“Are you called to marry this person?” I ask whenever I counsel premarital couples. After their eyebrows return to their resting place, they usually stammer, “Uh, yes. I think so.” You think so? Marriage is a commitment, but it is also a calling. Not everyone is called to be married. I’m sure your mind is filling up with examples from your extended family who fit the bill. 

In their book and premarital program Called Together, Steve and Mary Prokopchak explain that premarital counseling “helps to build a couple’s faith, or it will reveal to the couple that they are, in fact, not called together.” More Christians need to stop asking if their future spouse is “the one for me” and start asking if their future spouse is “the one I am called to be with.” When you know that the Lord has called you together with your spouse, arguments, different values, and even tragedies won’t tear you apart. This is why marriage must be a communal decision. Far too many lovestruck twenty-somethings (and fifty-somethings, for that matter) marry without seeking honest input from their family, pastors, and friends. When you’re called to marry a person, your faith community will know it, too. 

Now we’re cooking. We have our essential ingredients blended together to make a beautiful marriage: connection, communication, commitment, and calling. Colossians 3:14 sums it up like this, And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. 

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Dana Che Williams is a speaker, marriage/relationship coach, and the host of the Real Relationship Talk podcast, where she helps people uncomplicate relationships and build deeper connections. She is also a devoted daughter and friend of God and serves as a Teaching Pastor at a multi-site, multi-ethnic church in Virginia Beach, VA. In groups, large or small, Dana’s mission is singular: to help lead people into more fruitful and connected relationships with the Lord and each other. On the podcast, she is known for her graceful candor, humor, and encouraging yet challenging advice. Dana holds a B.A. in communication from Regent University. She has a fierce passion for fashion and a fiercer passion for truth. She shares her life with Shaun, her childhood sweetheart and husband of twenty-four years, their four amazing children, and their “multi-cultural” dog in beautiful Virginia Beach, VA. Connect with her on social media @mrsdanache and find helpful relationship resources on her website at https://danache.com.