Habits form the tool kit that propels life forward. They are the engine of your everyday routine and the safety net to fall back into. Good spiritual habits prepare us for our marriage with Jesus Christ. On the physical level, to prepare for married life, it is equally important to build good habits.

Good habits are the kind of tool you want to bring into your marriage to make it soar from the start. Our article “Develop More Good Habits” states: “One important tool for living a full, abundant life is the good habit. A few good habits in your life can be most helpful. But if you have an abundance of good habits in your life, you have a powerful tool! The difference between few and many such habits is like the difference between a handsaw and a power saw. Imagine how much more wood you can saw with a power saw over a handsaw. If your life is filled with a multitude of good habits, you will be like a power saw—a buzz saw!”

There are many ways to prepare for marriage, but an overlooked area might be the building of good habits.

When faced with overcoming laziness, a messy life style or bad sleeping habits, it’s easy for a single to say: I’ll fix that once I get married. True, as a married man you have a helpmeet to accomplish your goals; as a married woman you may have more time. But to carry all the baggage of bad habits into marriage is not only irresponsible, it also burdens you along the way. The time to build good habits—like it or not—is now.

You may not know when the blessing of married life is around the corner or years away. Whatever the case may be, building good habits will help you build a more attractive personality, greatly improve your day-to-day living and ease your transition into a happy marriage.

If, for example, a single man struggles with a good nutritious diet and believes his future wife will fix that problem, he may be in for a surprise. Even if you marry a nutrition expert, your body will keep craving sugar or the fast-food diet you were used to. As a married man you will have the responsibility to lead your family into a nutritious life style — to neglect such a lifestyle as a single will likely mean you will neglect that responsibility as a husband.

Contrarily, if you have a good spiritual and physical routine as a single, you will find yourself motivated to continue those habits into married life. These habits will propel your marriage forward. “An unlimited amount of good habits can be formed in everything we do. Each one protects us from the devastating effects of a bad habit. Give thought to add more good habits to your life—it is a powerful tool” (ibid.).

The more good habits a single can cultivate the better of a mate he or she will be in the future. Revelation 19:7 says the Bride of Christ “hath made herself ready.” We may tend to think that life will be far easier once we are resurrected as a God being and married to Jesus Christ — and certainly it will; yet God has called us to strive for perfection in our physical lives by using the power of His Holy Spirit (Matthew 5:48).

It is paramount to prepare for both spiritual or physical marriage by developing good habits today.