Are you only concerned with your desires?

Do you only care about your needs?

Takes no interest in another person’s purpose?

You may be a self-centered individual.

A self-centered person is concerned solely with one’s desires, needs, or interests.

Can you begin to comprehend how one might not be ready for a mate if they are self-centered?

Marriage is a man and woman coming together and becoming one.

Genesis 2:24 states, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”

Jesus says the same thing in Matthew 19:5-6, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife; and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Once we become united with our godly spouse, we should become ‘one’ with them and begin to consider them before ourselves.

I’m talking about a godly, saved, sanctified, sold out to Jesus’ mate.

A mate who practices the type of love the apostle Paul talked about in First Corinthians 13th chapter.

¹If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

We are not ready for a mate if one cannot demonstrate the type of love discussed in verses four through eight.

We are still self-centered – 

concerned solely with one’s desires, needs, or interests.

We are still spiritual babies:

Not ready to share our lives with someone else,

Not prepared to put someone else’s needs before our needs,

Not willing to put another individual’s interests before our interests.

But if we allow God to cleanse and perfect us, we can become the godly, saved, sanctified, sold out to Jesus individuals.

We will then be able to consistently practice First Corinthians 13th chapter love with our mates.

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………John 15:13 

Scripture references from the NIV version.

Discuss your thoughts on how being a self-centered person could affect a relationship: