Adult Jobs Require Adult Tools

“But a prudent wife is from the LORD.” Prov. 19:14.

When I was about eight years old my daddy bought me a little toy tool belt. While he was doing woodworking in his shop, I would use my little rubber hammer to whatever destructive purposes came into my little head. From time to time I would ease over to his BIG project and try to help, with my little toy tools. He was patient with me, but I soon learned that my toy tools were not capable of the real jobs.

When teenagers get married this can be one of the tremendous challenges, learning that the tools and methods teenagers use in their relationships are not suitable to the adult jobs (marriage, parenting). The tools and methods teenagers use in their friendships may seem to be effective in dealing with schoolmates and friends. You may get what you want through intimidation, threatening, charm and the use of allies who take up your cause. These tools do not work in marriage. Marriage is an adult thing, requiring what the above passage calls “prudence.”

I cannot lay down a law that teenagers must not marry, but I can caution young people to be aware that marriage is an adult relationship that God intends to be permanent. The tools and methods of adolescence must be abandoned, and replaced by prudence, maturity and the love described in 1 Cor. 13. Here are your tools: “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Cor. 13:4-7). And the same passage says, “When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” – Warren E. Berkley

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