Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. (Galatians 5:25)
Deciding who you will marry is one of the most important decisions you will ever make. In a kingdom courtship, the primary reason for marriage should be the conviction that a particular match is God’s choice for you. It should not be just a good choice, but God’s choice.
Good or Bad Choice?
Most of the time, you won’t have the luxury of choosing between people or circumstances that are totally bad or totally good. Nearly all your choices will appear good in some way, but only one will be part of God’s perfect plan —His best for you. The chief enemy you fight in choosing God’s best will be your own strong inclination to make a good choice instead of a God choice.
Before you can determine whom to marry, you must first answer an preliminary question: Does God want you to marry anyone, ever? Or is His plan for you to remain single? Scripture teaches that marriage, like salvation, is an unmerited gift from God (Genesis 2:18). When God wanted Adam to have a wife, He brought her to him. Their marriage was a gift from God.
Scripture Tells Us that Singleness is God’s Gift As Well.
“I wish that all men were as I am. but each man has his own gift from God,“ said the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:7. He wished all men were single like he was and free from the stresses of married life so they could devote themselves to God’s work. “But each man has his own gift from God.” In other words, God will either give to a person the gift of being married or the gift of being single.
People who are perpetually lonely as singles are usually the same people who are worried about what isn’t happening to them instead of what they should be doing to minister to others. Their focus is inward, not upward. In 1 Corinthians 7, we’re told to acknowledge singleness as good, allow it for our spiritual growth and use it for God.
C.S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis was single most of his life. He taught at Oxford and Cambridge Universities and used his free time as a single to write some of the best Christian literature available in the world today. As he was nearing retirement age, he met and married a woman he came to love intensely. Sadly, they only had 3 short years together. What would the world have missed if Lewis had married earlier someone whom God had not chosen?
It happens. Singles become consumed with the idea of how wonderful life would be if they just had a marriage partner, and then they make concessions and compromises that lead to marriage out of God’s timing and out of God’s will. To feel accepted by another person and avoid the stigma of being single, they enter into unhealthy relationships and compromise values they once held dear.
Beware of Slipping
The more consumed you become with the idea of marriage, the more easily you can slip into a pattern of fantasizing. It might start as innocently as fantasizing about being with another person. It might be someone you know at work or church. Then you might progress to fantasizing about the children you’d have together or where you would live. If they continue unchecked, your thoughts could become a full-blown X-rated video that stays stuck on replay in your mind until it replays in your life. The powerful feelings that accompany such thoughts can lead people into marriages God never ordained and intimate relationships He never approved.
Thoughtful Reflections
The Bible declares that as a man “thinketh in heart, so is he“ (Proverbs 23:7, KJV). What a strange thought! How can you think with your heart? We normally associate thought with the brain and feelings with the heart. The phrase “to think in the heart” refers to thoughtful reflection. Many ideas are briefly entertained by the mind without ever penetrating the heart. But those ideas that do grasp us in our innermost parts are the ideas that shape our lives. When our thoughts are corrupted, our lives follow suit. We are what we think.
“Gift” of Singleness
If God gives you the gift of singleness, He may use that quality in a way that wouldn’t be available to you as a married person. It may be for a season or it may be for a lifetime. God’s sovereign will is always meant for your good and His glory. If and when God decides you can best serve Him as a team member with a life partner, you won’t need to change Sunday school classes, search the singles ads, or join a dating service He will work out the circumstances. “He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the LORD“ (Proverbs 18:22). This favor of the Lord is what God extends to His children in arranging the circumstances for them to meet their life partners.
Circumstances Could Be Worse
It also helps to remember that there are a great many circumstances worse than not being married. One of them is being married to someone who doesn’t share your love and desire for God. This person could be someone whose commitment divides your commitment.
Powerful Lesson
The life of Hudson Taylor is a powerful lesson in the value of God’s wisdom regarding marriage. Taylor was an English missionary who died in 1910 after spending more than 50 years as a missionary in China. When he went there in 1854, nearly 380 million people in the country’s interior had never seen a Westerner. They had also never heard the name of Christ. With a heart for God, Taylor penetrated deep into Chinese culture. He dressed like the Chinese, learned their language, and lived among them. By the end of his life, 205 preaching stations, 849 missionaries, and 125,000 Chinese Christians were a testimony to a life surrendered to God.
