Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - When Are You Ready for Marriage? A Father's Guide to Christian Dating & Character | Erik Thoennes and Jonny Ardavanis

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

Are you ready for marriage or just think you are? This eye-opening conversation reveals the crucial questions every Christian man should answer before pursuing a serious relationship.Key Topics Covered:- The #1 question that reveals if a man is trustworthy in relationships- Why 85% of Christian college men fail this critical test- How to date in a way that honors God and your future spouse- Biblical boundaries that protect your heart and purity- What fathers really look for in their daughters' boyfriends- Breaking free from Hollywood's distorted view of attractionGame-Changing Insights:"Who do you submit to?" - The question that changes everythingWhy community accountability matters more than you thinkHow to treat your girlfriend as someone else's future wifeThe difference between godly character and surface-level attractionPerfect for: Young Christian men considering marriage, fathers of daughters, anyone seeking biblical wisdom on relationships and datingFeatured: Practical advice from a father of two daughters and experienced Christian counselor on building Christ-centered relationships that honor God.

Eric, thanks for sitting down. I want to ask you a question I get asked a fair amount from young men and even older men at times in regards to how I know if I'm ready to get married. I think in some regards people push off marriage even though they're ready by saying I still need to work out these things in my life and other people jump too quickly into dating that have some significant sin or maybe there's not a future of marriage in the near term. And so maybe just if a guy was looking to date your daughter, what are some of the things that you would say must be in place? And what are some of the questions that you'd be asking?

Well, as a father of two daughters, I've thought a lot about this question. And obviously, I want to be a good dad and have a protectiveness for them. And it's interesting how you'll see these somewhat comedic portrayals of a dad cleaning his shotgun when the boy comes to pick his daughter up or rules for dating my daughter or applications where it's filled with threats right like if you mess with my daughter and I really do appreciate that fatherly protective instinct but I think raising daughters needs to start with wanting them to be so wise that when they get to the dating age you're not going to need that kind of protective instinct because they'll be making wise decisions and some guy who isn't mature enough to be the

kind of man they need to be need him to be they won't be interested in them hopefully your daughters will be so godly that you won't need this dad cleaning a shotgun on the front porch but when it comes to the guy i think it's all about character i love i am bound said who you are before god on your knees is who you are and you may have areas of immaturity you may have areas where you have a lot of growth that's needed, but if the trajectory of your life is toward Christ and growing in the fruit of the spirit and submitting to his lordship in your life, well, you can trust a guy like that who is in a place before the Lord, even though he's got some things to work out where you can trust that guy and know that he's going

to have a fear of the Lord that's going to be far more important than a fear. of some father who's protective, or even not having some image that he wants to portray. So, you know, I think of the verse from Psalm 19, how can a young man keep his way pure by guarding it according to your word? So is he a man of the word? Is he a man of prayer? Is he devoted to the people of God? Is he growing in his relationship with the Lord?

And that's the important thing, that who's... somebody is before God, living out their Christian life, boy, if a guy's like that, you can trust him. And that's the most important thing. What would you say then even maybe clarifying questions, if it's a guy that, you know, in our own culture today, even in the church, like pornography is almost a respectable sin, you know, like everyone struggles with pornography. Like, what type of qualifying conversations would you have with a young man? If that's not something that, you know, your daughter, a girl is going to approach with the dude, is that something that she should want someone in her life, either her father or a spiritual father, to navigate for her? Because

statistically, 85% of guys, even in Christian colleges, have recent exposure to pornography. So what type of clarifying questions might you ask in that regard, or even just maybe scoping it out? Well, I would want any young man to be in a community with old, men in his life who are already asking him those sorts of questions and who have good godly friends who are in each other's lives to that degree as well. One of the, often the first question my wife will ask a young lady who comes and says, I think I met the man in my dreams. She'll say, well, to whom does he submit?

And that's a strange question. You know, it's like, tell me about him, you know, does he play to the guitar? Is he cute? No, to whom does he submit? And a lot of people find that an odd question. And a lot of times the young lady will say, well, what do you even mean by that? And she said, well, is he submissive to the elders in his church, to the older men in his life, to his father if he's a godly man? And sometimes the girlfriend will go back to the guy and say, do you submit to anyone?

And I've actually gotten phone calls from boyfriend saying, hey, your wife said I'm not trustworthy. And I'll say, why did she say that? And he said, well, because I'm not really submitting to anybody. And I'll say, well, maybe you're not trustworthy then because if you're not in relationship with people where you answer to them for the way you're living your life, including things like pornography and just your integrity in general,

then why would anybody trust you? And people say, well, I submit to Jesus. I answer to Jesus. Well, Jesus puts this layer of his people over us so that we submit to one another out of fear of Christ. And so I would want to know a God, committed to community and older men in his life and friends in his life where those questions are already on the table. They're being asked and he's cultivating a fear of the Lord in the context

of a submission to people in his life that he answers to. And that sort of individualistic mentality in this independence as Christians is deadly to us. It cuts us off from God's grace through his people. And the conviction that comes through good, hard questions, good friends ask, that help us to grow. So I would hope that any man who wants to date my daughter wouldn't be starting from scratch in those kinds of relationships where his new girlfriend's father somehow needs to step in and play that discipleship role that I would hope

had already been happening ahead of time. I mean, I'd be willing to do that, but that's not ideal. Yeah, no, that makes sense. In regards to even that submission, are you when you're navigating that and you're wanting your daughter even to ascertain some of the things about the individual before it even arrives to you. How do you go about raising sons, daughters,

