What are life's Most Important Questions?

6316 words long.

Published on 2024-04-15

The title of this article is a question with no answer. However, it has no answer for a very good reason. Decades ago I argued with someone about whether some issue related to Christianity was important or not. I said it was; he said it wasn't. After thinking about the matter some more, I realized we both were right and both wrong. It all hinges on this:

What makes a Question important?

What makes a question important (we were debating about evangelism) is whether knowing the answer to that question will bring the hearer closer to God. Will it remove an obstacle to faith? Will it destroy a stronghold of the enemy? Will if glorify God and draw us into worship and deeper fellowship?

That means that the importance of a question (and the corresponding answer) depends on the hearer. It depends on their spiritual condition. It depends on their history. It depends on God's plan for their life. God loves us all specifically, not generally. As He directs His energies to save each one of us, He takes our personality and family background into consideration. He tailors His approach to us. That is why there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question of questions.

That leaves us with meta-questions. What are the questions, that if we answer them for ourselves, lead us to the important questions that we must consider in our own lives? For that list of questions, I have a promising set to offer. I proposed this list in the chapter "Twelve Timely Questions" in Peace, like Solomon Never Knew.

For these meta-questions, I discovered something marvelous. They are self-authenticating. How are they self-authenticating? When you find the answer to one of them, it changes you. It opens your eyes and makes the world clearer. It sets you free from some form of bondage.

Do you see the problem? Only once you find the answer can you be sure that you were asking a good and important question. There is a remedy for this problem. Sometimes God buries a question in your heart that will not go away. It shouts confusion and longing into your soul year after year. It must be investigated or your heart will never find peace.

This speaks a simple truth. God guides us not by answers, but by questions. Have you heard this adage?

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.

Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.

The Bible does answer many questions, feeding us for a day. It also poses deep questions. Those carry us forward, deepen our curiosity, hone our logical skills and teach us humility. This is how the Lord began to teach me this lesson.

I read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship and tried to live by it. I failed. Much of his teaching centered on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. When I realized that I did not know how to follow Jesus' teachings in that sermon, I memorized it. That took months. Out of that activity I gained new insight into the Golden Rule. (We will later see that the Golden Rule is part of the answer to one of the twelve questions.) I was so amazed by what I learned that I knew I had discovered something deep. I was convinced that this new insight was so powerful that the rest of my days I would live at peace, able to love my neighbors and produce good works in this world. Surely all my confusion and anxiety would evaporate.

I was wrong. The Golden Rule really is very powerful, but it only answers one question, and there are more. For a time I drifted, confused. I did not know what I did not know. I did not recognize my disability. I needed another question! The Lord generously provided one, and it flowed from that same sermon that I had memorized. That next question was, "What are the spiritual treasures that we are supposed to store up in heaven?" Jesus told us to pursue heavenly treasures, but he didn't give us a list!

That question would nag at me for a decade. I had young children and was busy fighting to hold a job during a turbulent time in the software industry, so I made no efforts to research it. When I came up for air, it was 2004. I spent the next decade pursuing an answer. The outcome was two novels that explored that theme plus my first nonfiction, The Endless Hunt: Or if I've Found God, Why am I still Looking?

As I searched for hidden treasure, new questions popped up that would lead to more books. Some of those questions were:

• How can I cultivate a desire to see God's Glory that is as strong as that of Moses?
• How can I find resilience to overcome suffering?
• How can I find the path to peace?

As I explored those questions, I found answers for other questions that I hadn't asked. As the answers started piling up, I was able to step back and consider what those questions might be. In Doug Adams' parody of science fiction and philosophy, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he made fun of using AI to solve existential questions. The philosophers program a vast computer and ask it to tell them the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything. The computer dutifully chugs away for thousands of years before spitting out the answer:

42

The sheepish philosophers realized their error. The answer was meaningless without the question! So they built a bigger computer to find the question. That would take millions of years to run.

We don't have millions of years, so here are the questions I found.

