There’s no way to know for certain if you will be married one day until you actually get married. But according to the Bible, there are certain ingredients that are required for true love to take place in a relationship. Therefore, if you are going to have a loving marriage one day, God will teach you how to have biblical ingredients in your relationship.
So here are 4 signs God is preparing you for a loving future marriage.
1. If You Are Discovering How Powerful You Are to Do Both Good and Bad to Someone Else, God Could Be Preparing You for a Loving Relationship
Before you can do anyone good, you have to first realize how much potential you have to do evil. God has made humans far too powerful for us to be negligent towards our own potential for harm. The reason dangerous weapons are even more dangerous in the hands of children is because kids don’t realize how dangerous these weapons are. Likewise, when you undervalue the power God has given you in your relationships with other people, you are like a child holding a loaded gun.
Proverbs 26:18-19 states, “Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, ‘I am only joking!’” Proverbs 10:23 also says, “Doing wrong is like a joke to a fool, but wisdom is pleasure to a man of understanding.”
Those who don’t see the seriousness of how they treat other people are dangerous to be in a relationship with. God made the human heart to really care about other human hearts. This is a good thing. If we were cold and isolated beings, we could not experience true love. But with this gift comes the responsibility on both ends. One, we have to realize we have power to bring good and evil into the lives of others. And two, we have to realize that when we let others into our hearts they then gain power to do both good and evil to us.
Therefore, when God is preparing your heart for a future loving marriage he has planned for you one day, he will teach you to be aware of how dangerous you can be so you will be careful to use your power to build your future spouse up rather than tear him or her down.
2. If God Is Teaching You How to Truly Forgive Someone, This Is a Sign He Could Be Preparing You for a Loving Marriage One Day
Since both you and your future spouse will have great power in each other’s life and both of you are sinful people, the question is not “if” you and your future spouse will hurt each other but rather “how much” will you hurt one another and how quickly will you be able to forgive one another?
When we read Ephesians 5:22-33 and learn about how marriage between humans is supposed to reflect the love relationship between Christ and his church, it’s natural to feel warm and fuzzy inside as you imagine how great it will be in such a loving union. And I’m not downplaying that. It truly is amazing.
But let’s not forget what a Christian marriage is reflecting. Let’s not forget how our relationship with Jesus actually looks. It’s not perfect. It’s messy. Jesus sees the worst part of his bride but still loves her. He sees the corruption in the church. He sees the rebellion in each of our lives behind closed doors. But his love is unwavering. Not only does his love remain, Jesus died for us so that we can be forgiven.
The point is, if you hope to have a future marriage that is full of love, you must learn to be a very forgiving person through the power of God’s grace. I’m not saying that you will be required to be a doormat for your future spouse. There should be relational consequences when someone continually mistreats you. I’m just saying that no matter how healthy your future marriage will be, both you and your future spouse are going to do hurtful things towards each other, and if you have not learned to forgive you will be unable to have a loving marriage. As Ephesians 5:25 states:
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.”
3. If God Is Teaching You the Importance of Commitment, This Is a Sign God Could Be Preparing You for a Future Loving Marriage
If I was able to go back in time and ask myself 12 years ago what is the one word I can think of that defines a healthy marriage, I probably would have said, “Love.” Having been married for 12 years come next month, I wouldn’t argue with that answer, but depending on the day you asked me I might answer with the word “Commitment.”
Love certainly is key to a healthy marriage. How could it not be? If you don’t love each other you can’t possibly have a healthy marriage. But as I’ve been trying to tell you, in marriage you will walk through many fires together. And love sometimes isn’t really what keeps you together during your hardest moments. Commitment is actually what keeps you together.
But what is surprising is that your commitment gives your love the protection it needs to thrive and grow. Without the marriage covenant keeping you together, your love does not have a safe place to live. Your love for one another will wither if it is not surrounded with commitment.
In John Piper’s book called, This Momentary Marriage: A Parable on Permanence, he states:
Christ will never leave his wife. Ever. There may be times of painful distance and tragic backsliding on our part. But Christ keeps his covenant forever. Marriage is a display of that! That is the ultimate thing we can say about it. It puts the glory of Christ’s covenant-keeping love on display. . . .
Jesus died for sinners. He forged a covenant in the white-hot heat of his suffering in our place. He made an imperfect bride his own with the price of his blood and covered her with the garments of his own righteousness. He said, ‘I am with you . . . to the end of the age. . . . I will never leave you nor forsake you’ (Matt. 28:20; Heb. 13:5). Marriage is meant by God to put that gospel reality on display in the world. That is why we are married. That is why all married people are married, even when they don’t know and embrace this gospel.”
If you were to read further in Piper’s book, his point is not that a Christian marriage can be loveless as long as commitment is there. His point throughout the book is that commitment in marriage is what sustains love in marriage.
And I agree with this point. I believe love and loyalty are always tied together. You can’t have true love without commitment and you can’t have true commitment without love. So if God is teaching you these things now in your season of singleness, this is a good sign he is preparing you for a future loving marriage.
4. If God Is Deepening Your Knowledge of His Love for You, This Can Also Be a Sign He Is Preparing You for a Loving Marriage
God is the author of love. God is also the author of marriage. He is love and he made marriage to reflect that love. Therefore, it should be no surprise that at the heart of any healthy Christian relationship will be two hearts that are first individually connected to the love of God.
The only way to truly love someone else is to first receive God’s love. Without God’s love we are empty of true love and will not have any true love to give away. For as 1 John 4:7-8 states:
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”