Romans 8:28
If God knows the future, why would he let you get your hopes up about a certain person if God knew all along that this was not the person you were going to marry?
Here are 3 possible reasons God let you get your hopes for a relationship that did not work out.
1. God May Have Let You Get Your Hopes Up for a Relationships that Did Not Work Out to Help You Learn How to Guard Your Heart
The question, “Why did you let me get my hopes up?” can actually be a mask for the accusation “You should not have let me get my hopes up!” Accusations are often presented in the form of a question. Ultimately, we are responsible for our good and bad choices. But through it all God allows certain things to happen for our good. And even what was meant for evil God can turn for our good when we follow him as Romans 8:28 teaches us.
God doesn’t treat us like a computer. When a computer is lacking something you need it to have, you just download that new program and bam, there it is. God wants us to have the ability to guard our hearts as Proverbs 4:23 commands us. But he does not simply input this ability into us like you do when you download software to a computer.
God certainly gives us the ability to follow his commands once we receive the Holy Spirit at the moment of our conversions, but there is a learning process from that point on as we discover how to submit to the Spirit of God and reject the sinful nature within us. God’s primary way of teaching us is through the truths in his word. But many times we skip over what is written and then God has to teach us the more painful way – through personal experience. I really relate to how C.S. Lewis put it when he wrote, “Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”
One way or the other, God is going to teach us to guard our hearts because it is the wellspring of life where he dwells. If we do not learn this lesson through applying God’s word to our lives, God will eventually teach us the hard way for why he wants us to be so diligent in protecting our hearts.
2. God May Have Let You Get Your Hopes Up for a Relationship that Did Not Work Out to Help You Hear His Voice Better
Just as guarding your heart is a learning process, hearing the voice of God certainly is as well. None of us will ever be perfect as we seek to hear and obey the voice of God until we are face to face with Jesus in the next chapter of this story he is writing. But in the meantime, God wants us to continually learn to hear and obey his voice better and better.
God’s voice is spoken the most clearly through his word. When we open the Bible we see in black and white lettering what God has said to us. But when we seek to hear something personal from God to us, it is very easy to make a mistake in identifying the voice of God. Sometimes we thought we heard God say something, but when it does not happen like we thought we heard God say it would happen, we have to then make the right conclusion.
It’s wrong to conclude that you heard God correctly but God did not do what he said he would do. If God really said something, he will always do exactly what he said because according to Titus 1:2 God never lies. So when you felt God said something to you and then it does not happen, this means that you simply misheard what God really said.
You don’t need to beat yourself up over this. You don’t need to forever doubt hearing the voice of God. Rather, you just to learn what went wrong. Did you forget to ask God for confirmation to really confirm you heard this? Did you let your own desires create the voice of God in your mind? Did you forget to confirm what you heard through the studying and applying the word of God? Did you hear God accurately but then execute his will inaccurately?
There are countless lessons we must learn when seeking to hear the voice of God. So God may have let you get your hopes about a certain relationship that did not work out to teach you a valuable lesson on how to really hear God’s voice.
3. God Could Have Let You Get Your Hopes Up for a Relationship That Did Not Work Out to Help You Know What to Look for When He Is Sending You The One
One of the ways God will reveal the person he wants you to marry is by highlighting to you the biblical qualities in someone that are needed to be a godly spouse. In other words, God rarely reveals “the one” by just telling his people, “You will marry this person.” Certainly God can do that but that is not what God normally does in his people’s lives.
When you think about it, that would require a lot less maturity on our part if that was how God would reveal the one to you. People who need signs and wonders are actually expressing a lack of faith because they are saying they need a grand supernatural sign in order to believe and hear God. As Jesus told Thomas when he doubted the reports about Jesus’ resurrection and claimed he would only believe if he could stick his fingers in the holes in Jesus’ hands, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).
As someone matures in the Lord, God will not send them more and more supernatural signs and wonders. Rather, God will deepen their ability to hear the still small voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to them moment to moment. Both in the mundane and big moments of life, God is always speaking to us and he wants us to be mature enough to hear him.
So when it comes to noticing who it is God does want you to marry one day, God will most likely not reveal this to you through the parting of the clouds. Rather, he will reveal this to you by helping you rightly apply the word of God. You will see the biblical qualities needed for a godly marriage in the person God wants you to marry. This means, however, that if you don’t know what are the most important qualities to really look for in a spouse, you will not be able to rightly identity who God wants you to marry.
Therefore, God could have let you get your hopes up for a relationship that did not work out to help you reassess what you are valuing in a future a spouse. Perhaps you got too excited about a relationship because you were putting too much value on someone’s appearance. Perhaps you got your hopes up too much because you put too much value on someone’s charisma or charm. Or perhaps God let you get your hopes up because he wanted to show you can’t change someone into a godly spouse so you need to look for someone who is already walking with the Lord rather than trying to make them into someone they are not.
Before God reveals the specific person he wants you to marry, he will often teach you what “type” or person he wants you to marry. And he will often teach you that by putting you through relationship experiences with people that are not ready for marriage.