and even, you know, you obviously interact with so many young people at university level today. How do you cultivate a proper fear of God, obviously, in a high character that comes from loving God, but also just a high view of marriage where they don't view dating as a game, but as a means to a biblical and wonderful end? Yeah, the advice I,

often give to young people is date in a way where when you break up, which is probably going to happen statistically when you're a young person you're dating, when you break up that someday because of how you dated, you get invited to that other person's wedding. I mean, that'd be the ideal, that if a young man dates a woman, he dates her in a way where, like Paul says to Timothy, treat the older women as mothers, the younger women as sisters with absolute purity. So if that's how you act with a young woman and her growth in Christ is your priority in this relationship, not getting out of this relationship what you want, but helping her to mature in Jesus, if that's your goal, well, you should get invited to her wedding. And at the reception, her new husband should come over to you and say, thank you for dating my new wife. She's more like Jesus because she hung out with you. And she's ready to be a better wife than she otherwise would have been because of the influence you had in her life. I mean, people laugh at me when I say that, well, it shouldn't be laughed at it. That should be the ideal for us.

And vice versa, you know, the woman should get invited to the guy she used to date's wedding, too. But that almost never happens because we date in a way where it's a selfish thing. We rush to a level of intimacy before the commitment allows for it. And so we end up leaving scars and wounds and regrets instead of a relationship we can look back on that was edifying, even if it didn't end up in marriage, it helped us both grow in Christ. And with that sort of ideal, I think it puts everything into place where the good of the other, it's just love people. And so then what I'll say, so if say you got to go to lunch with your future wife's boyfriend.

Yeah. Right. And you got to lay down the parameters of what that relationship would look like. Because she's dating some other dude right now. And you got to say, here's how I want you to date. Here are the boundaries I want you to have. Here's how I want you to treat her. When you do break up, here's how I want the relationship to have looked.

And then think about how you would advise that guy. And then just apply that to yourself in your current dating relationship. Yeah. And it's going to be due unto others as you would have them do unto you. So you're dating somebody else's future wife until you marry her. So treat her that way and treat her as if you could look the guy in the eye that she marries someday and feel good about the way you treated his wife that she is. No, it's really, it's a helpful way to think about it because there's often so much selfishness in dating. And just in regards to the marriage thing, I'm curious just on your perspective on this, you know, at times in a Christian environment, I've heard kind of two different spectrums.

the hey i just got to line everybody up that loves the lord and let's just marry him off and i think people use that to go like hey it doesn't matter as long as they're christians you'll be able to work it out where is the the truth in at times i think people are looking for the messiah right that you know or elizabeth elli and reincarnate and you know they have unrealistic expectations and then where's this also this real component that there should be an actual chemistry and dating, and you're going to want to observe with your daughter that there's a real joy in the relationship she has with the guy she's dating and how that affects even your marriage. Yeah.

Well, I think in balance, the first thing you said is what's most needed. We have such a Hollywoodized version of what beauty is and what attractiveness is. And the media have so affected us in the way we view beautiful or handsome. or attractive. And so, you know, in different periods of human history, a man would look at a woman and be attracted to the fact that it looked like she could be really helpful on the farm and in bearing and raising children, right?

She's got broad shoulders. You've physically, right. But we have such a warped idea, even what beauty is in a culture that has runway models that look like they're about to faint from, you know, not getting enough nutrition. And so Barbie physically couldn't stand up if she had a body. Actually, it looked like that.

So I think in balance, we need to find character and godliness overwhelmingly more attractive than Hollywood's latest version of what's beautiful or handsome. And so I think in balance, we've got to go that way. And pornography has really messed this up in a big way for us. And so I think we need to go to war with false ideas of what beautiful. is and what attractive is and find godly character by far the most attractive thing. But to your other point, there is a legitimate attraction that we should feel toward people that I would hope would grow over time as we appreciate someone's character more and more.

Remember, I was having dinner with my wife and a woman and her husband name, her name was Elizabeth Catherwood, and she was married to a man named Fred Catherwood. She's actually the daughter of Martin Lloyd Jones, a famous preacher. And we were in their beautiful old home that was the home of Martin Lloyd-Jones and his wife where they raised their kids and played ping-pong with people when they'd come over.

But we were sitting there and I asked that question. I said, what do you say to young ladies when they say, I think I met the man of my dreams? What's your ideal for a man that you advise these young ladies to have? And she, it was phenomenal because they were much older in life now

and Fred was sort of this wonderfully disheveled Englishman. And she was saying, well, you've got to have godly character. He needs to love the word. He needs to love people. He needs to have a heart for ministry. And then she looks down across the table at Fred. And she gets this twinkle in her eye and a smile. And she says, but of course, at the end of the day, you have to fancy him, don't you?

And it was just this beautiful moment. And this teenage Elizabeth Gatharwood comes out when she's looking at her husband, Fred. And I remember that so often because she says, you've got to have all these non-negotiables in place. But there's got to be something there that makes your heart flutter when he walks in the room. And then you can tell she still felt that toward Fred. Yeah. He's a member of British, the European Parliament.

I mean, just so established in their lives, but still with that teenager. attraction, which you never want to lose even when you've been married. I've been married 34 years, and I still love my wife and find her incredibly attractive. That's so helpful. So just recap and asking a young man, who do you submit to? There's a real element of your hoping that your daughter already has the character to be able to discern whether this is a man of character, and vice versa with raising sons and ascertaining that of young women, and then just to even evaluate where they're at with the Lord and who who's the community that they surround themselves with, that maybe even just cultivates a heart

of righteousness and a work ethic that you would trust would be able to provide for your daughter. So, Eric, I'm so thankful for your perspective and the input you've provided in this regard. Thanks, John. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.