When I had been out of High School for a few years and had been working at the Post Office for about that amount of time I made a new friend and was reacquainted with an old friend. The new friend was a guy who was in my wedding and the old friend was a girl that I had spoken with a lot as a kid. She was on my school bus route.

While working at the Post Office Tom, my new friend, and I would end up flirting with this girl. We found her to be both pretty and fun. It also didn’t hurt that we rarely saw someone our own age because we worked such weird hours. But, we both knew that she was, at least for the time being, not good. I have no idea where she is now or what she is now like, but I do know that we understood something that a lot of guys don’t understand when they’re young. There are just some girls that you don’t date. So, I remember conversations about her between the two of us being warnings about her.

How many times have you seen guys fall in love with a beautiful woman that hasn’t got much else going for her? She’s mean. She is borderline or even verbally abusive to this guy. And, for some reason he stays with her.

Guys are tempted in ways that girls are not. Guys are very visual. This is not to say that girls don’t find guys attractive, but it is to say that this is a particular area where guys struggle.  I have heard of some of the most outrageous stories that involve guys dating a beautiful woman who was all kinds of wrong for them.

I fast-forward to 3-4 years later. I met a beautiful young woman who neither Tom nor his wife had reservations about. They met her before we got married and he was in my wedding. I married her and have not regretted being with her at all since day one.

So, there are two things that I want to discuss today at the same time. We are looking at the type of woman that a guy should be looking for in a wife. At the same time, this is the type of woman that you ladies should be striving to be.

Guys, choosing a wife can either be a wonderful thing for you or your undoing. You’ll need to do it wisely. Ladies, you want to be the type of woman who honors God with your life and brings joy and happiness to those around you. That is why this message is so necessary for us to hear. And I hope that both the guys and the ladies in this group want to honor God with their marriages.

Guys: Don’t Be Deceived By Beauty/Girls It’s About Way More Than Beauty

One of the most telling Proverbs about beauty is this one. The imagery this passage conjures  is amazing.

“Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without discretion.”—Proverbs 11:22 ESV

Discretion here comes from the word Ta’am. It means lacking judgment, taste,and understanding. Now that we know what the word means, what does Solomon mean here?

Solomon is saying that the beauty of a woman with poor judgment is like the ring on the nose of a pig. If she has poor judgment, runs her mouth, and ruins the lives of those around her then she is a pig with makeup on. She is not what she may at first seem.

He is teaching us, in no uncertain terms, that there is far more to a woman who has strong character. And the woman of character is the one to be sought after. We should seek after the woman who is the opposite of this.

Notice the difference in the first woman and the woman that is to be praised in Proverbs 31.

“Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.” –Proverbs 31:30 ESV

Guys, I hope that you can smell what Solomon is cooking here. I hope that you get it. In multiple ways he is stating that you don’t decide whether or not you should be with a woman by how she looks. Do looks play a part? Obviously they do. Are looks the main identifier as to whether or not we should be with someone? Absolutely not.

I had a friend who had this conversation with myself and another friend when we were in High School. I remember him trying to talk himself out of dating her. He thought she was beautiful and that was really the only thing he kept saying in her favor. And guess what? He still ended up dating her. He realized the foolishness of his decision very soon after, but this illustrates plainly what I’m saying here. Guys can be incredibly stupid when it comes to girls. This is an area of major weakness for many, many men.

Ladies, I don’t want to say that being pretty is unimportant. But I want to say that your beauty is secondary to your character. If you put on the best dress in the world and pair it with the right shoes, jewelry, hair style and perfume without character then you just put a ring in a pig’s nose. Strive to be a woman of character.

Our relationship with our spouse is of massive importance to us. And the way in which they think of us is very important to us as well. We want for our spouse to love us and think well of us. And it is the woman who is of good character that is adored.

“An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones.”—Proverbs 12:4 ESV

This is an interesting turn of events. The woman who is considered to be the “excellent wife” is cherished and adored. She is placed upon the top of her husband’s head as if he is showing her off. He is proud of her and he honors her whenever he can. But the woman who lacks character is hidden way and is “rottenness in his bones”.

We want to be honored by our spouses. I think everyone does. We want for our spouses to love us and cherish us. Solomon points out very clearly that this won’t happen if you lack character.

Guys, Look For An Intelligent Wife/Ladies, Strive To Be Intelligent And Insightful

I don’t know when it became vogue to have no common sense or sense at all, but apparently over the course of the last few decades striving for intelligence and insight became unpopular. And many local churches are to blame. As people began not desiring more insight they dumbed down their messages, their bible studies, the teaching, and the doctrines that they believed.

