How To Be The Right Partner For Your Spouse by Pastor Dolapo Lawal: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

The Overlooked Question: What Are You Bringing?

There is so much emphasis on red flags, but many people do not know green flags. The result is a generation that knows what they do not want but cannot clearly define what they want.

Knowing what you do not want is often a trauma response. A woman once asked what she was looking for in a man replied: "I can't marry a man who doesn't have a job." When asked directly what she wanted, she had no answer. Her father had been jobless. So for her, any man with employment was already everything. That is not a standard — that is a wound.

It is not enough to know what you don't want. You must know what you want — and more importantly, you must become what you want.

This is not a message about how to pick a partner. It is a message about how to be the right partner — so that someone will not marry you and find themselves experiencing judgment. The goal is for someone to wake up beside you and say, "Thank God it was you."

What Scripture Shows About the Person Ready for Partnership

Genesis 2:15–18 — Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." And the Lord God said, "It is not good that man should be alone."

Notice the structure here. Before God declared that it was not good for man to be alone, three things were already true of that man. These become the biblical profile of the person ready for partnership.

Profile Point One: A Person with an Assignment

The man had work to do. He was placed in the garden to tend it and keep it. He was not idle — he had a job, a purpose, a direction.

This is not merely about employment. It is about assignment. There is a difference between working a job and walking in a calling. When a person is doing what God designed them to do, there is a grace on it. The work does not wear them out in the same way. The labor of fools wearies them because they do not know how to enter the city — they are expending effort outside of their lane.

When you are in alignment with God's design, rest is not the absence of work. Rest means what you are doing is consistent with what God would have you do. You can be busy, fully engaged, deeply productive — and still be in rest because everything is in order.

Genesis 1:26–27 — Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness; let them have dominion…" So God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Note that man here means male and female. Both are included. So the assignment is not only for the man. A woman must also have an assignment. Both must know what they are doing with their lives. You cannot bring someone into confusion.

The best thing anyone can offer a potential partner is a life that is already moving with God — not a life waiting to be activated by someone else's presence.

Profile Point Two: A Person with Regulations

The man had boundaries. God gave him instruction: of every tree you may freely eat, but this one tree you shall not eat. This man had consecrations — things he would not do, lines he would not cross.

If that is absent from your life, the honest counsel is: remain single until it is present.

There must come a point in every person's life where they can say, "Enough is enough." Consider Samson — God gave him power to be a judge for the people of Israel. But he kept going to the Philistines. The power was for communal use, yet it was repeatedly spent on personal defense and personal indulgence. A spirit of error kept him free to begin but unable to stop. That pattern eventually cost him everything.

The same was true of Solomon. Seven hundred wives. Three hundred concubines. Even with supernatural wisdom, he could not say enough. The inability to stop is as dangerous as the inability to start.

• Consecration is not a restriction — it is a gate. Gates protect. They do not imprison.
• Consecration does not make God better. It is a guard on what God has placed in you.
• A person with no values, no principles they will hold to, cannot be a stable partner. Their in-laws will control them. Peer pressure will move them. They cannot hold a position.

The person ready for partnership is someone who has capacity to choose — and who consistently chooses God.

Profile Point Three: A Person Who Can Carry the Right Kind of Burden

Then God gave the man a helper. And that helper was given to help carry the burden of the assignment.

But there are two different kinds of burden, and this distinction is critical.

Galatians 6:2 — Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Galatians 6:5 — For every man shall bear his own burden.

These are not contradictions. The Greek reveals the difference:

• Verse 2 — baros: a heavy, overwhelming weight — something too much for one person to carry alone. This is the kind of burden a partner helps carry.
• Verse 5 — phortion: a personal load, an assigned duty. This each person must carry for themselves.

A student working hard to afford school fees, doing everything within reach — that is baros. Stepping in to help that person is bearing a burden.

Someone who hears that you helped and comes asking for money to buy a flagship phone — that is phortion. That is a lifestyle ask, not a burden.

The help God brings into a person's life is not someone who fuels their lifestyle. It is someone who can sit down with them, think through the assignment God gave them, and bring their own resources to the table.

