuing this, they don't think of the little boy that they've seen grow up in the church, that they know the man that you've established yourself to be.

When you talk to your parents about readiness for marriage. How did that go? I honestly, when I, when I talked to my dad, especially when I thought I was ready to move forward and talk to my dad. He was like, I think you are ready. So that was a big confirmation as well.

Yeah. It wasn't like you've got a lot of things to work on son. So that was a nice confirmation for sure. Oh, that's great. Hey, was there anything in particular in the scriptures that you felt was most helpful in preparation?

For me, probably one thing is not necessarily like a specific verse that stands out to me, but trying to figure out how do you know the will of God? That whole idea, trying to know how do I know that God wants me to marry this person? I think studying the scripture, hearing it preached, John MacArthur did a series that I found was really helpful in knowing the will of God. It really starts with knowing God. Do you believe in Jesus Christ's salvation?

You know, once you have that, then you move to the God's commands that are clear in Scripture. He's given us plenty of things. For example, honor your father and your mother. That's a clear command. And if you're not doing that, that he's clearly commanded, how could you ever expect him to show you who you're supposed to marry?

And then moving from there, 1 Thessalonians 2, I believe it says, the will of God for you is your sanctification. He wants us to be sanctified and to grow. And part of that is through the Word of God. Like Jesus in His high priestly prayer said, Father, sanctify them by Your truth. Your Word is truth.

And then as you do that, your mind is being renewed and your desires are becoming like Christ. And then God kind of uses that to what you desire is good and right. And so then you can kind of walk forward in faith with that basis from the Scripture. You know, this is clearly what God has given us and then can kind of move forward toward marriage with that foundation. I think having that foundation from the Scripture of how do you know the will of God was probably one of the most helpful things for me to know that I wasn't just like walking out on my own doing, you know, making a dumb decision.

I could rest in that foundation of God's will. You know, you're a part of, I mean, a community of people, you know, who are self-consciously preparing themselves for marriage. And you know, you just told us how you did that. And I praise the Lord for that kind of focus for getting ready to be married. So did anything take you by surprise now that you've been married all this time?

I'd say probably the biggest surprise for me was how good it is when you seek to honor the Lord, seek to honor the authorities God has placed in your life, and seek to love your wife like Christ loves the church, just how sweet it can be. It's been really amazing, really huge blessing. Greatest thing in my life. Yeah. I had this realization in the first months and years of our marriage, I didn't get married because I thought it would make me happy, but it did.

I wasn't expecting it. That took me by surprise. Yeah. So much of the sweetness though is interrelated with the person that you marry. Yeah.

It doesn't have to be sweet. For so many people it isn't sweet. You know, we know Madison, your wife, at least a little bit. And she's just a lovely young woman. And by that, I mean so much more than a pretty young woman.

She's a substantive... She's a blessing in so many ways. But when you marry somebody like that, it's the second most influential thing to your happiness. There is walking with Jesus, and then there is choice of a spouse. I think one of the things we want to say to people who are listening is it is so important who you choose, as, as a spouse because you're going to be eating the fruit of that decision for so long.

Yeah. Amen. So, and now, and now, you know, your wife, Madison, you know, has a baby and that baby's hearing you talk when you are in the room. So you're, you're all, you are already preparing that baby to be married someday. That's right.

As the preparation happens every day in life. And I think you're going in the right direction. What a joy. It's isn't a joy to talk to a man who tried to prepare himself for marriage like that. Many years ahead, many happy years ahead, I'm sure.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, Hayden, thank you so much. Jason, anything else before we shut down? No, it's just good to see you. Yeah, thanks.

Hey, thanks for joining us, Hayden. God bless you guys. And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life Podcast, and we hope to see you next time. Resource helpful, we encourage you to check out ChurchandFamilyLife.com