Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
PSALM 127:1
For many years, an email with the outline of a speech entitled “Eleven Things You Will Not Learn in School About Jobs”—attributed to Microsoft founder Bill Gates—has circulated the country. I say “attributed” because Gates never wrote or said these words. The list was actually distilled from a 1996 article written by Charles J. Sykes. Of course, whether or not Gates had anything to do with the list doesn’t really matter. The point is that the list effectively reveals that feel-good, politically correct teachings have created a generation of kids with a false concept of reality.
Here are some of the rules of life that you won’t learn in school:
Sage advice.
After reading this piece, I was inspired to make a similar list, but this one is entitled “Eleven Rules About Marriage That You Won’t Learn in School.”
Rule 1: Marriage isn’t about your happiness. It’s not about you getting all your needs met through another person. Practicing self-denial, self-sacrifice, patience, understanding and forgiveness are the fundamentals of a great marriage. If you want to be the center of the universe, which is not a good idea, then there’s a much better chance of that happening if you stay single.
Rule 2: Getting married gives a man a chance to step up and finish growing up. The best preparation for marriage for a single man is to man up now and keep on becoming the man God created him to be.
Rule 3: It’s okay to have one rookie season, but it’s not okay to repeat your rookie season. You will make rookie mistakes in your first year of marriage; the key is that you don’t continue making those same mistakes in year 5, year 10 or year 20 of your marriage.
Rule 4: It takes a real man to be satisfied with and love one woman for a lifetime; it takes a real woman to be content with and respect one man for a lifetime.
Rule 5: Love is commitment, not a feeling. It’s time to replace the D word—“divorce”—with the C word—“commitment.” Divorce may feel like a happy solution, but it results in long-term toxic baggage. You can’t begin a marriage without commitment. You can’t sustain a marriage without commitment. A marriage that goes the distance is really hard work. If you want something that is easy and has immediate gratification, then go shopping or play a video game.
Rule 6: Emotional and sexual fidelity in marriage is the real thing. Online relationships with old high school or college flames, emotional affairs, sexual affairs, and cohabiting are shallow and illegitimate substitutes for the real thing.
Rule 7: Women spell romance R-E-L-A-T-I-O-N-S-H-I-P. Men spell romance S-E-X. If you want to speak romance to your spouse, then become a student of your spouse, enroll in a lifelong “Romantic Language School” and become fluent in your spouse’s language.
Rule 8: Differences are God’s gift to you to create new capacities in your life. During courtship, opposites attract. After marriage, opposites can repel each another. You married your spouse because he or she is different. Different isn’t wrong; it’s just different.
Rule 9: Pornography siphons off a man’s drive for intimacy with his wife. Pornography robs men (and sometimes women) of a real relationship with a real person and poisons real masculinity, replacing it with the toxic killers of shame, deceit and isolation. Marriage is not for wimps. Accept no substitutes. Robbers should not be invited into your marriage.
Rule 10: As a home is built, it will reflect the builder. Most couples fail to consult the Master Architect and His blueprints for building a home. Instead, a man and a woman marry with two sets of blueprints by two different builders (his and hers). As they begin building, they discover that a home can’t be built from two very different sets of blueprints. [But when God builds the home, the couple will not labor in vain (see Psalm 127:1)].
Rule 11: How you will be remembered has to do less with how much money you make or how much you accomplish and more with how you have loved and lived.
Barbara and I will elaborate on many of these rules throughout this book. They are some of the foundation stones of a marriage—a relationship built on God’s blueprints.
Discuss