Does spiritual compatibility matter?

Tomi Toluhi

Does it matter if I and the person I am thinking about marrying have different views when it comes to the role God plays in our lives? If we get on well in all other areas and agree to respect each other’s differences when it comes to spirituality can a relationship not work under those circumstances? What if the person I want to marry believes in God but is less concerned about spiritual things than I am, can I not influence them positively later on in marriage? These are some of the questions people find themselves grappling with as they approach the crucial decision of who to marry. In the last few days I have had a number of messages and emails asking questions relating to spiritual compatibility so I thought I would write a blog post addressing this issue.

First things first
It all depends on how much your relationship with God means to you. If your life is centred around God, as it should be, contemplating marrying someone whose life is centred elsewhere presents unique problems which you would not have had otherwise. Couples sometimes downplay the importance of spiritual compatibility in their relationship because during the initial stages of the relationship they seem to have so much else in common that they minimise the importance of this fundamental area. There is a tendency to think that because you like each other, have fun together and agree on a lot of things, your spiritual differences can be worked out as you go along. However, there are a number of reasons why this approach does not work.

Storing up conflict
Harmonious marriages are usually a union between two people who have shared values. Your values determine how you view life, what is important to you in life, and consequently the decisions you make about your life. If God is central to your life then your values will emanate from your relationship with Him. To attempt to share your life with someone whose core values emanate from elsewhere and whose decisions will be driven by a different agenda is to store up conflict for later years. There are many potential areas of conflict when you marry someone who does not believe what you believe: Where will you get married? What happens regarding worship after you marry? In what faith will your children be raised? What happens if you want to get involved in your Church or give to godly causes and he or she disagrees? There is so much potential for conflict in the future. It has been my observation over the years that people who claim to be fairly relaxed about these issues before marriage suddenly become more militant about their views once the adjustment period of marriage gets underway and especially when children enter the picture.

Betraying you
In order for you to live in some semblance of peace in an arrangement where there is spiritual incompatibility, either one of you is going to have to betray your core values in an attempt to achieve compromise. Have you considered what you will have to give up in order to live peacefully with this person? If you are passionate about your relationship with God and you marry someone who is lukewarm about their relationship with God, or indeed has no relationship with God to speak of, then you will have to tone down your passion in order to accommodate their indifference. Rarely does the compromise happen in the opposite direction. If someone is on a ladder heading upwards, it is always easier for someone lower down to pull them down than for them to pull that person up. So it is with trying to go on a spiritual rescue mission in order to be able to marry someone. If you are trying to influence someone positively for Christ it should not be with the ultimate agenda of marrying them. If that happens naturally then it is an added bonus but it should not be the reason why you pursue someone for Christ. On the other hand, if the person you are contemplating getting married to is less spiritual than you are but they are pursuing a deeper relationship with God of their own volition, then it is safe to assume that they are not being swayed by the prospect of marrying you. If you have to beg, cajole, convince and persuade this person to get involved with spiritual matters, then you have your work cut out for you if you decide to get married to them because as soon as the motivating factor, their desire to marry you, is removed, they will revert back to status quo.

Life happens
When the challenges of life hit, as they always do, who will be by your side? You want your closest confidant to be someone who has confidence in, and a solid relationship with, God. Someone who can offer you godly advice and encouragement. Someone who can stand with you spiritually and pray with you when your world seems to be caving in. Clearly you will not get that sort of support from someone who has a dubious relationship with God. This also applies when you marry someone who claims a knowledge of God but has a shallow relationship with God and does not desire anything beyond that. The issue of whom to marry goes beyond whether that person professes Christ or not. The biblical admonition, ‘You will know them by their fruits’ comes to mind. Many Christians do not realise that when they choose to marry an immature Christian who is not interested in growing in faith, they will experience many of the same relationship difficulties they would have experienced with someone who has no relationship with God at all. Virtues like forgiveness, patience, kindness and humility do not come naturally to most of us. They have to be worked into us through a living, breathing, growing relationship with God.

Trusting the God in you
I don’t know about you but, I would never trust my heart into the hands of a man whose heart is not secure in God. Human nature is too fickle to depend totally on who someone says they will be to you 20 years down the line if they don’t have the help of God. People change but when the word of God is a permanent anchor in their lives, you know for a certainty that any changes will be for the better. The reason I trust my husband so implicitly is because I trust the God inside of him. I trust that he lives his life constantly under the influence of God and therefore will always seek my best interests. Similarly that is the reason why he trusts me to seek good for him at all times. The vows I made when I married him cannot be kept in my own power; only in God’s power. If I am tempted to be less than kind, loving, respectful, loyal or whatever other virtue is required to create a happy home environment, the Spirit of God within me is quick to call me to order. My husband can rely on that. As long as a person is God-ruled, you can trust that they will seek your best interests; if they are self-ruled, you do not have any such assurances and you are basically at the mercy of their whims. I can’t think of anything more risky than that. Are you prepared to take that chance?

