Steward's Portion

IS IT OK TO PRAY about getting married?  What if you have someone in mind already?  What if you haven’t met anyone you think would be a good match? Praying for your future husband is God’s invitation to co-author your own love story.

Our God is a God of relationship.  He designed marriage and families to teach us about His own heart and emotions towards humanity.  He also designed man in His image, with the same capacity to feel emotion and long for relationship.  It should not come as a surprise that within our own hearts we find longings that have been planted there by the God who also longs.

If within your heart you find the longing to be married, consider that your invitation to press in and dialogue with God about what you desire.  If you are born again you do not need to fear that your heart is still deceitful and desperately wicked (Jer 17:9) but you can rejoice that you have been given a new heart (Ezek 11:19).   As you put your eyes on God and seek Him first, He will give you the desires of your heart (Psa 37:4), because they were planted there by God Himself!  Too often we push away the desires of our heart because we fear that God will not answer them and we would rather not be brokenhearted.  By not talking to God about our desire, we  in fact only delay its fulfillment. We shy away from the One who is longing to hear our voice and before long we are truly heartsick.  (Prov 13:12)

How exactly can you co-author your own love story?   God is writing the history of your life and just like a choose-your-own-adventure book the choices you are making affect the outcome.  Your free will is mingled with God’s divine plan.  In this way, by actively praying about a husband you are writing the first few lines of that chapter of your life, you are drawing God into a part of your heart that you may never have opened to Him before now.   So where do you begin?

1:  Resolve that God is a good leader and can be trusted with your heart! Try to put things into proper perspective: as a born again believer you have decided to trust that Jesus Christ has redeemed your eternal soul from the damnation you justly deserve.   You are believing that when you die you will not be cast into Hell, but instead will one day be resurrected in a new glorified body and live with Jesus and all His saints forever.   If you can believe that He has your afterlife in the palm of His Hand, you can easily believe that God also has a plan for you here on Earth!   God is a good Shepherd, He will look after all of your needs and He longs to answer the desire of your heart.  Can’t you trust Him to pick the perfect husband?  The enemy will cause you to doubt God’s leadership, so watch out for this attack and stand firm in the Love of God.

2. Pray specifically! When you pray for “a Christian man” God is looking at a pool of millions of eligible candidates.   God has placed specific desires in your heart and He wants you to discover those, begin to pray for them and watch as your faith actually becomes a more substantial image of the thing you are hoping for! (Heb 11:1)  In one sense God is waiting for you to engage Him with a “fully fleshed out” request.  How else will you have the confidence that God has answered your prayer and you have met the “one” for you unless you have asked specifically?   Your prayer list can include things like 1) the calling he has on his life, 2) spiritual and physical attributes,  3) the thing you most want to respect about him,  4) his family and background, 5) his occupation and hobbies…etc   Trust that anything that gets added to your list that is not of God will be made clear to you by God.

3. If you already have someone in mind, pray for divine appointments. In this early relationship stage if you have peace in your spirit regarding this man, you should move forward by asking God to confirm it to both of you as you get to know each other better.  God loves to be involved in all the little details (like a best girlfriend who wants to hear you talk about every little detail, He really does care!)   It doesn’t matter if the man doesn’t even know you are alive or is your best friend: begin to pray that God will awaken a desire in him to be married and that God will point you out as the perfect fit.  No matter how well you already know him, ask God to begin to give you divine appointments; times when you just run into each other unplanned.  If you do that, God will orchestrate amazing “coincidences” and you will not be able to avoid each other! You might both end up being invited to same dinner party, standing in line next to one another at the grocery store, or serving on the same ministry team, yes it is even possible that God will physically have him “bump” into you as you come around a corner.   Letting God take the leadership ensures that you are not simply manipulating the circumstances.  I also recommend not letting it be widely known that you like the man in question.  What really has value is for God to show you his character when he is not already trying to impress you by putting his best face forward.  Many times it will be during the mundane moments of life that God will point something out to you and speak regarding whether or not this man in question is the one for you.

4) If you haven’t met yet, ask God to arrange an introduction! God is well able to help you meet your husband whether he lives one block from you, or is on the other side of the world.   Pray that God would order his steps in your direction, specifically that God would cause opportunities to arise that will bring him to where you are.    It is also a good idea to pray for his purity so that the enemy will not lure him into other relationships.  Begin even now to pray for him like you will for the rest of your life as his wife.  You can pray for protection, for blessing, for encounter with God, even that he would begin to long for a wife -just like you!

5) Is there truly a MR RIGHT for me? The choice of a spouse (for choice it is after all) remains with the two individuals.  The only prohibition given concerning marriage between Christians is that we are to be equally yoked (marry someone who is a Christian). (2 Cor 6:14).  It falls within the will of God for you to marry any unwed Christian believer (divorcees will be addressed in a separate future article), but in the spectrum of available men God knows who will be the very best match for you.  This principle of who to marry would therefore be classified as one of those issues which is lawful, but must be weighed in terms of whether or not it will also be profitable? (1 Cor 10:23)  Even if you marry someone who is not the one who would have been the best match for you, God is able to make you both more Christlike and make a strong marriage (because it is lawful), however much more heartache and difficulty lay down this path which would have been lessened had God’s best been pursued. (not the most profitable).

6) The big BUT…  BUT what if I’m supposed to be single? There are many reasons why a person would choose to be single: illness, persecution, war, specific ministry calling, desire to be single…   Do not fear: singleness is both a calling and a choice.  God will call some people to be single, but it is still their choice to remain single.   For some, singleness is a way of fasting and just like fasting may be for a short period of time or a lifetime.   Remaining single for the sake of pursuing God with an undivided heart is awesome, it is what the Apostle Paul was called to and chose to do.  You can tell by his comments that he was not sorry for his choice! (1 Cor 7:8)   For those who have that unrelenting desire to be married, who’s eyes are always scanning for the perfect mate, who’s hearts are lonely, who are desiring to raise a family, Paul recommended marriage instead of frustration.  (1 Cor 7:9 yes this also has a sexual implication!) Singleness in itself isn’t intrinsically better than being married.  It is also not something to be feared, for if God is calling you to be single He will also extend to you a measure of grace to fulfill that calling.    I believe that unless God is clearly calling you to a life of singleness, if you find the desire to be married is in your heart, thank God for that desire and pursue Him about its fulfillment.