The following is exactly as found in the chapter "Twelve Timely Questions" in Peace, like Solomon Never Knew, apart from a few added notes. Please pardon me if there is a little repetition with what came before. Before that, in case I did not make myself clear and you are left wondering why an article about questions is in a section on spiritual growth:

Part of Growing Spiritually is Learning to Ask Better Questions!!!

Twelve Timely Questions

Something is missing. As a teenager, this thought kept popping into my head. Something is missing. I knew it was important to figure out, but I didn’t know what I was missing! I confess, I didn’t do much to find out what it was I was missing. My life was like a nearly empty Sudoku puzzle. Without numbers in enough of the squares, you can’t find the solution.

Something is missing... Actually, a lot of things were missing, but if Someone would have given me one clue, I could have found those missing pieces to my life. What clue is that?

I didn’t even know the questions! If I at least had the questions, I could start looking, and as I solved each riddle I would know how close I was to my goal. These days you could ask your phone, “Hey, Siri, what are life’s most important questions?” Then you could ask Alexa, Google, Wikipedia and other “experts” and compare answers. Would you trust them? Would you plan how to live your life based on an A.I.?

Good news! I found the list of questions and can save you the trouble!

Wait, I see a problem. My list of questions might be so detailed that they only apply to me, or so general that they are a useless guide to you. Ah, but the way I found them might be helpful...

This is the way I once believed life ought to work. When you are young, your heart seizes a grand goal and you think long and hard about what it will take to get there. That passion is the wellspring for all the important questions you will need, and you set about getting answers and acting on what you learn. Once the final question is answered, you have achieved your goal and found true happiness. You might be able to plan out your life that way. I read a biography about a man who did exactly as I described. It worked for him.

For that life to work, it is really, really important that you get a handle on those questions early on, or you will never get very far. When did I figure them out? While I was researching this book! People my age are near retirement. My younger sister “Captain Kate” already retired. By my original way of judging things, my life has been a failure. I don’t have enough years left in me to do much with those questions now that I have them.

Should I be disappointed? I am not. This is another paradox. Life is like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. You get the answers first, then must set off to figure which questions each answers. Sound confusing? This is a good thing!

What does an answer look like? I have described several. Joy. Acceptance. Fearlessness. Purpose. Peace. Answers are powerful, self-authenticating, and directional. They point to God. Once you learn one of these answers, the appropriate questions pop out of hiding. You know the question is important because its answer transformed you. This is the way Jesus worked. Instead of the crowd getting to ask Jesus direct questions like, “Are you the messiah?”, he turned it around. He performed the miracles of a messiah, then asked them, “Who do you say that I am?” God’s miraculous power changes us, then the questions pop into our heads to crystallize our understanding and guide us farther.

In becoming a Christian, I discovered my first question, but didn’t know I had. That question is: when I am in trouble, who can help me? The answer is Jesus. Now that I have all the questions gathered and organized, it is not first on my list, though maybe it should be. Among the troubles Jesus helps us overcome is being lost. He helps us find those questions because we need their answers to thrive. My search for life’s most important questions took on urgency when I turned thirty. After hearing hundreds of sermons, reading scores of religious books, and praying for wisdom, I was confused. So many ideas! So many rules! So many doctrines and arguments! It was too complicated to follow. Trying to live up to what I expected I ought to be doing was exhausting. I needed something simpler. I started researching so I could write a book on the subject, but didn’t get far.

Then I got married. Knowing that I would soon have children, I felt the urgency double. I needed to know so I could raise my kids right. I tried thinking things through for a few months, but the busyness of life combined with not knowing where to begin. I gave up again.

A few years later, I had three young children, with one in the hospital. Out of work, sitting by Danielle’s bedside every night, I decided this might be the last long stretch of free time I would see for many years. I began to outline my first novel. In the course of writing it, I asked, “What are the ten most important spiritual treasures?” After all, Jesus said we were supposed to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven. What are they? I decided that the hero of my story had failed to value and protect these treasures, suffered for it, and needed to change to save himself and his family. Searching my heart and scripture, my list filled up with things I have already described, like love, joy, and goodness, plus others.

