Here are 4 signs that often occur before God opens your eyes to see someone in a new light.
1. If God Is Changing Your Perspective About What You Want in a Spouse Through Your Study of Scripture, This Could Be a Sign He’s About to Open Your Eyes to See Someone in a New Light
There’s always two ways for a situation to change. Sometimes the actual external variables can change and thus you will see the situation differently. At other times, however, the external circumstances will stay exactly the same but your perception of the situation will change.
This can happen in relationships too. Sometimes there will be a person in your life that stays exactly the same, but then something in you changes your perspective and now you see this person in a very different light. One reason this sometimes happens is because through the Scriptures our values change.
Perhaps you were valuing talent over character. Perhaps you wanted someone who was verbally gifted, artistically expressive, or who had a very specific skill like the ability to preach or lead worship. But these types of skills are not character based. These are talent based skills. When it comes to relationships, skills and talents are not that valuable. Character is far more important.
Psalm 119:18 states, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.” Sometimes God will open your eyes to the biblical characteristics of a godly spouse and you will then see that this person in your life possesses these desirable relationship traits even if they lack certain talents and external skills.
2. If Your Friendship Is Beginning to Fade and It’s Making You Realize How Much You Care About This Person, This Could Be a Sign God Is Opening Your Eyes to See This Person in a New Light
Sometimes the realization that this friendship is not going to last forever will make you realize you want something more with this person you only viewed as a friend. The number one reason I hear for people not dating their friend is, “I don’t want to ruin the friendship.”
That is respectful and makes sense if you know for certain you two will not make a good couple. But it’s also wise to realize male to female friendships are not built to last regardless of whether you two never date or not. Once one of you does start dating or get married, this will cause the friendship to not be as close as it once was. If someone you are close friends with is about to date someone else and you realize your friendship is about to change, I’m not suggesting you date this person out of being possessive or jealous. Sometimes we should just let a friend go and let them move on into a more serious relationship we know they can never have with us. But if you are saddened by this and are beginning to regret that you never dated this friend, this could be a sign God is leading you to try.
Additionally, all relationships are living and breathing. Friendships are either growing or moving backwards. They are never just staying still. It’s okay to be really close to someone for a season and then later on the friendship weakens a bit. That’s normal. But if this is happening with someone of the opposite sex and you want to remain close to them, this means the relationship needs to keep growing, and oftentimes it can’t grow any more unless you two move beyond friendship and into dating.
If your heart is saddened by the loss of a friendship, pray about whether or not God wants you to pursue something more with this person. He may just tell you to let this person go, or he may lead you to try to date this person. But either way, it’s worth asking the Lord about this in prayer.
As Psalm 32:8 states, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.”
3. If You or This Person Has Recently Gone Through a Dramatic Change, This Could Be a Sign God Is Opening Your Eyes to See Someone in a New Light
As I mentioned in point 1, there are two variables to change: the external and the internal. While God can change your perspective about someone through learning to value different traits in people, at other times people actually do change in such a way that makes you see them in a very different light.
Sometimes a boy seems to turn into a man overnight. One day this guy was playing video games and living with his parents, and the all of a sudden he’s out on his own, going to work every day, and becoming a respectable leader in the church community.
Or maybe a woman was living a double life with one foot in the world and one foot in the church. But then all of sudden she repents and fully commits herself to Jesus. Now she’s not conflicted anymore and her love for Jesus is undeniable.
While others can change, sometimes we ourselves are the one’s who go through a season of transformation. We tend to gravitate towards the people who seem like us. If you were living in sin, you probably were not attracted to those people who were trying to resist sin. But if God has changed you recently and you are now living a different lifestyle, it’s highly likely you will start being attracted to different types of people than you once were.
1 Corinthians 7:39 states, “. . . she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.” If you or someone else has gone through a real change through the power of God, it’s very possible you will begin to see people in a new light that makes them more desirable to you because they or you are now “in the Lord.”
4. Sometimes God Will Just Change Your Perspective and It Will Cause You to Feel Differently About Someone
Sometimes there’s not really a good reason for why your feelings change about someone. Sometimes they just do. All of a sudden, God will just cause you to see someone in a totally new light.
If this is happening to you, certainly pray about it and give it a little time to make sure you are sensing this accurately. But eventually, just go for it and explore the possibility with the Lord of being with this person that you never imagined you would want to be with.
This type of thing isn’t super common, but it happens more than you think. Sometimes God will just change your perspective. As Psalm 115:3 (NIV) states, “Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him.”