Ripple Effect
Hudson Taylor wielded a spiritual influence far beyond China. Even today, the ripple effect of his ministry is a part of our lives. The Chinese Christians number in the hundreds of thousands world-wide. Taylor was single when he left England, but he eventually married another missionary in China. A small sentence in one history book has always intrigued me: “In England, Taylor had left behind his unfinished medical studies and the girl he had hoped to marry. She had refused to come with him.” What would the world have missed if Taylor had stayed home to marry someone God hadn’t chosen?
God tested Taylor when He made him choose between God’s will and his own desires. The day came in Taylor’s life when he had to decide if it was important to be in God’s will or be married —the God choice over the good choice.
God still tests us today.
We can’t assume that the woman Taylor left behind was ugly, irritable, or contentious. He was a man of character who probably kept the company of godly woman. Many people may have thought it was a good match, and perhaps the couple could have had a good marriage. But every good choice isn’t God’s choice.
If God gives you the gift of singleness, He may use that quality in a special way. It’s something that wouldn’t be available to you as a married person—for a season or a life time.
God Still Had a Plan
God’s favor wasn’t lost on Hudson Taylor. In China, he eventually met and fell in love with 22-year-old Maria Dyer, the much-admired daughter of prestigious missionary parents. They had an uncommonly happy marriage because they shared a deep passion to evangelize China even at great personal sacrifice.
Seven years before his marriage to Maria and after his breakup with his fiancé, Taylor made a God choice that was painful and agonizing at the time. “What can I do?” he wrote to his sister. “I know I love her. To go to China without her would make the world a blank.” Instead of the “blank” life Taylor feared —the life we all fear—God brought purpose to his pain and honored his sacrifice. Even though it may have felt like a long wait, God was in the waiting. And so it is with us.
Don’t Miss the Best
When we decide on our own that we’re in love with another person and refuse to seek or wait for God’s instruction, He will allow us to choose the good. But we will miss the best—His perfect will. The problem is that things don’t work right when we’re in only the permissive will of God (1 Corinthians 6:12).
In his popular workbook, Experiencing God, Henry Blackaby suggests we “find out where God is working and join Him there.” We, on the other hand, are more likely to say, “God, here’s the person I want to marry. Will You bless us?” The difference is the approach. One approach puts God at the center while the other puts ourselves at the center. When we make choices independent of God and then ask for His blessing, we’re asking God to approve an idea that originated with us, not Him.
Adjust to Doing Things God’s Way
Throughout Scripture, God always takes the initiative. He sets the agenda. “We adjust our lives to God so He can do through us what He wants to do,” says Blackaby. “God is not our servant to make adjustments to our plans. We are His servants and we adjust our lives to what He is about to do.”
Once again we’re back to the difference between a good idea and a God idea. How many times have we heard people say, “If God gave me a brain, He must expect me to use it”? Even though God gave us the ability to reason and make choices, what did He say about our thoughts compared to His?
We’re Told in Isaiah 55:8-9:
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
God’s knowledge and wisdom are far greater than ours. He can see the entire landscape while we concentrate on a single valley. We would be foolish to try to fit God into our mold and conform Him to our plans. Yes, He did give us a brain, and we should be smart enough to know that God’s even smarter.
Good Idea VS God’s Idea
Once again, what’s the difference between a good idea and a God idea? A good idea will work some of the time. But God’s ideas will work all the time. Scripture warns us not to lean on our own understanding but to trust God wholeheartedly (Proverbs 3:5). When we’re not willing to submit to God’s leadership in our lives, God will let us follow our own devices. In following them, we will never experience what God is waiting and wanting to do in us and through us.
Go With God
Christians must realize that it’s more important to be certain that a marriage is God’s will than to judge our suitability for marriage by love, attraction, or compatibility. Our situations change and we grow through the years. We cannot predict future compatibility on our own. When we accept compatibility as a primary basis of marriage, we can be led into cultural traps. One of these traps could be living together before marriage to make sure we are compatible. Only God knows the end from the beginning. He is the one who creates love, not man.
Ruth and Naomi
It was Ruth’s mother-in-law, Naomi, who made the choice of a husband for her (Ruth 3). It wasn’t love at first sight, getting to know each other, or even a passionate kiss that brought Boaz and Ruth together. Romance wasn’t the issue. But the story later became romantic as Ruth and Boaz developed an unselfish love and deep respect for each other. The issue was obedience, a “rightness” about the relationship. God was working in the situation, and He was using Naomi’s kindness and moral integrity to guide Ruth. As a result, Ruth later became the great-grandmother of King David and direct ancestor of Jesus.