I didn’t know it, but I had just discovered another worthy question. After the novel was done, I wrote The Endless Hunt. I expanded on those ten spiritual treasures and in the process found two more.

Later I realized those two extra treasures were not like the others. One was the fear of the Lord. The other was the glory of God. Only in preparing this book did I realize that those two treasures are the answers to two more big questions: Where do I begin? and What is my goal?

Now that I knew where to begin, what to collect along my journey, and what was my goal, that left the middle. How can I change? Life is filled with trials and we must change to meet them. After enduring over a decade of such trials, shortly after my mother died, a thought entered my head. How can I make my life more resilient in the face of life’s challenges? To pursue that I studied Job and wrote Job Rises: Thirteen Keys to a Resilient Life. Only after writing that book was I able to simplify what I had learned into a five-step process for spiritual growth. That includes the process for change, the obstacles (and how to become resilient enough to handle them), and where to turn for help (that first question again).

This book will expound on that five-step process for producing a spiritual harvest (expanded later into seven steps). However, Ecclesiastes brought me face to face with the hardest question of all. The Psalmist asked it often: When? I am still looking for that answer.

When I was younger, I struggled with three other questions. They were very important to me at the time, but when Jesus said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you,” he meant it! Unlike the important questions, these secondary questions were not hard to find; they were hard to push aside. If you do not push them aside until you find God and begin to grow in His ways, you may never find the right path. They are: "What should I do for work? Whom should I marry? Where should I live?"

Let’s collect all these questions together:

Primary Questions

• Where do I begin?
• Who am I?
• What’s my Goal?
• What’s Valuable to acquire along the way?
• How can I change?
• What’re the Obstacles to change?
• How can I become resilient and overcome them?
• Who or what can help me?
• When will I succeed?

Secondary questions:

• Where should I live?
• What should I do for work?
• Whom should I marry?

Are you surprised? Disappointed? The questions are not surprising, revolutionary, or specific to Christianity. For someone immersed for thirty-five years of his life in Christianity, its ideas, ideals and peculiarities, I am surprised. I expected after such a lengthy investigation to come up with a list exhibiting profound theological insight. Anyone with skill at planning, organizing, and executing a path to a treasured goal has probably internalized these questions since birth.

I am not such a person! In “Executive Function Challenges in Children with Asperger Profiles”, Bonnie Glickman, M.Ed., NCC describes one challenge faced by children on the Autism Spectrum (in which I fall), called EFD or Executive Function Disorder.

“Executive function is the ability to plan, organize and manage complex tasks. Executive function allows us to develop and apply problem-solving skills as circumstances call for them. We need executive function skills to deal with the stream of decision points we encounter throughout every day.”

People with EFD are confused, disorganized, and poor at planning and executing tasks. One of the many deficiencies they have is “Lack of a systematic approach to keeping order in their daily lives.”

What does this mean? A man with an innate physiological limitation, after decades of prayer, study, struggle, and reflection, rediscovered what most ordinary people take for granted. Is he now trying to persuade you that he discovered something new? Yes! My favorite poem by Emily Dickinson comes closest to capturing it:

Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne'er succeed.

To comprehend a nectar

Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host

Who took the Flag today

Can tell the definition

So clear of victory

As he defeated – dying –

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph

Burst agonized and clear!

Who prized the gift of sight more, the crowd of onlookers, or the blind man Jesus healed? Who jumped the highest, the ones strolling through the temple or the lame man Peter healed in Jesus’ name?

In the summer of 1989, I received a call to missionary service. I thought it was for a lifetime, but it turned out that it was only for two short term trips to Romania. During that brief period, the Lord lifted me up. I found language texts and a Romanian immigrant to teach me the language. I got a passport, gathered supplies, wrote letters to missionary agencies, prayed, and read hundreds of articles on Eastern Europe and Romanian history. Every smallest detail of life was suddenly infused with urgency, purpose, and excitement. I felt as though I were being pulled into the future. I went with a Christian choir on my first trip and we sang in about twenty-two different cities.

