What could be more delightful than answering questions with and about the one that you love?  To the young couple dreaming about a life together, few things would make them happier than to answer questions about their love.

Yet too often, too many couples go into engagement and marriage unprepared because they did not know the right questions to ask.  Sadly, many marriages have suffered and others have broken because of unforeseen challenges that could have been avoided or softened by a thoughtful season of question-and-answers prior to engagement and marriage.

To help facilitate this inquisitive discussion, pastor-counselors David Powlison and John Yenchko have provided couples looking to marriage with an insightful diagnostic in their 36-page booklet, “Pre-Engagement: 5 Questions to Ask Yourselves.”  In “Pre-Engagement,” they lay out five questions, and give young lovers much to think over as they make plans to enter into a covenant legitimately broken only by death.

Here are the five questions.

1. Are You Both Christians?
2. Do You Have a Track Record of Solving Problems Biblically?
3. Are You Heading in the Same Direction in Life?
4. What Do Those Who Know You Well Think of Your Relationship?
5. Do You Want to Marry This Person? Are You Willing to Accept Each Other Just as You Are?

Of course, these questions don’t get to everything, but with the follow-up questions that supplement these main questions, Powlison and Yenchko do a superb job getting to the heart of each couple.  Moving their readers to consider more than their personal love for one another, they challenge couples to consider marriage in its larger framework (see Ephesians 5:22-33; Luke 14:26).

So, if you are getting married, doing marriage counseling, or anticipating a phone call from a child or grand-child saying “He asked…I said yes,” let me encourage you to pick up, read, and pass along this little book with 5 Questions.  For yourself or for someone you care about, this set of diagnostic questions could save years heartache and ensure a well-informed, biblical process of answering the question, “Is he (or she) the one?”

May the Lord bless those who are getting married this summer, and may God use this book to help others discern the wisdom of popping the question or answering in the affirmative.

Soli Deo Gloria, dss