The Need for This Book

    When my wife and I were still just friends—before we ever realized that we would one day be married—we asked each other a lot of questions. As we grew more and more interested in each other, we asked hundreds of questions about our spiritual walks, personalities, families, values, various beliefs, and anything else we could think of. We wanted to make sure that we knew each other as completely as possible. After all, we were considering entering into a courtship and possibly marriage, and that wasn't something to take lightly. We wanted to know what we were getting into.

    As we tried thinking of more and more questions to ask, we looked online to see if we could find an extensive set of questions—preferably from a Christian perspective—that would help us get to know each other better. After some diligent searching, we were quite surprised when we were unable to find such a collection. We looked at bookstores, both online and in person, and we could find no such book in print. We found a few websites here and there that had a short list of questions, and we found a few more extensive online resources that were very secular. (They had a lot of questions about sexual preferences, encouraging the readers to have sex before marriage, promoting homosexual activities, etc. Clearly this was not upholding God's design for sex within marriage.) So we began to realize the need for an extensive book written from a Christian perspective.

    At this time, we also knew several couples who had recently gotten married or were in serious relationships, and we were surprised at some of the difficulties they were experiencing. As we counseled them, we realized that 90% of the problems were due to a couple's poor communication and their lack of knowledge about each other. They simply hadn't asked each other the right questions, and due to their lack of knowledge, they encountered many unnecessary difficulties.

    Communication problems are cited as one of the highest causes of stress in relationships. A primary reason for this is that good communication patterns are not established early on. Each person assumes too much about the other, or they just don't take the time to find out about the other’s needs, wants, and personality traits. They do not regularly ask each other questions, and they mistakenly filter the other person’s actions or responses through their own experiences and knowledge, which often leads to great misunderstandings. One person believes they know and understand how the other person acts and thinks, when in fact they have simply made several incorrect assumptions. To avoid misunderstandings, it is incredibly important to start asking each other a number of questions early on. Get to know each other. Learn more about the other's personality, and learn what you can do to help build that person up. If you don't, your lack of investment in communication time will haunt you later.

    Take Aaron for example. By nature, he is inquisitive, and he especially likes to understand how things work and why people think the way they do. On a recent trip to the grocery store, he questions his good friend Ashley about almost every item she buys. He wants to know why she picked one brand over another, how she decided whether or not the meat might be contaminated, why she had to thump four watermelons before she found one she wanted, how she determined that the bananas in the produce section were too ripe, and so on. By the end of the trip, Ashley is extremely frustrated with Aaron because she feels like he is questioning her every move and doesn’t trust her. She and Aaron had been talking about the possibility of starting a courtship, but now she isn’t sure if she wants to court a guy who doesn’t trust her judgment. Aaron doesn’t understand why Ashley has suddenly become short with her answers and seems agitated. Unfortunately, it never occurred to Ashley that, in Aaron’s family, the men never did the grocery shopping, and Aaron was simply trying to expand his knowledge so he wouldn’t feel out of place the next time he was in a grocery store. Had Ashley and Aaron taken the time to ask in-depth questions about each other’s personalities, they would have better understood where the other was coming from.

    Here's another example: Patricia can be very emotional, and she cries several times a week. Gerald, on the other hand, does not express his feelings very well. During the early stages of their friendship and even into marriage, each one sees the other through their own personal filter. Gerald sees Patricia as being completely irrational, and since he cries very infrequently, he has no idea how to respond to her. He just wishes that she would snap out of it. Meanwhile, Patricia is growing increasingly frustrated with Gerald, because she interprets his more reserved emotions as being uncaring. There is nothing wrong with these two people being together—they simply have different personalities, and they express their emotions differently. However, if they do not take the time to discuss these differences and ask each other detailed questions about them, they will have a hard time understanding where the other is coming from, and their differences in emotional expression will be a constant source of frustration.

    Take another scenario that is not at all uncommon: John and Jennifer are co-workers, and they find out that they are both Christians. They start to like each other and they begin dating. They begin to pray together and do short Bible studies. As time progresses, they decide to go to each other’s churches to see which one they want to attend as a couple. John, who comes from a charismatic background, is appalled to find out that Jennifer’s church only sings hymns, believes that dancing is wrong, and does not believe that the supernatural spiritual gifts are for today. Jennifer is the complete opposite; she comes from a very conservative background, and she can’t believe that people at John’s church speak in tongues, jump up and down, lay hands on the sick, and pray for healing. Both had assumed that the other held similar beliefs, because none of their differences had come up during their prayer times or Bible studies. Both of them feel that would be compromising their beliefs if they went to either church. Had John and Jennifer asked the right questions about their beliefs early on, they would have avoided so much frustration.

    One last example: Sally has recently gone through a nasty divorce, and she meets Charles who says he is a Christian. He likes her, and he asks her out for dinner. He seems nice, so Sally agrees to go with him. The dinner goes well, and they start seeing each other regularly. They have a few discussions about God, and they pray at meals together. Two months after their first date, Charles takes Sally into his bedroom and starts to unbutton her shirt. She slaps his hand away, looks appalled at him, and asks what he is doing. It turns out that Charles had no problems praying for meals and talking about God occasionally, but he wasn’t willing to commit his life to following Christ’s commands. Charles didn't think Sally would object to having sex simply because he didn’t see premarital sex as any big deal himself. Had Sally asked Charles a lot of questions about his Christian walk and views on sexual purity, she would have: 1) probably discovered his true intentions, and 2) made it clear to Charles that there was no point in pursuing her. This would have saved Sally a great deal of heartache, and it could have possibly opened up a good witnessing opportunity with Charles, since the questions would have been discussed early on when there wasn’t as much personal emotion involved.

    From these examples, it is clear that communication needs to be established early on. We are not saying that marriage intentions need to be declared on the first date, but we believe it is important to learn as much as possible about the people you are around. The longer you wait to get to know these people, the more the chance for misunderstandings and devastating heartbreaks. We hear so many couples say, “If only I had known _______, we would never have gotten into this mess.” We encourage you not to make the same mistakes these couples have made. Ask the questions. Get the answers.

    God spoke through Hosea, saying, “There is no... knowledge of God in the land... My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:2, 6, NKJV). In our walk with God, we need to have knowledge of Him. Peter wrote: “[A]dd to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge” (2 Peter 1:5, KJV). In our relationship with God, He wants us to learn more about Him. We need to have knowledge added. He wants us to know Him more and more. Since human relationships, especially marriage (Ephesians 5:22 33), are to reflect our relationship with God and Christ (1 John 3:16; 4:11-12, 19-21), is it not reasonable that we should also learn as much as we can about the significant people in our lives, especially those we may consider for a spouse?

    Most people want to know more about the person they are befriending, dating, courting, or marrying, but they just don't know which questions to ask. That's why we wrote this book.

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