The trip stretched me and I grew in confidence. After I returned, I wrote my first Christian song. Creative parts of me that had withered during the depression of my college years began to heal. However, the total commitment to a mission, the ease and delight of planning and executing on a worthy goal evaporated and I was back to my normal self. However, there was a difference. God had shown me what it was like to live a life of purpose. There was no turning back. I had to find that way again. I had heard a voice like Isaiah saying:

Whether you turn to the right or to the left,

your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying,

“This is the way; walk in it.”

- Isaiah 30:21, NIV

The decades since then I have labored to rediscover in large what God privileged me to glimpse. Let’s look at those questions again. Pretend you are blind and lame like I was, and be amazed.

Where do I begin?

This question is easy to ask and easy to answer, but its answer is not easy to understand. The road to peace begins with the fear of the Lord. The preeminence of the fear of the Lord is the starting premise in Proverbs, the heart of Job, the pervasive theme of thirty-one Psalms, and the conclusion of Ecclesiastes. The fear of the Lord is extolled or commanded in the Books of Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Isaiah and almost every other prophet, in the Gospels, the letters of Paul and Peter, and in Revelation.

People already living in fear want comfort and protection, not more fear. The arrogant want the power to make others fear them. The philosophical look down on fear as a scornful source of motivation. The hedonists want only pleasure. And proud freedom-seekers of all stripes want to be in charge of their own destiny and fear no one. This is a great paradox that God has laid before us. What we want least – to be afraid – God has made the avenue by which most of His blessings enter our life. Here is a selection of the benefits that accrue to those who fear the Lord:

• wisdom & knowledge
• love, joy & peace
• prosperity, provision & riches
• protection, security & deliverance
• salvation
• long life
• freedom
• courage & strength
• eternal purity
• sincere and true praise & worship
• generosity & happiness & contentment
• compassion & justice
• honor
• humble authority
• righteous children & a prosperous, blessed family
• repentance & obedience
• God's remembrance and compassion

Ecclesiastes concludes with these words:

Now all has been heard;

here is the conclusion of the matter:

Fear God and keep his commandments,

for this is the duty of all mankind.

For God will bring every deed into judgment,

including every hidden thing,

whether it is good or evil.

- Ecclesiastes 12:13-14, NIV

Here is the problem with Ecclesiastes. Onto a compelling argument the author grafts an incongruous conclusion. Bridging this chasm took me decades. Each time I revisited the book, I took one more step. Ultimately, I accepted that such confusion says more about the state of the reader’s heart than the logic of the book.

The first milestone is rejection. What good is following more rules? Isn’t it legalistic? You crave freedom. Like me, you probably consider yourself moral, don’t steal or kill or go out of your way to cause trouble, so it is not an anarchy thing. It is just that Ecclesiastes demolishes the case for following the rules, but what does it replace that with? Nothing! That long list given above of the benefits that accrue to those who fear the Lord is scarcely alluded to, and only then to show counter-examples. The case that fearing the Lord bestows benefits is made in Psalms, Proverbs and elsewhere, but not in the book that frames the thesis. Why?

The second milestone is confused acceptance. You have begun to cultivate fear and reverence toward God and it has caused positive changes. You agree that obeying God conscientiously is a good idea and are trying hard to do that, but the conclusion of the book still does not follow logically from the argument. What kind of apologetics is that? Fear seems an empty goal to set for your life. It is not something to get excited about.

The third milestone is submission. You labor to discard your old sources of meaning and purpose. As it says in Proverbs 2:1-10, understanding the fear of the Lord takes patience and a dedicated, seeking heart, but eventually:

... wisdom will enter your heart,

and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.”

- Proverbs 2:10

You accept the possibility that it will prove more fulfilling than initially thought. The logic of the book is becoming clearer. There is a reason for the disconnect between the steps of the argument and the conclusion. Human logic relies on reasoning about things we can see “under the sun”. God’s wisdom relies on reasoning about things invisible, things that can only be seen “under heaven”. An empirical proof of the conclusion is therefore impossible. That the fear of the Lord is the purpose of life must be accepted on faith.

