4 Reasons God Is NOT Telling You if Someone Is Your Future Spouse

Why won’t God just tell you if someone is your future spouse or not?

You obviously don’t want to get your hopes up for someone who isn’t going to work out. You also don’t want to start dating someone and waste a bunch of time if God knows it won’t end in marriage.

After all, God does know the future! So why doesn’t he just spare you the waiting and confusion and tell you whether that specific person is or isn’t the one?

Here are 4 possible reasons God is not telling you whether someone is the one.

1. God Is Not Telling You If They Are The One or Not Because the Process to Figure It Out Is More Valuable to You Than You Realize

Imagine if all your teachers had always given you the answers rather than showing you how to find the answers. After all, they were smarter than you. They did have the answer guide right in front of them. So they could have just told you the solution every time you were given a problem.

The reason teachers don’t do that is because it would completely defeat the purpose of school. In school, we grow and mature not because our teachers tell us the correct answers; rather, we grow because we are given problems and then taught “how” to find the answers.

Likewise, while God does know the answer to all your relationship questions, he would be seriously stunting your character development if he always did everything for you (Romans 5:3-5). While it might be painful and confusing (Hebrews 12:11), when you go through a wise process of meeting, interacting, and biblically assessing your interactions with someone from the opposite sex, more is going on than you realize.

Yes, you are slowly gathering evidence to one day know whether this person will be your future spouse. But in addition to that, as you interact with someone, as you pray about those interactions, and as you consider those interactions in light of Scripture, your very personhood is being changed for good. You are developing into the person God wants you to be.

Which leads us to point 2.

2. God Is Not Telling You If They Are The One Because The Process of Finding The One Helps You Develop Into The One

The journey is meant to prepare you for the destination. If God just transported you from the beginning to the end, you would have missed out on the transformation that always occurs on the path forward.

Dating people who aren’t the one can help develop your character, so you are ready to be with the one. And even when you are dating the person you will marry, that process of discernment you are going through is changing you, making you into the person that will fit with your future spouse.

As Hebrews 5:14 teaches us, “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” If you want to be a mature Christian, you can’t just ask God to give you all the answers. Rather, you must ask the Lord to walk you through the process of discernment so that, through this practice, you are developed.

3. God May Not Be Telling You If Someone Is The One Because You May Not Know How to Hear What He Is Saying

Maybe throughout this article, you’ve been asking, “Well, what is the process of finding the one? What should I be doing so I can be transformed through this process?”

Here’s a three-part video series where I discuss the three ways God will reveal the one to you: 3 Ways God Will Reveal The One to You. The quick summary is that God will reveal your future spouse to you through the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit speaking in your heart, and real-life circumstances.

Most people only rely on one, maybe two, of these three means of hearing God. But to really confirm what the Lord is saying, you need all three to point in the same direction. For example:

• You might see biblical qualities in someone and know you are biblically ready to be a spouse. But that doesn’t mean you two will be together one day.
• You might sense the Holy Spirit telling you that someone is your future spouse; but we all know we can mishear the Spirit sometimes, tricking ourselves into hearing what we want to hear.
• You can really connect with someone in real life and have great chemistry, but if the relationship is unbiblical or simply not God’s will, you would be foolish to assume this person is the one God wants you to marry one day.

To really know you’ve met the one, the relationship will check the biblical boxes, you will sense the peace of the Holy Spirit giving you the green light, and the relationship variables needed for success will actually be manifesting in reality.

So if you don’t know this process, it might feel like God isn’t telling you whether this person is the one. But in reality, God is speaking; you just need to know how to hear him.

For more on this, click here to watch this video series: 3 Ways God Will Reveal The One to You.

4. God May Not Be Telling You Someone Is The One Because You’re Not Fully Surrendered to Hear His Answer

If you really want to hear from God, you must be fully submitted first (Isaiah 57:15). As Psalm 25:9 states, “He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.”

Maybe God will give you a no, or maybe he will give you a yes. You won’t know until you are prepared to follow him anywhere. You can really only hear his answer when you are ready to receive any answer from him with full acceptance.

God will speak to you when you are ready to say, “Not my will be done, Lord. But may your will be done!”

Here’s a related article called This Verse Proves God Does Choose Your Spouse.