Someone can take you on vacation and still not be a helpmate. Someone can buy you gifts and still not be helping you. Partnership is not sponsorship. A genuine helpmate is someone who invests in the assignment — not just in comfort.

God Is Intentional About Family

God is deeply intentional about family as a unit. In Genesis 12:3, when God made his promise to Abraham, he did not say "nations" or "crowds" — he said families. That choice of word reveals the unit God was targeting.

Matthew 1:1 opens the New Testament not with a miracle but with a genealogy — tracing Jesus through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and David. The incarnation was the fulfillment of a long family promise. Jesus did not simply appear. He entered through a family. That is the legal passage of anyone into the world.

God chose family to reverse what was broken through family. Sin entered through a husband and a wife in a family context. Redemption also entered through that same structure — Jesus the husband, the church the wife. Marriage is older than sin. It is older than salvation. It is not an afterthought.

The practical implication is this: what is built inside a home has generational reach. A woman in ministry had three sons — one was a cultist, another deeply wayward. All three eventually came to Christ. When asked how she prayed, she said: "When I gave birth to them, I dedicated them to God and I waited to hear God promise me that they would not die until they served him." She gave them an inheritance they could not even comprehend at the time.

It is possible to be Solomon — immensely wealthy, gifted, celebrated — and have nothing to pass down except prophecy, because the wealth dissipated through lack of restraint. It is also possible to carry very little materially and leave something eternal through prayer, dedication, and covenant.

The Revelation of God as Father

One of the most important things a person can carry into partnership is the revelation that God is their father — not as a phrase but as a lived reality.

There are two practical tests of whether this revelation has truly landed:

1. Absolute dependence on God

   • A child does not earn love through performance. A child is loved and therefore speaks, asks, reaches out.
   • A child is cared for. A child is dependent. That posture — not earning, but receiving — is what childlike faith looks like.
   • If anxiety dominates the planning stages of life and relationship, it is an indicator that the revelation of God as father has not yet settled. The person who knows God as father can be still when they do not know what to do next.
   • There is a peace the Bible describes as surpassing understanding — meaning when it is manifested, those around may think the person is unreasonable or irresponsible. But it is the peace of someone who has handed the matter to a father, not just a God.
   • Philippians 4:6–7 — Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

2. How they treat other believers

   • If God is truly seen as father, then every believer is as real a sibling as any biological brother or sister — connected by the eternal blood of Jesus.
   • To defraud, disrespect, or abuse a fellow believer reveals that the revelation of God as father has not taken root.
   • This also applies to how anger is managed within a relationship. There is a fear of God that should govern the hands, the tongue, and the temperament when dealing with someone who belongs to God.

If this revelation is absent, a person is not yet ready for partnership — regardless of their other qualifications.

Point One: Let Scripture Shape Your Thinking

The standard for what a man should bring into marriage is found in Isaiah 53:5–7:

He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.

Paul draws directly from this in Ephesians 5 when he instructs husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church. The disposition of Christ is the disposition of the husband. What does that look like practically?

• He does not push blame — he takes it. Adam's response when confronted was to point to his wife. Christ's response was to absorb the weight of what others had done. A man ready for marriage is moving away from Adam's posture and toward Christ's.
• He is an intercession, not merely an intercessor. Jesus does not go to the Father and pray on an ongoing basis as though lobbying a reluctant God. His death, burial, and resurrection are the monument of intercession — a finished work that silences accusation. A man embodies that same covering over his household.
• He is oppressed but does not open his mouth in self-defense. There is a maturity that comes with knowing when to speak and when silence is the stronger act. A man who processes every offence through complaint is not yet carrying the weight of headship.

The standard for what a woman should bring is found in Proverbs 31:10–31. This is a mother's counsel to her son on the kind of woman to seek. More importantly, it is the kind of woman to become.

Key observations from that text:

• She is not idle — she is working, producing, building.
• She is not a taker — she has something going for herself and brings it to the table.
• She is not reduced by submission — submission is a role, not a ranking.