The fourth milestone is transcendence. You discover that the fear of the Lord is not the purpose of life! Instead, it is the door you must walk through to discover the true purpose of your life. The fear of the Lord is the general purpose for all mankind, but alongside that we each have a specific purpose. Truly, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, not its end.

(Note: Since writing that chapter, I wrote another book and reached a fifth milestone in my understanding of the end of Ecclesiastes. You cannot understand Solomon's conclusion unless you grasp both the fear of the Lord and the Commandments. There is a glory in the Ten Commandments that I had not yet seen when I originally wrote this essay. I rectified that in Plague, Precept, Prophet, Peace. Those commandments are not static scalars, defining right and wrong and judging our actions. The commandments are vectors. They have a direction and they point us along the path to peace.)

Who am I?

It is tempting to put this question at the head of the list. When I was a kid, the older generation made fun of young people dropping out of college and hitting the road. They said, “I need to find myself first.” Acquiring self awareness is useful when it comes to plotting your path through life. It is the first milestone on the self-directed life.

For someone aspiring to lead a God-directed life, it must not come first. As it is written:

But who can discern their own errors?

Forgive my hidden faults.

- Psalm 19:12, NIV

Acquiring knowledge of God must come first. Then, in the light of God’s truth, a disciple will see who they really are. Vices and virtues will become clear. The fear of the Lord will not only reveal the weakness and sinfulness within, it will begin the process of transforming you into a righteous, sanctified person.

The unregenerate person cannot stand to see who they are, and so must avoid looking too intently at certain areas of their character. They must construct a false facade to hide the shame. They must periodically reinvent themselves like a pop star.

The Christian, through prayer, repentance, and the assurance of God’s forgiveness, is emboldened to search deeper. The question “Who am I?” once haunted me. No more. Why? Because I have replaced it with a better question:

Who am I becoming?

What’s my goal?

We skip from the start of the journey straight to the end. While writing The Endless Hunt, this was the greatest surprise. The twelfth treasure was the Glory of God. That is the goal of life. The difference is that we shall each glorify God in different ways. The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is this:

Q. What is the chief end of man?

A. Man's chief end is to glorify God,

and to enjoy him forever.

God’s glory and our true delight are inextricably linked. No less than C.S. Lewis struggled to comprehend how God’s pursuit of His own glory should be good, unselfish and the highest good of mankind. In “The Weight of Glory” Lewis described his journey from discounting the place of glory in the teachings of the church to celebrating it. The moment of God’s first bathing of his children in undeserved glory and approval will be the happiest day in all of time. Despite reading Lewis’ essay in my twenties, it was not until I was around fifty that the importance of God’s glory exploded in my consciousness. It is not something you get the first time you read it. How did I make this discovery? I was writing what I thought was the final chapter of The Endless Hunt. It was dawning on me that treasuring eternal treasures in our heart is another name for worship. I noticed a Bible quote in my book that referred to God’s glory and decided to research it. That led me back to Lewis’ essay. I decided to add glory as my twelfth spiritual treasure. That was when I reread my own book and saw that dozens of the Bible verses I had quoted throughout my book made mention of the glory of God. Glory was right under my nose, but I didn’t see it!

Your assignment is this. As you read your Bible, note how often the word glory appears in your favorite verses. How can such a powerful word hide so well? After my discovery, did I leave it at that? No. For the next three years I fasted one day a week with a single prayer, “Lord, show me your glory.” Can you guess what happened?

Nothing! I don’t recall a single one of those hundred and fifty plus days of prayer and fasting where I felt extra close to God, or received a miraculous answer to prayer, or received new spiritual insight. Not one.

