Preparing To Be A Help Meet by Debi Pearl

A godly young lady who is anticipating marriage will certainly want to be prepared to be a godly wife. Very possibly, she will spend more years married than single. But how can adequate preparation be accomplished? On the one hand, the women’s lib movement urges her to claim her rights as superior to men in many ways. On the other extreme, some teach that a wife is to be virtually a mindless slave to her husband.

Out of the mire of unbiblical extremes emerges another potential classic from Debi Pearl, Preparing To Be A Help Meet. Her right-on-target best seller, Created to be His Help Meet, dealt with every aspect of the Bible’s instruction for married women. As an older woman of God, Debi is both qualified and urged by Scripture to share with young women what God has taught her through experience, and most of all through her study of the Bible. Now Debi has written the much-needed sequel, a book for young girls yet to be married. Instead of learning ‘the hard way’, it provides an opportunity to be Biblically prepared for a wonderful, Christ-honoring marriage.

Too often young people get married simply because they are old enough and feel they have found the right mate. “After all, since we love each other, we can work through any problems,” they say. Hopefully they will work through the difficulties. However, without preparation, serious damage often results and too often the damage is never repaired. How much better it is to be prepared, and this is a book to help a young lady do just that.

In the same style as Created, Preparing contains more than theoretical platitudes. It is a storehouse of practice instruction straight from Scripture, peppered throughout with testimonies and stories of woman who have experienced the joys of a Christ-centered marriage as God designed it. Debi writes, “An important part of this book is instruction on preparing for your future by saving money, developing skills, gathering information on cooking, health, and many other topics.”

Not only are the chapters pointed, clear, and personal, but they have also been tested by her daughter through a young ladies’ class while it was being written. The young ladies who took the class grew in the Lord and came away joyful that they were privileged to receive such excellent instruction. This class led to an extensive study guide at the end of the book so that it can be used as a text for a marriage preparation class or for a mother to use with her own daughter.

The author recognizes that some problems in marriage result from personality weaknesses. Debi talks about the shy girl, the brassy girl, and the impatient girl, and how to deal with these negative traits. She talks about what young men are looking for in a wife, and, as godly traits are developed, how young ladies can meet young men who could be a godly mate for them.

Though aimed at young women approaching marriage, the book contains instruction that can help a wife wanting her marriage to be all that God intended. It can even help young men learn more about how girls think and what characteristics would be most important in a wife.

A few years ago I came across a quote from a 1950’s home economics textbook for junior high girls. The title of the clip was, “Slave Labor.” It was typical teaching in the 1950’s: girls should be prepared to be homemakers and to love and joyfully serve their husbands and children. Though others call it “slave labor,” God calls it “perfect, orderly design.” What was taught in that textbook is fundamentally what Debi has presented in her book, Preparing To Be A Help Meet. However, she goes beyond the text by giving the Biblical basis for her what she shares. It is not presenting wife abuse but Christ honoring through submitting to Scriptural principles that are timeless. Though an entire generation has virtually lost this teaching, young ladies, and godly mothers will rejoice that it has returned.