Passionate Love?
Does the story of Boaz and Ruth interrupt your romantic vision of passionate love? Would you like the story more if the two had been lovers who glimpsed each other across the wheat field and became passionately attracted? It happens to some people in some situations, but the qualities that are attractive in the beginning may prove difficult to live with in the long run. The man who falls in love with a woman’s attentiveness may find it is the very quality that drives him crazy when he can’t get enough space. The woman who falls in love with a man’s drive to succeed may eventually find that quality irritating and destructive. He may end up spending more time at work than at home.
Critical Choice
Dr. Neil Clark Warren, author of the book Finding the Love of Your Life, says your choice of whom to marry is more critical than everything else combined. “If you choose wisely,” he says, “your life will be significantly easier and infinitely more satisfying. But if you make a serious mistake, your marriage may fail, causing you and perhaps your children immeasurable pain. Most of the failed marriages I have encountered were in trouble the day they began dating. The two people involved simply chose the wrong person to marry.”
What might seem like a good choice at the time may not be a God choice for a lifetime. If you “lean on your own understanding,” you may someday feel like the person who fell out of the raft into the Colorado River. The more you struggle, the deeper you go.
The Larger Picture
Just as Ruth was unaware of the larger purpose God had in mind for her life, you can’t see the larger picture of your life. Because of Ruth’s faithful obedience, her life and legacy carried great significance even though she couldn’t see the end result. In a similar way, your faithfulness to God’s leadership will bring a significance to your life. It’s one that will extend beyond your lifetime. The question is not how to find a mate, but who will find the mate. God will direct you in choosing God’s best.
This edited article can be found in the great book, Choosing God’s Best: Wisdom for Lifelong Romance
Filed under: Single Yet Preparing
LIZZY FROM NIGERIA… Thanks for this beautiful piece….I met a guy who is a twin and has been my friend for close to 5 years. But we weren’t very close up until 2018 and I discovered we complement each other. But he proposed to me in 2019 to be his wife but I discovered he goes to an ANGLICAN church while I attend the REDEEMED CHRISTIAN CHURCH OF GOD. He has the fear of God and he is a born again, but I discovered in Anglican church believes in infant baptism, but me I don’t. Please, what do I do because the only reason I am not marrying him is because of his church. Please, I need an urgent reply…thanks.
Lizzy, I would back up and rethink and pray even more about marrying this man. If you doubt… don’t. If you doubt whether or not you will be strong together spiritually as husband and wife, then don’t marry. Here are a few quotes I found that applies to the dilemma you have here:
• “If you have doubts—don’t do it. The Bible says that if you’re thinking about doing something about which you have doubts, don’t do it. Your doubts may be God’s warning signal to protect you from making a big mistake. Back off. Take some time. Rethink what you’re about to do. A doubt may be God’s way of keeping you, or someone you care about, out of harm’s way and the inevitable hurtful consequences that could come.” (David Gudgel)
• FOR THOSE CONSIDERING MARRIAGE: “There has to be a theological unity. You and your future husband, you and your future wife, have to be on the same page on who God is, because He is your reference point for how you act, for how you perceive the universe, for how you perceive man, children, everything is your perception of God. They don’t simply have to be a Christian, but they have to line up on the major particulars. If you are an evangelical, and you see it in a certain way, and you marry a charismatic, you’re going to have some struggles.” (Tommy Nelson)
• “On marrying someone who is theologically different than you: You’re not in danger of what the Scripture calls being ‘unequally yoked’ (2 Corinthians 6:14), since that passage is clearly about a joining of ‘righteousness with lawlessness… light to darkness… Christ to Belial.’ You are both godly people trusting in the blood of Christ and received by faith into the kingdom of God through the Holy Spirit. But, just because you can morally marry is no sign that you, wisely, should.” (Russell Moore)
I gave you these quotes because I didn’t just want to give you my prayerful opinion, but also the counsel of others on this issue of being theologically divided in your marriage. Honestly, I wouldn’t marry someone with whom I have such a spiritual divide with before we even enter into marriage. We see this kind of situation through this ministry continually. Over and over again spouses will write in and plead with us for help because their spouse, who proposes to be a Christian, and they, who propose that they are a Christ follower are divided as to the church they should attend and join. One spouse goes one way and the other spouse goes the other. It brings real division, not only between them but with their children. They see the bickering and the division and are pulled back and forth. It’s a horrible witness of the love of Christ being lived out.