Is that why I stopped fasting? Because it didn’t work? No, I stopped fasting because it seemed like I had prayed enough for that. Since I stopped fasting, my thirst for God’s Word has increased, I wrote my book on Job and began this one. My understanding of Scripture has grown more in the last few years than it had in the previous twenty. My conviction that I knew what I should be doing, sense of purpose, direction, drive, and focus have increased markedly. I feel closer to God recently than I had for a long time. That is why Solomon had to tear down all those other sources of purpose but could not adequately describe their substitute. The real thing cannot be described, only experienced.

What is valuable to acquire along the way?

I wrote a whole book on this topic so won’t repeat it here. Setting aside the fear of the Lord and the Glory of God, these are the other ten treasures:

• Eternal Life
• Family
• Work & Rest
• Authority & Purpose
• Love
• Wisdom, Justice & Truth
• Courage & Protection
• Freedom
• Happiness & Generosity
• Joy

I grouped them into four rings. Eternal life stood by itself. The next three formed the ring of relationships. Then came the ring of nourishment. The outer ring was the ring of flourishing. At the core, inside life, was the fear of the Lord. Shining around the whole like the corona of the sun was glory.

(NOTE: I now would classify these groupings as surrendering (for the fear of the Lord), protecting (for life), establishing (for relationships), nourishing, flourishing and transcending (for glory).)

The paradox with these eternal treasures is that you receive them by giving something similar that is perishable away. For example, money and material goods are perishable, not eternal. However, give them away to the poor, to friends in need or to the church, and those perishable, material goods are transformed into the spiritual goods of goodness and generosity. This is one facet of the paradox that Jesus sets before us:

For whoever would save his life will lose it,

but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world

and forfeits his soul?

Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

- Matthew 16:25-26

You may notice considerable overlap between these treasures and the seven pieces of peace derived from Ecclesiastes 3: Existence (eternal life), Function (wisdom, etc), Emotions (freedom, happiness, joy), Relationships (family, work, authority, love), Resources (freedom, happiness & generosity), Communication (love, truth, generosity & glory), and Loyalty (courage and protection). This shows there is a clear link between our spiritual values and our happiness. Treasuring the things that God treasures is conducive to a life of peace.

(NOTE: I later in my book renamed "The seven pieces of peace" to the Growth Pattern. It took awhile to appropriately name what I had discovered. The names of the seven pieces I later changed to Security, Ability, Stability, Amity, Community, and Loyalty.)

How can I change?

What’re the Obstacles to change?

How can I become resilient and overcome them?

Who or what can help me?

These four questions come as a package deal. What do they have in common? They are four facets of spiritual warfare. Answering the third question, about resilience, was the focus of my precious book, Job Rises: Thirteen Keys to a Resilient Life. Peace tackled all four in the chapters titled “Hour of Temptation” and “Four Months ‘Til Harvest”.

The principal finding is that spiritual growth typically occurs in cycles, and each cycle has five principal stages:

• Plowing, though suffering
• Planting the seed of the Word
• Pouring water, the baptism of the Holy Spirit
• Plucking weeds and thorns, via the Father’s discipline
• Producing a harvest

(Note: Peace would later add two more stages, Preparation at the beginning and Peace at the end.)

By this construction, our obstacles are the devil, the world and the flesh, and our allies are the three persons of the Trinity, working in concert. This leaves only the question of change. We change if we endure until the harvest. Which brings us to...

When will I succeed?

There are times in Scripture when God tells the people exactly how long a situation will last. To pharaoh: there will be seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine. To Israel, wandering in the desert: you will not enter the promised land until after everyone in this generation dies. While taking a shower in January 1985, I demanded that God prove to me that he exists and gave him two weeks to show himself. Three months plus a week later, I became a Christian. It is not my experience that God acts on our timetable. We are not God. We are not in charge. Some harvests require a very long growing season. One of mine lasted over a decade, as related in the next chapter in Peace, “Hammer Time”.

God usually does not tell me how long I will have to wait. There are exceptions...

Where should I live?

What should I do for work?

