Your book was very helpful for me to see the what could happen. You spoke a lot about your regret that you did not date longer and it was a major consideration in not immediately proposing.

This is terrible and taught throughout UBF. This teaching goes hand in hand with “sacrificing Isaac” and “sending away Ishmael” which both produce the same result–cutting off and getting rid of a current boyfriend or girlfriend, in order to seek “God’s way.” Who didn’t get this kind of teaching during their Genesis Bible study? I cannot find any place where the apostles taught about Isaac and Ishmael like this. But we can find them teaching about Isaac and Ishmael in view of Christ, such as in Galatians 4:21-31, which I never heard taught in UBF Genesis Bible studies on Isaac and Ishmael.

Also, “Why is this continually overlooked/excused and even promoted in the organization?” That’s a good question. What UBF has done with marriage has become the staple of a UBF committed disciple and the single, most important way to show one’s faith in God. I attended a UBF wedding recently where the words “faith,” “trust” and “from God” were used so often it felt like the whole ceremony was a way to convince us all that the couple trusted in God in the most important way by marrying like this. Near the end of the reception, the mother of the groom came out and said, “We thank you for coming,” and, “We invite you all into our family.” I felt so sad when I heard her say that. She spoke as if the church were the family’s guests. But really the family are the guests. This was a UBF wedding. It was probably going to happen even if the family didn’t like it. Here was the mother welcoming the church into the family. It called to mind how often I heard of people being told to leave their families, to cut ties and time with family, to not be family-centered and to sacrifice them, even letting the dead bury their own dead. I also hurt my family in the way I married and I’m very sorry for it.

Promoting marriage in this way is manipulating. I jokingly said, since the shepherd or director even determines who people marry, the church should also decide where people work and where they live, only to realize that UBF already does that!

When it comes to marriage, you are right MJ–ubf is VERY different. New bible students in college need to prepare for arranged marriage under the guise of trusting God. All of your faith and Christian life will be measured by it.

For a time, I shamefully allowed myself to be a standard to be followed by others, including my dear wife. I too live in broken repentance of such arrogance to this day.

For the last six years since West Loop started in 2008 I have been apologizing to a dear American friend for butchering his lovely American speech by giving him two decades of “message training,” in order to (YIKES!) sound like me! Thank God that he forgave me. Thank God that after six years, he finally began to speak like himself, and it is lovely indeed!

I appreciate how you said you felt inclined to marriage by faith. Honestly, I also married by faith thinking that the UBF way was just so much better. Deep down inside, i disliked dating and wrongly embraced marriage by faith as a cop-out. If you marry by faith, any problems that result can be voided of responsibility, since it’s God who does it, at least that’s the mentality I think.

I might have had a better experience than some. I read several people’s life testimonies before settling on my wife. My bible teacher prayed that God would move my heart, and I to this day believe God indeed did move my heart. I did put my faith in God, and I’m keeping it there!

God has used it. But in no way should anyone ever think that’s the only way.

There are always costs, too. My ministry strongly felt that after I married, three other people in my ministry ought to then marry. They were seen as those who would go after me, instead of free disciples of Jesus. Then the focus in our ministry was to get the others married, and surprise surprise, they all left. They tried to warn me too. It’s my sin that I allowed my marriage to be a standard against which they are measured, and I live in repentance of that sin every day.

What do the leaders earn by getting shepherds to marry by faith? Notoriety, I think. All the testimonies people hear about how “God worked” that are so inspiring. It gains leaders “face” in the UBF community and earns them privileges and good gossip for years and years.

Marriage by faith means trusting God–we should believe in God more than ourselves and our spouse. But in UBF unfortunately, in all too many cases, the “By Faith” part actually meant “According to X UBF Leader”.

Be wise my friend. Be sober. Do everything before God. Personally, God let me marry by faith, but I think to see what it would give me. I was personally blind to the issues people brought up to me about it. God has been with us. But I got what I wished for in more ways than one. Yes, God can always work. But he gave us a brain and he does want us to use it.

Forests wrote:

* “Cancelled marriages when one party did not show enough loyalty. In at least one case a kidnapping of one of a bride to be. – See more at: http://www.ubfriends.org/2015/01/06/the-greatest-struggle-of-my-adult-life/#more-8753

Actually it gets worse than that. I know of two cases (both involving Americans) where people were threatened that their marriages would be cancelled AFTER they had already gotten married. And there are multiple instances where UBF leaders told someone to divorce a spouse because the spouse chose to leave UBF.

LET GOD BE GOD!

What should be obvious from teaching and declaring this is that no man should play God over the marriage and the lives of others.

Even my MbF, which was considered successful until we left, we experienced some of those 10 problems. As I wrote about in my first book, “Rest Unleashed”, I tricked the MbF system and therefore mitigated many of these 10 problems for us.

The bottom line for ubf: The MbF process needs to STOP and be completely overhauled.

Also, I was not afraid of being smitten by the person introduced to me, but being a perpetual pessimist I was deathly mortified of marrying someone I was not attracted to, but would then still feel pressured and compelled to “just marry her by faith and trust God.”

In a sense I just “bit the bullet and married by faith,” gritting my teeth…but to my surprise it turned out for me to be my happiest story next to knowing Jesus, since it is nothing but God’s overwhelming mercy and grace to me through UBF: http://www.ubfriends.org/2013/01/23/if-not-for-ubf-i-would-not-be-married/