Dear Future Wife: 10 Things You Must Know Before You Marry by Pastor Mildred Kingsley-Okonkwo: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Ten Things You Need to Know Before You Marry Him

A quick caution first: if God shows you someone still deep in a lifestyle far from Him — smoking, drinking, whatever it is — that's often an invitation to reach them with the gospel, not necessarily a green light to marry them. Don't confuse the two.

1. Know God for Yourself

If you don't know God's nature for yourself, you'll accept things that shouldn't make sense to you — like someone telling you, "If you miss me, you've missed the will of God." 1 John 4:8 — God is love. The more you study His word and know His nature directly, the less you'll be talked into a counterfeit of it by someone who claims to speak for Him.

2. Know Yourself

You can't go into marriage not knowing your own personality, your pet peeves, your triggers, how you behave under stress. If you don't know yourself, you'll end up marrying what you don't actually know how to live with.

3. Know Your Purpose

Two people can't walk together unless they're agreed on where they're going. Don't let marriage suppress what you were called to do and be — too many women give up everything they were meant to become because of marriage, mistaking that suppression for submission. A spouse should add to your purpose, not press it out of you.

4. Know Your Core Values and Whether They Align

Do your mindsets actually align? If you're a big dreamer, don't marry someone whose vision is smaller than your own — and remember that as the wife, you're the one being asked to submit to that vision, so you need to genuinely respect where he's leading before you agree to follow.

5. Know and Understand Family Dynamics

Know how his family functions, and let him understand yours. Managing in-laws and their expectations is far easier when you already understand the dynamic you're both walking into, rather than discovering it for the first time after the wedding.

6. Know His Accountability Tolerance

Is this person actually accountable to anyone, or do they just say they are? A real mentor isn't someone you merely point to — it's someone whose instructions you actually obey, especially when you're the one in the wrong. Ask specifically: when there's a real conflict, are they open to counseling, or do they insist on solving everything privately, alone? Someone who won't listen to anybody is a serious warning sign — don't assume a green fruit will simply ripen once you're married. At the same time, know where accountability tips into control — deferring every decision, including your own finances, to someone outside the marriage is a different and separate problem.

7. Know How They Handle Conflict and Stress

Anyone can be pleasant when things are good. The real test is how someone behaves during conflict — do they fight fair, or do they fight to strip you of your dignity? A good love language during peacetime means little if it disappears entirely the moment there's tension. You can understand anger, but unkindness and pettiness during a disagreement are a different matter entirely. Watch how someone handles ordinary friction — even something as small as a road trip can reveal it.

8. Know Their Money Habits, and Your Own

Money is one of the leading sources of conflict in marriage, so know both your own relationship with money and theirs before the wedding, not after. Some people have no respect for money at all; some are spenders, some savers, some hoarders. If someone consistently avoids paying their own way and leans on you to cover every gap now, that pattern doesn't disappear after marriage — it usually gets worse, because they already know you'll step in.

9. Know How He Treats Others, Not Just You

There has to be consistency between someone's public behavior and how they treat you privately. Take yourself out of the equation for a moment and watch how they treat people who can't benefit them in any way — that tells you far more about their actual character than how attentive they are to you.

10. Know How to Survive

As a woman, don't let marriage cause you to quietly shut down your own survival skills — financial literacy, the ability to manage a household and its basic responsibilities on your own if you ever had to. Too many women assume they'll never need those skills because their husband provides, and are left unable to function if that ever changes. It isn't about distrust of the marriage — it's about never losing the ability to stand on your own.

Beware of Unequal Yoking Within the Faith Itself

Unequal yoking isn't only about believer versus unbeliever — you can be unequally yoked even with another Christian. Picture two oxen: both are oxen, but not pulling with the same strength or in the same direction. Two believers can hold radically different convictions about what the Christian life even looks like, and that mismatch in spiritual maturity or doctrine can create real friction in a marriage, even when both partners genuinely love God.