On the matter of submission: when Philippians 2 describes the Son submitting to the will of the Father, it is not describing inequality — the doctrine of the Trinity holds that all three are equal. But within the Godhead, there are roles. The Son submitted in role, and that submission led to exaltation. Submission did not diminish who he was. It was the path through which greater glory was revealed.

Submission is a role, not a verdict on worth. And the man loving sacrificially is equally learning Christ — it is not the woman's burden alone.

Marriage is not permanent in its current form — it is a school master, a tutor, as Galatians 3 describes the law. Just as the law was given to bring us to Christ, marriage is designed to teach both partners who Christ is. You miss the point of marriage if you are not learning Christ through it. And the reason many walk away from marriage is that they do not want to learn — they want to enjoy, but not to grow.

Point Two: Be Someone Who Knows How to Enjoy Life

This is not permission for recklessness. It is a correction of a different kind of problem.

Some people are so guarded, so calculating, so afraid of being hurt, that they cannot immerse themselves in love at all. They hold back. They hedge every emotion. They are always preparing an exit.

A woman once ended a relationship with someone who had not done anything wrong — had not cheated, had not been abusive, had not hurt her. When asked why, she said, "Have you seen me? Have you seen him? There's no way this could last." She ended the relationship before it could end her. She chose the certainty of heartbreak over the uncertainty that it might not happen.

The question asked to her was: "Right now — are you heartbroken?" She said yes. "And what were you trying to avoid?" That was the moment it landed. She was heartbroken because she was afraid of being heartbroken.

Fear is not protection. Fear is a pre-emptive form of the very loss it claims to prevent.

Life holds genuine beauty — and that beauty is not diminished by the fact that it is temporary. Moments of love, joy, and connection are worth entering fully. To overthink every interaction, to second-guess every feeling, to audit every gesture for hidden motives — that is a way of destroying something real before it has a chance to become what it could be.

Resentment, which is often the thing that ultimately breaks relationships, almost always begins with words spoken in anger that cannot be taken back. A person who speaks before they think, who amplifies problems instead of holding space, who is so heavy that others cannot share good news without first asking what is wrong — that person will find that people slowly stop calling.

• Enjoy the relationship you are in.
• Be someone others feel lighter around, not heavier.
• Speak carefully. Once something is said, it becomes the lens through which everything else is heard.

Point Three: Be Aware of Your Drama — and Actually Want to Be Better

Awareness is not enough. A person can know exactly what is wrong with them and still do nothing about it. David experienced abuse through leadership and went on to abuse someone else. Knowing the wound does not automatically break the cycle. What breaks the cycle is wanting to be better and submitting to the process of becoming better.

A practical exercise: write down everything being looked for in a partner. Then hold that list like a mirror. Ask honestly — am I this?

• If patience is on the list, are you patient?
• If emotional stability is on the list, are you emotionally stable?
• If generosity is on the list, are you generous?

To desire what you cannot give is not a standard — it is an imbalance.

Many people use their history as an explanation for their behavior, but resist accountability for that same behavior. Two brothers can grow up with an alcoholic father and arrive at completely opposite destinations — one uses it as a reason, the other uses it as a warning. It is not what happened. It is how you are choosing to respond to what happened.

Expectations also need to be realistic. A woman married seven months had watched her parents never argue — not once in her memory. She had no framework for the friction of an early marriage. She was projecting a finished product onto a process that had barely begun. Her parents had been married nine years before she was born. She simply was not there for their early years.

Something good can set an unrealistic standard just as easily as something bad can. You can want the results of a mature marriage without understanding or respecting the process that produced them.

A couple who both came from toxic previous relationships found each other after each, separately, had sat with the word of God and said: "I am the problem." From the moment that honest reckoning happened in each of them — independently — God moved them into position. She had been without a job for three years. He had been single for two. Within months of that internal shift, both the job and the relationship came. What looked like delay was preparation.

You might not be experiencing delay. You might be in a process. And that process exists because of the person God is preparing you for.

Lord, make us a blessing. Give us the strength to love selflessly — to spend and be spent on whoever you give us. Help us to love without fear. You will always be better for having loved. You will always be better for kindness. You will always be better for being good. In Jesus' name. Amen.