Advice to Single Guys

Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth. Proverbs 5:18

Call it what you want—slavery (see verses below), a job, a vocation, a calling—but someday some company or organization will own you.  They will determine how far you go in life, what you eat, wear, aspire too, and how you provide for your family and future. 

You will spend most of your adult life serving some company or organization.

Don’t fool yourself…you may be the boss, the owner, on salary, have a fancy title, your own office, make big bucks…but you have still sold your soul to the company store.

So here’s my advice…

Get married first.

Don’t wait until you can afford to provide for a wife and family.  Don’t wait until you get a good job and get settled in a good career.  If you do your wife will know nothing else and will not really know you. 

Her expectations and demands will be different.  There will never be an escape—spoken or unspoken, she will expect the kind of lifestyle she entered into with you and will only expect things to get better.

But when you wed your girl first, she loved you when you had nothing and were a nobody.  That’s the kind of gal that will still be there when times are tough and when times are good.  She won’t be shaken by setbacks and downturns…she remembers when you two had nothing and you were a nobody.  For her, the stuff is nice, but she didn’t marry for the stuff…she married for you.

The Kemp men in my family have experienced this first hand. For example, our cars (or lack thereof)…

Almost seven decades ago, my mom married my dad when he didn’t even own a car, now she’s driving him around.

Way back in 1978 my wife jumped in a 1972 Ford Pinto—a former postal car—and headed out with me into the unknown (I had a 100.00 to my name). Thankfully, I have a different car today, but not a different wife.

For his first date with his future wife, my son pulled up in a 1980 F150 Ford truck that looked like it had come through a dozen demolition derbies…she jumped in and they’re still truckin.

This works fellows…  

I can’t say a lot about us Kemp guys, but I can’t say enough about the gals we married.  All three of us…dad, Lee, and me…we’ve had a measure of success working for the company store…but I lay it all at the feet of the good Lord and our good wives.  Thank God, we married up.

The ONE THING for today: What are you waiting for!? Marry.  Marry young.  Marry first.  The both of you can sort the rest out as you go.

² If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years; and in the seventh he shall go out free and pay nothing. ³ If he comes in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. ⁴ If his master has given him a wife, and she has borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself. ⁵ But if the servant plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ ⁶ then his master shall bring him to the judges. He shall also bring him to the door, or to the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him forever. Exodus 21:2-6