The woman that guys should seek after and that ladies should strive to be is different. The praiseworthy woman is actually quite the opposite.

“She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.”—Proverbs 31:26 ESV

The opposite of this is quite striking in the Book of Proverbs.

“A foolish son is ruin to his father, and a wife’s quarreling is a continual dripping of rain.”—Proverbs 19:13 ESV

“A continual dripping on a rainy day and a quarrelsome wife are alike; to restrain her is to restrain the wind or to grasp oil in one’s right hand.”—Proverbs 27:16 ESV

“Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.”—Proverbs 21:9 ESV

“Better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and ill-tempered wife.”—Proverbs 21:19 ESV

On one side of the equation you have a wife who speaks intelligent kind words and on the other side you have a wife speaking in such a way that it makes her husband wish that he lived out in the middle of the wilderness because that would be better. At least there the continual dripping of rain would cease.

You’ve likely seen this happen at homes before. I remember going to a friend’s house where his Mom was constantly beating her husband down verbally and everyone else she came into contact with down. Then I would go to another friend’s house and hear the kind and intelligent words that his mother spoke to her family. They lived in the same neighborhood within walking distance of each other’s homes. Yet, there was a world of difference.

In one home the whole family and visitors retreated to the downstairs living room to steer clear of Mom. In the other the whole family would spend a lot of time together along with visitors.

On a rather humorous note I read a news story about this very thing last night. A man in Kansas robbed a bank so that he could get caught, go to prison, and not have to be around his wife anymore.

“He told investigators that he would rather go to jail than live at home, and now faces up to 20 years [in prison]…after stealing the money he “took a seat and told the guard he was the “guy he was looking for”…then in a police statement he also told police that he “had an argument with his wife earlier that day. This is one of those stories that you’ve got to read a couple times to truly appreciate. The guy even robbed a bank that had a police station on the same block. You can check it out at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38735358

Guys it’s easy to see why you would want to marry a kind and intelligent woman. You don’t want to be attempting to avoid her presence for the rest of your life. Apparently it drove one man to rob a bank in an attempt to go to prison. You want to enjoy her presence and have meaningful conversations with her. You want to have something meaningful with her for the rest of your life.

Ladies, again there is something obvious about this. You don’t want to be the type of woman that everyone is constantly trying to avoid. Enrich the lives of your family with wise kind words. To do that you will have to seek after wisdom. You will have to study God’s Word and know it well. Like the guys you will need to seek to be all of the things that we’ve already discussed in the Book of Proverbs.

• Be a believer—this is the foundation of wisdom
• Work to find wisdom
• Submits to God and His Word
• Works hard
• Chooses friends wisely
• Behaves wisely within her friendships. This is more important than you likely realize because handling her friend relationships well is a big indicator as to whether or not she can handle other relationships well.
• Behaves wisely with her parents.This is more important than it would first seem as well. If she treats her parents poorly what makes you think that she’ll treat you well.

This is important. A husband and wife come together and they build things together. Together they make a home, but I can tell you from experience that my wife should get more credit than myself in that area. Together they have children…she definitely gets more credit for that. Together, we go through many endeavors together. We live through incredible hardships together. If my wife weren’t a wise, strong, and caring woman I just don’t know where I would be. It is no wonder that Solomon would write,

“The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down.”-Proverbs 14:1 ESV

The wise woman has the incredible ability to build a glorious home and life for a family, but the foolish one tears down everything that they have made together. It is clear, choose wisely.

This leads me to the last part of this message. The search is more than worth the effort.

Guys, The Search For A Good Wife Is Worth The Hard Work

My wife is precious to me. She is very precious to me. I cannot imagine life without her. It is no wonder that he says this about the excellent wife.

“An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.”—Proverbs 31:10 ESV

Guys, an excellent wife is such a treasure that she is very much worth the effort it takes to find her.

Conclusion

Week after week, as we discuss marriage, I have made an effort to help you to understand that your happiness is not the main point of marriage. Marriage’s main purpose is to image forth the relationship of Christ and His Church. Last week we established that this image will be better and clearer if we are the people that Scripture says we are to be and if we marry the right type of people.

We want to honor God with our lives. A very large part of our lives will be our marriages. You may spend many years married to this person, if God allows you to live that long. There are many natural reasons to be wise in our relationships. It will lead to our physical happiness, but there is truly something more. We want to honor God with our lives. And this will be much easier if we will spend these years cultivating character in our lives. Spend this time cultivating character. And when you are ready for marriage and begin looking for someone to marry look for the character traits that we’ve discussed.

R. Dwain Minor