Taking God’s eye view
From God’s perspective, spiritual compatibility is the most fundamental factor in choosing someone to spend the rest of your life with. In advising widows who were considering remarriage in 1 Corinthians 7:39, the Apostle Paul’s singular instruction was this. ‘…She is free to marry anyone she wishes, but only if he loves the Lord.’ As soon as we begin to view our relationships from God’s perspective, our choices become clearer. I have learnt that when you honour God in your decision making, He will honour you with good outcomes. If you want God’s blessing on your marriage you won’t get it by consciously marrying someone in whose life God is not a priority. If you are already into such a marriage, God will work with what you have and His grace will cover you. If are still at the decision making stage, you have the distinct advantage of shaping the future today by the decision you make. Marry someone who matches your passion for God. I can assure you that you will never regret doing it God’s way.

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Why Values in Marriage Matter

By Tomi Toluhi • December 18, 2024
Sharon was a God-loving, go-getting, hard-driving, ambitious woman with grand dreams of conquering the world. She had all her plans carefully laid out. She would own her own business by 35, hit her first million by 37, exponentially grow her business and by 40 she would branch out into real estate acquisition. Her ultimate goal was to make millions, not for herself, but to provide a better life for orphaned children in her community. She had felt the pain of being parent-less and passed from relative to relative with no real stability growing up. She knew what it felt like to go to bed hungry and cold. No child should ever have to go through what she went through growing up. She was determined to do everything in her power to rescue, nurture and care for as many orphans as she could. Mark was a stable, godly, focused man with the ministry on his mind. For as long as he could remember, he had always felt a divine call to be a missionary. Reaching unreached people-groups was his consuming passion. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that he wanted to spend his life preaching, teaching and pastoring in an island community where no Christian church existed. He was committed to living among these forgotten people and reflecting the light and love of Jesus to them. Then Mark met Sharon. They fell in love, had a whirlwind courtship, got married…and reality struck. You can already tell where their story is heading. Wondering what became of Mark and Sharon? We will never find out because they are entirely fictional but their story illustrates a point which I have observed graphically playing out in some marriages. It is entirely possible to fall in love with someone who shares your Christian values but whose life values are wildly different from yours. Your values manifest in two different ways; what is right and what is wrong in your view, and what matters to you most. The dictionary supports this distinction in our understanding of values. Values could refer to the principles or standards of behaviour which you subscribe to, including your commitment to live by Biblical standards, but on the other hand values could equally refer to your judgement of what is important in life. Sometimes Christian singles are encouraged to pursue a relationship with someone because they are both Christians and want to please God with their lives, ignoring the fact that pleasing God means different things to different people. Your desire to please God will play out differently in your life compared to the person who sits next to you in Church on Sunday, based on your values. Your assignment is to find someone whose life values align closely to yours so that you can both stay true to your values in marriage. To some people, pleasing God simply means living a quiet life raising their families in a godly manner. Others want to go out in the marketplace, business, politics or academia and make a big difference as leaders. Yet others want to dedicate their lives fully to God’s work in some form of ministry, caring spiritually for a lost and dying world. None of these approaches is more noble than the next; they’re just different. What is right for one person may not be right for the other. It’s all a question of what matters to you and how God wired you internally. Amos 3:3 makes a succinct statement in this regard. “Do two people walk hand in hand if they aren’t going to the same place?” In other words, before you hitch your wagon to someone else’s vehicle, ask yourself “Are we heading in the same direction?” If someone is heading for Australia and the other person is heading for Austria, the destinations sound similar but the direction of travel for those two countries is completely different. The destination you intend to arrive will determine the route you choose to travel in life. If you get in the same vehicle with someone going in a different direction, one of three things will happen; you will arrive at your desired destination and they won’t, they will arrive at their desired destination and you won’t, or neither of you will arrive at your preferred destination. When people fall in love and emotions are running high, it’s easy to think that these things don’t matter, or that they will sort themselves out with time. Twenty years of counselling married couples suggests otherwise to me. When the music stops and the stars fall out of their eyes, reality collides with fantasy as they slowly come to terms with the fact that one or both of them will need to compromise on their values for the survival of their marriage, and compromise you must. If you are already married to someone whose values are diametrically opposed to yours, compromise is your only option because in God’s eyes the survival of your marriage has to take precedence over your closely held dreams. When I think about my life and the things that drive me daily, I realise how blessed I am to be married to a man who is driven by a similar impetus. He encourages me to fulfil God’s call for my life because it aligns with God’s call on His life. Our values are congruent. I shudder to think what my life would have been like if I had married a man who dances to the beat of a different drum. I would have had to lay aside all the possibilities before me to embrace a different future. It would have been a painful but inescapable compromise. Values are critical because they influence how you choose to spend your energy, where you invest your time and how you allocate your money. Consequently, if your values are fundamentally different from your spouse’s, you may love each other but you will not be able to enjoy living with each other until you have made deep and necessary compromises. There will be many fault-lines and potential battlegrounds where you will disagree and there will be no ‘right’ answer. If you want different things in life but you want to be in each other’s lives, something will have to give. You will either have to be faithful to your love or faithful to your values; the best marriages occur when you can be both at the same time.  If you’re considering getting married to someone, spend time exploring with them what their values are. Ask questions and read between the lines of every conversation, trying to sense what matters to them. Crucially, observe their lifestyle. A person’s values are more eloquently conveyed by the life they live than the words they speak. When you observe the trajectory of someone’s life, where they will land is predictable. An oak tree doesn’t become one overnight, but the leaves of the tiny seedling will tell you what it’s future holds. Ask…listen…observe, and above all else be prayerful.

