Luke 14:26
Here are 4 things God will often do in your life that will cause “the one” to be drawn to you.
1. God Will Draw a Man and Woman Together By Helping Them See an Equal Passion for Him in Each Other
If you’ve read many of my articles or books before, you know I am a big believer in being proactive rather than passive as you follow God’s leading towards your future marriage. But before you should be proactive in searching for a relationship, you must first be proactive in your passion for following God.
I don’t believe you should try to put God first as a way of getting married. When you only put God first so he will bless you with a marriage one day, you are not really putting God first. You are just using God to get what you want. But with that said, if you don’t put God first, it is impossible to be blessed with a godly marriage one day. You can get married without Christ in your life, but you can’t have a godly marriage without Christ in your life.
There are many reasons for this, but on a practical level, when someone is truly putting God first in their life, they will only have eyes for someone else who is also putting God first. God will cause a godly person to desire you as a spouse by helping this person see the same passion in you that they have in themselves. As 1 Peter 3:3-7 states:
Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. . . . Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.”
A godly woman draws a godly man by her godliness. “Likewise” a godly man draws a godly woman by his godliness. So God will draw the one to you by creating in you both a passion for him that attracts you to one another.
2. God Will Draw The One to You By Causing You to Connect Through Serving Him in Similar Ways
It’s a mistake to think that you and your future spouse need to involved in the exact same ministry and possess the exact same spiritual gifts. That is not needed. You just need to marry someone that is ministry minded and active in serving God like you even though it may look different in both of your lives.
But on a practical level, many times people struggle to make connections with other singles because they don’t have anything to bond over. It is a lot harder to form a connection right away without some sort of bridge connecting you to this person you don’t know that well yet.
Mutual interests often act like bridges between people who don’t know each other. Through their mutual interest, they then have something in common which then allows them to interact more together. Through these interactions that come from sharing a mutual interest, new connections are sometimes formed that then go beyond the mutual interest.
For Christians, this mutual interest is often ministry. It’s much easier to spend time with someone you don’t know when you are both actively doing something for Christ. For example, if you help setup before the church service starts, you will naturally be spending time with other people who are also helping in this way. If you do this week after week, you will naturally form connections with other people who also are doing this week after week. Once you form that connection, you will also be able to interact with those people in other contexts much easier because you have already connected through your shared experience on the setup team.
That is just one example that could take the form of thousands of other examples. Children’s ministry, greeting teams, mission trips, Bible studies, special events, and so on are all bridges to other people. If you are always alone doing things by yourself, you won’t suddenly meet someone and start doing lots of things with others. You need bridges to get the ball rolling.
Besides the practical relationship benefits of ministering alongside of others, being a part of a Christian community is simply a need God tells us to actively fulfill, “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24-25).
3. God Will Draw Two People Together By Causing Them to See That Their Individual Spiritual Lives Would Be Enhanced Through Partnering Up Together
Many Christians fear relationships because they are afraid of a person coming between them and God. This is a valid concern and one of the reasons Paul so valued a life of singleness. 1 Corinthians 7:32-35 states:
I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.”
It would be easy to assume the Bible is telling us that singleness is always better than marriage for everyone. But that is not what it is says. In this passage above, Paul is pointing out the advantages of singleness, but throughout many other parts of 1 Corinthians 7 he also pointed out the advantages of marriage (1 Corinthians 7:1-5, 36-38).
So how will you know which one you should pursue, singleness or marriage? You will know whether you are called to pursue marriage or called to pursue a life of singleness by assessing which one would most benefit your walk with God. Being married or being single is really not the focus of 1 Corinthians 7 or any other part of the Bible. The focus is that we do what we can to live for God’s glory. God has made each person different. Some people will serve God better in singleness and some will serve God better in marriage, which is why 1 Corinthians 7:7 states, “But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.”
The point is, when God draws the one to you, you will both see that you help one another’s walk with the Lord rather than hurt it.
4. God Will Draw The One to You By Showing This Person that You Love Jesus More Than You Love Them
A worldly person will want you to put them above everything else. But a godly man or woman will actually be unattracted by someone who seeks to do this to them.
A godly man or woman does not want to marry someone who puts them at the center of their lives. Rather, they want to be married to someone who is truly putting God first above everything and everyone else, including themselves.
When you are truly putting God before everyone and everything else, this will push most people away from you in the world because people who don’t love God like you do will not understand your devotion to Christ. But when someone is also putting Christ above everything and everyone else, they will see your unwillingness to put anything before God as an attractive quality.
As Jesus said in Luke 14:26, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
Obviously Jesus does not call us to hate anyone, for we are to love others as God loves us. But Jesus uses this extreme language to show that we are called to choose Christ and love Christ in an extreme way compared to how we treat others.
Ironically, when a godly person knows that you truly love God more than them, this will draw them to you because they too will love God more than they love you.