I am married and ours is an "equal yoke." An equal yoke involves much more than whether or not someone believes in God. One lady from my church that I got to know extremely well a few years ago is in a marriage where she is a believer and her husband is not. She was raised in a Christian church, but as a teen and young adult she rebelled and lived for many years without Jesus. During that time, she met and married her husband. Her husband believes in God, but not in redemption through Jesus. It was after they had been married for a long time already that she was drawn to Jesus and accepted his gift of salvation. She has been a faithful servant ever since. However, she and her husband are still "equally yoked" in every other way and remain happily married. She prays every day for her husband to come to Jesus through her obedience to the word.
My husband and I are both believers and share our faith. There are many ways we are an equal yoke, and the longer we are married, the more equally yoked we become; however, there are some key ways that I do not believe we would have been equally yoked had we married young and had children. I think we would have had many challenges getting on the same page with certain things.
I see that you are single. When you are considering someone as a potential spouse, your equal yoke should include the same faith, but it should also include mutual respect for each other's individuality. It should include both of you accepting influence from each other, turning toward each other as your best friend, valuing each other's opinions and beliefs even / especially when they are different than your own. An equal yoke should also include your style of conflict management and problem solving, etc. The most important is that you share faith, though, so that when all those other things are not the same, you have the same Jesus to turn to for prayer...
