Wise choice making - Choosing your mate (Creflo Dollar)

After a sermon of Creflo Dollar on 'Wise decision making' - now on 'Choosing a mate':

The SECOND GREATEST decision will be of who’s going to be your mate. Who will be your life-partner? Your happiness is going to be based on your choice, who YOU choose to live your life with.

2 Establishments:
1. This choice will determine to a great extend your degree of happiness.
2. It will have a permanent baring on your children and their emotional well-being.

First, 3 principles:
Some sort of spiritual base:
1. DO NOT seek a mate! SEEK GOD! (Of course you can do the practical checking out of people, but do NOT making seeking a mate a priority over seeking God.) There is no such thing as a perfect mate. Who ever you choose, they will have an issue. You need to find out what that issue is before you get married. The dating process should be a process in search for that issue. Everybody needs to be healed, somewhere. Marriage is designed to bring about healing in the lives of two people that have issues. When you make seeking God the priority in the process of finding a mate, He will be able to assist you. (Make your requests known)
2. Respect your parents judgement. They will see some-thing about the person that you may have missed. They will ask the question that you didn’t think about. Don’t fall too in love, before you can get the judgements of the parents. What if you're parents are not around? What if your mom and dad are crazy? Find an elder people who’ve been married for a while and talk to them.
3. Marry a spiritual person. Marry a Christian, a real one. You wanna make sure you’re harmonizing when you choose a mate.

33 Question you need to ask yourself and answer before you walk down the isle.
Now you need to get them 33 questions because you might be about to say “I do” to an alien, you’re about to say “I do” to… the Exorcist-lady. You can even run through all these questions as married people. If there are things here you didn’t think about or resolve, you can still make the decisions of working on them and resolving them today.

1. Are they Christian people? Vital! You gotta make sure you have enough character and willing to walk away. You gotta make your mind up, whenever you enter a relationship, willing to walk away. Maintain your standards.
2. What kind of Christian person is he/she? A tree shall be known by the fruit that it bears. Saying you’re a Christian is not enough.
3. Is this person truly committed in loving and obeying God? This is the purpose for the dating process. Obedient to the Word of God. Now, YOU gotta know the Word first of course. This is Discovery Channel! Are you a clown? Are you a fool? Are you a Psycho? First of all: Are you married? Sometimes Christian people are so gullible, all they need someone hear saying is ‘Praise the Lord’…Well, demons can say that!
4. Do you have compatibility in spiritual things? We know that the Word is spiritual. Are you compatible people where prayer is concerned? Do you both like praying? Do you both agree with fasting every now and then? Do you agree that it’s important to get the Word of God and to get an understanding of God’s Word? Do you both agree that it’s important to meditate on God’s Word? To live by it?
5. Do you agree on the major doctrines of the Bible? First of all, do you KNOW the major doctrines of the Bible? On the doctrine of Baptism? On the doctrine of the Trinity? The doctrine of Righteousness? The doctrine of Faith? Beautiful teeth…SPIT! Are they yours? Point is: You gotta talk!
6. Do you agree on the Church you will attend?
7. Do you agree on how you will spend your time and money? Especially people with a career. Because there’s a certain amount of time you should schedule together. Are you able to communicate with me of how we will spend our money or are you going to tell me it’s none of my business?! There’s something to be hidden when it comes to that. There needs to be transparency in a marriage. That’s what intimacy means: IN TO ME SEE. There can be no intimacy without vulnerability. If it is too good to be true, It’s NOT. If he’s too good to be true, he’s not! If she’s too good to be true, she’s not!
8. Can you trust this person?
9. Have this person given you ANY reason NOT to trust him/her?
10. How does he/she handle adversity?
11. Does this person trust God or fall into unbelief regularly?
12. Have you ever seen him/her angry? Because anger is an expression of fear and you should see how much fear they got.
13. Have you seen this individual angry with YOU?
14. Did you resolve the conflict in a Biblical way? Or did you just ignore it?
15. Was forgiveness asked for and granted or did you just forget the issue after a while? Deal with the issue straight up and ask for forgiveness.
16. Does he have a way to provide for you?
17. Is he or she responsible person with money? Is she an emotional spender? Or do you have a husband who spends his money and doesn’t tell you about it?
18. Is he/she a good example? ‘Cause one day you guys are going to have children. Is that the example you want your children to follow?
19. What issues do you agree or disagree on?
20. Does the person have control over his or her sex-drive? Because if he cannot control his sex-drive while you are dating, then most likely when you get married you are going to have to be concerned about external marital affairs.
21. (In the light of question 20) Is there pressure on you, to have sex, in that relationship? You don’t want to end up with someone like that.
22. Does your prospective mate respect you? Your opinions?
23. Does he or she listen to you and receive your ideas and/or corrections or are you not even consulted over the decisions?
24. Is there mutual/equal submission between the two of you? Can each of you give and receive ideas, advice or corrections to one another or one is open and the other’s closed to it?
25. Is he/she really open to your inputs?
26. Have your resolved the conflicts that have come up between you and have you done it lovingly? Have you dated this person long enough to even have had a conflict?
27. How does your prospective mate treat other people? Have you ever seen this person around other folk? How do they act around other people?
28. Have you dated this person long enough to have an idea what he/she struggles with in their daily life? Don’t be gullible! If it looks too good to be true; IT’S NOT! No-body is perfect! How many times do I have to tell you that? Do background checks!
29. Can you live with the areas your prospective mate is not dealing with very well? Money-issues, a deceiving character, eating powdered donuts, disrespecting men because of her bad relationship with her father…etc.
30. Is this person a giving person? If he or she is not interested in giving you the majority of his or her time – then that will not be a happy marriage. Your pitcher is going to be empty one. Find someone who is looking for ways to bless you. I’m not talking about material things – I’m talking about one another.
31. Do you have the effect of communication-skills?
32. Is your prospective mate your best friend? Because, friendship is a central within marriage.
33. (-for the divorced amongst us…) Do I understand why you got divorced in the first place? Have you changed in those areas where you have gone wrong?