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By Tomi Toluhi • December 6, 2024
It is a well-known statistic that money consistently features as one of the top three triggers for a breakdown in marriages. It is therefore no surprise to me that my most-vi ewed video on Facebook so far relates to money. Money is not just notes and coins; it is such a powerful force that even Jesus acknowledged that the strongest competitor with God for human hearts and allegiance is money. Matthew 6:24 highlights this: ‘No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.’ Money means different things to different people and usually it is what money represents that couples fight over, rather than the money itself. To some, money signifies the opportunity to make a contribution to the lives of others; to others it represents status, the opportunity to gain control, respect, power, fame; to others it represents a world of options. 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The premise on which biblical marriage is based is covenant. Covenant means that you pool resources and liabilities; your strengths compensate for each other’s weaknesses. As long as there are walls of division between your finances, it is impossible to achieve true unity; you are not truly one until your money is one. This demands going beyond paying lip service to unity and actually seeing each other as financial partners. Marriage is not supposed to be run like two separate corporations under the same roof. This does not necessarily mean having joint accounts, but it means that both parties are aware of what is coming in and what is going out of the family. It also means that through continuous practice you have learnt to communicate effectively about money which leads to my second point. Stop keeping secrets Keeping financial secrets is never a good idea in marriage. The minute couples begin to hide pay rises, bank accounts, expenditure and debts from each other, disunity, division and distrust sets in. Every marriage needs a healthy balance between financial autonomy and financial accountability and you need to agree as a couple where that balance lies. As adults we all need a certain amount of discretionary spending money such that we don’t have to justify every little expense to our spouse. Depending on what your family income is, you need to agree as a couple how much you can spend without consulting each other. As a rule of thumb, major purchases should be a product of joint decision making, although what constitutes major in one family can be a minor expense in another. This is why dialogue is so crucial. In the words of Larry Burkett, the noted Christian author on finances, ‘Money is either the best or worst area of communication in a marriage’ . If you can’t trust each other financially, this is an issue that needs to be worked through with a counsellor or it will eat at the heart of your marriage and rob you of your sense of unity and oneness. Agree a budget and stick to it Where there is no budget, a business will perish and the same can be said for marriage. The downfall of many couples is the unwillingness to take an honest look from time to time at where their money is being spent and whether that represents good financial stewardship. Many Christians mistakenly believe that budgeting is a faithless exercise. Yet Jesus Himself taught the exact opposite. In Luke 14: 28-29 He states, ‘Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you.’ I find it instructive that Jesus assumes the wisdom of budgeting our resources should be obvious. Similarly, financial planning is a theme that runs through the entire book of Proverbs written by King Solomon, one of the wealthiest men who ever lived. The absence of a financial plan is evidence of the absence of a financial vision for your family. When you agree as a couple how you want to manage your finances from month to month, and what your long term goals are, a lot of stress and conflict can be eliminated from your marriage. Understand temperament differences The way we choose to spend our money is a reflection of our money-values. We spend on what we cherish. Usually couples have different money languages and this can be the start of many conflicts if not properly handled. In my article, ‘Why couples really fight over money’ , I explore in detail the four basic money languages and how they influence our spending patterns. 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