I grieve when I hear of this. I can only imagine how much this grieves the heart of God. How does this honor Him? Yes, you can be friends with someone who you theologically have differences with, but to purposefully marry someone when you are to cleave together? I just don’t see how that is wise. We’re told in Amos 3:3, “Do two walk together, unless they have agreed to meet?” You need to prayerfully consider: Are you willing to “walk together” spiritually in your marriage as far as who you worship, how and where? Can you agree to meet together and cleave together spiritually as well as in other ways? If you can and will do so for the rest of your lives, then this will not be a continual “thorn in your flesh” in the future of your marriage relationship. But if you can’t at this point, then back up. Just because someone seems like a good choice, it doesn’t mean that he is for YOU. He may be good for someone else, but not for you. Please deeply, prayerfully consider this.
Don’t willingly go into a marriage when you see division ahead of you before you even enter into it. You can’t complain to God about this or tell God you didn’t realize there would be division over this issue. He will tell you that you were warned, and yet you took this upon yourself even so. If you truly didn’t know about this divide before marrying, that’s one thing. But you do know. So my prayerful opinion is that you should back away. You can be friends, but if you can’t embrace him and walk together as married believers, dedicated to each other’s spiritual growth–worshipping and loving Christ together, then don’t enter into marriage. At this point you are theologically and spiritually divided. Please don’t let the particulars of your love for Christ become a dividing point in your relationship. This is not Christ honoring. Only enter into marriage with someone who loves God as you do, who loves you as you love him, and who is totally committed to walk together with you spiritually, and morally… being of one mind together. That is my humble opinion.
I am blessed by this, God bless you. Yet, I need help. I have a conviction that it is God’s will for me to marry a particular sister. I knew her right from childhood but we were not very close. The conviction came after I have not been in touch with for over a year. Then, I looked for her contact and got in touch with her.
I made my intention known to her. Then she told me her pastor has been telling her that she has been in a wrong relationship (from her statement, I knew she was in a relationship). I started praying, going close to her then seems to me as disturbing her relationship because I later found out about her relationship.
Later she was convinced that I am God’s will for her, which she told me herself. I asked her about the other brother. She said she was going to handle it. It has been close to a year now, yet she is still in love with the guy and could not end the relationship.
What step should I take in this situation. I am really confused. Please, I need urgent help. God bless you.
Hi, Jerry. I want to caution you in how you are interpreting your conviction as coming from God about this woman. As you know, God is not the God of confusion but of order. If He was ordaining this relationship the clearest sign would be that she would be “free” from any past relationships and would be willing to be fully committed to you and to developing/growing a relationship with you, and you alone.
From what you said it seems obvious she is not willing to do that. To me this is God warning you not to pursue her because even if she did break off her current relationship to be with you “now,” what would stop her from pursuing a new relationship with another man in the future?
Another reason for not pursuing her is the fact that she IS with another man and you shouldn’t try to break up that relationship just because you “want” her. That would not be God’s will.
Jerry, never settle for anything less than God’s best for you when it comes to finding a wife. And His best is a woman who loves Him first and would love you second. While you’re waiting for Him to bring this woman into your life you need to be working on making yourself the most godly man a woman could ever want. Educate yourself on what a godly husband does and how he needs to understand a woman and what she truly needs. To do this you can go back into our web site and start reading articles in the “For Married Men” topic.
I hope you’ll prayerfully consider what I shared…especially if it is your desire to honor God with your life and your future marriage. Blessings!
I’m so grateful. I will follow this instruction diligently. God Bless You.
I completely agree that it’s God using you. You have touched every corner of my life especially marriage issues. I’m currently not married but God has enabled you to prepare aground for my Godly marriage. Questions like, “how do I know she from God?” Kindly keep sending as I share with others. in Jesus name.
I really need help please… Have been doing and taking wrong choices and I know they are wrong yet I do them… Please help. I am really hurting myself and am headed to perdition 😞
The Lord help you now, dear Sister!
This article really is the answer to every question in my heart concerning the relationship aspect. I am so very blessed indeed. I am a young pastor who has a church, and I normally preach on relationships and marriage, but for me to get engaged becomes a problem; I prayed and prayed but is as if God was silent. At times I tried to use my own ideology because many kept asking me what is really wrong but suddenly the sister will just say she’s not ready for anything like marriage; at times I do cry out to God at night that what have I done wrong 😊. Am grateful for allowing God using you to answer my questions. And please I need more of such as this.