God has often guided me in my work, helping me choose between job offers or to find a new job quickly amid a recession. During the Great Recession, things were bad. I went to a book store going out of business and found a half price book by Joel Osteen. One chapter title spoke to me: “You are closer than you think.” I believed that on faith. The next day I had a job offer from General Electric. I have many stories to tell about work, but the most memorable happened about four years ago. My mother had just died and now my dad was in the hospital. He nearly died of a rare tick-born illness called anaplasmosis. By this time I had been out of work two-and-a-half months. My frequent periods of unemployment had wiped out our savings and my pension, so it was urgent that I find a new job immediately. I was staying with my dad in upstate New York and spent every day at the hospital for several weeks so I could advocate for him.

What happened? My dad lived. Why? My focus was on caring for him, not myself. I relayed his symptoms to my wife over the phone and she came up with the idea that it was a tick-borne illness. With that hint, the doctor knew what medicine to use and changed his treatment. I had job interviews over the phone and had to write and submit code samples to potential employers. How was I able to withstand the temptation to be anxious and panic, to concentrate during those phone calls and simultaneously attend to my father?

That is a question I don’t have to answer. That wasn’t my job, but God’s. Because I put my father’s needs first and trusted God to take care of me and my family, He gave me peace like I had never known before. It lasted for months. A few days after my father was released from rehab, I landed a new job. God knew exactly how long my dad would need my help and that I could not be there for him if I was employed. He planned everything down to the day. It was a good plan.

Whom should I marry?

This question is so all-consuming for young people that God arranged for the book of Proverbs to end with advice on how to recognize a good wife.

For years I wore myself out trying to find that wife. Loneliness, depression, hopelessness, and unbelief in God’s goodness assailed me. I even got mad at my pastor one summer and refused his advice. That fall, a woman at church named Lynette approached me. She said, “I think God is telling me that you will soon meet someone that you will be in a relationship with.”

Outwardly, I thanked her, but inwardly I was angry. Christians can be as good as the rest at telling you what you want to hear. I considered her words to be false comfort. A few days later, I repented. I didn’t know if Lynette’s words were a true prophecy from God or not, but I was sure that my disbelief was proof that I lacked faith that God could help me find a wife.

A few weeks after Lynette spoke, I first set eyes on Tina. Tina and I just celebrated our twenty-sixth wedding anniversary. She is not just a wife, she is a good wife. Her love and careful attention to the important things of life saved my mom’s life once and my dad’s life three times. (Did I mention that she diagnosed his first heart attack over the phone and urged me to drive him to the hospital right away?) She has also diagnosed numerous of our children’s ailments, some exceedingly rare.

Should you get married, how you find your spouse will be different. One thing that should not be different: trust the Lord to help you answer this question. He’s good with advice.

Without that advice, I would not have made it through the storms that hit our family, as you shall see...

---

Links to the other articles in this section:

Spiritual Growth Introduction to the articles about spiritual growth.

What are Life's Twelve Most Important Questions? If you can answer these questions, you know the way better than the Mandelorian.

What are the Heavenly Treasures? It is one thing to list these treasures, quite another to acquire them!

The Harvest Pattern of Jesus A tactical pattern for overcoming an individual obstacle and reaping a single spiritual harvest.

The Growth Pattern of Solomon Overview of a strategic pattern to help you plan your whole life.

• There is a Season The chapter from Peace, like Solomon Never Knew where I first introduced the Growth Pattern.

• The Apostle Paul's Discipleship Program Shows how the first seven letters of Paul to the churches are arranged according to the Growth Pattern.

• Seven Facets of Spirit-led Discipleship The Sermon on the Mount conforms to the Growth Pattern.

The Motherhood Pattern A strategic pattern for women.

The Law Pattern of Moses The law does more than restrict; it also guides.

The Journey Pattern It is a long journey back to Eden.

Emotional Prophecies of the Psalms

Job and the Ways to Talk to God

Job Description for a Savior Job knew what he needed in a savior. Do you?

Dreams Dreams can guide you, paralyze you, or lead you astray. In my case, it was all three.

Spiritual Warfare Somebody IS out to get you.