Galatians 5:16
When God reveals your person, will this be marked by easy signs or difficult signs? Most likely, this experience will be easy and hard in different ways.
By the term “your person,” I’m talking about the man or woman God wants you to marry one day. So of course you will enjoy this person, they will enjoy you, and you will experience a satisfying level of compatibility. But what about the hard signs? What will those look like?
Here are 5 stressful things that often happen when God is revealing your person.
1. God Will Begin Your Relationship with “Your Person” Through the Stressful Experience of Trying to Figure Out If Your Feelings for Each Other Are Mutual
Why won’t God just tell you, “That’s your person!” as soon as you lay eyes on them? Why must we all go through that tense experience of trying to figure out if this person likes us just as much as we like them?
Perhaps God allows this to occur at the beginning of the relationship to help create an environment of healthy communication for decades to come. Throughout the life of your relationship with your future spouse, from the moment you meet this person until the moment one of you goes to heaven, the health of your connection will be directly linked to the health of your communication with each other.
This doesn’t mean you need to constantly talk, as though volume of words is the sign of good communication. This also doesn’t mean you need to be eloquent, as though the style of your phrases marks good communication. Rather, good communication is marked by “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). This is so hard because it’s easy to speak the truth harshly or speak half-truths kindly. But healthy communication finds a way to tell the truth in the most loving way possible.
Therefore, to set you up for success, God helps you mature in this area right from the start of the relationship. For you two to become a couple, you will both have to express interest and reveal your feelings for each other.
2. When You Meet Your Person, God Will Make You Decided If You Are Ready for a Relationship
While God does speak through our circumstances at times, God also requires us to not be ruled by our circumstances. God does not want us to be like a wave tossed about by whichever way the wind is blowing (James 1:6-8).
When we apply this idea to relationships, this means you need to make choices about the circumstances in your life rather than just going along with every decision other people are making. Just because a door is open doesn’t mean God wants you to walk through. And just because a door is closed doesn’t mean God wants you to give up trying to get to what’s behind that door. Perhaps there’s another way to access the blessing besides that closed door.
All that to say, you will need to say no to relationships when you are not ready. And when you meet the right person, you will need to make the choice that, yes, you are ready to start a relationship. This can be stressful to decide, but God will lead you.
You don’t need to be perfect to be ready for a relationship. You just need to be willing to follow the Lord, repenting when you error, and mature enough to obey his word.
3. When God Is Revealing Your Person to You, You Will Need to Decide If the Problems in the Relationship Are Signs You Two Are Growing or Signs You Two Should Part Ways
Stress usually occurs when you’re being pulled in two different directions. This is why problems in relationships cause so much stress. On one hand, you will want to run away and not deal with this issue. But on the other hand, you will want to make it right with this person and so you will need to confront the issue that is causing distance between you two.
To make matters more stressful before marriage, you also need to decide when the issues are just too much and it’s best to part ways. In marriage the commitment level is much higher so it’s much easier to know that you should work through the issues. But in dating, you haven’t made that lifelong commitment yet, thus God could lead you to move on.
One way you can know what you should do is by looking at the effect these issues are having on you. Are they causing you and this person to sin and fall away from Christ or are these issues causing you to confront immaturity and bringing you closer to Christ?
When you meet your person, there will be issues. But these issues will actually help you two grow closer to each other and to God (Proverbs 27:17, Galatians 6:1-2).
4. When God Is Revealing Your Person to You, You Will Need to Decide What Parts of Your Past Need to Be Talked About
Some people believe you should tell your partner everything you’ve ever done. Others believe you should let the past stay in the past. So which is? Does your partner need to know what your life was like before you started walking with Jesus, how many people you’ve had sex with, or about your struggles with porn?
I don’t think there is a clear rule that everyone needs to follow. Rather, in wisdom, I think it’s good to ask, “What do I need to tell this person? What would benefit our relationship? And what does God want me to share with this person about my past?”
Ultimately you don’t need your spouse to know about every sin you’ve ever committed because Jesus is your redeemer (2 Corinthians 5:21), not your spouse. However, you also want your spouse to know you, to understand what you’ve been through, and to rejoice with you as you glory in the grace that God has lavished on you.
So ask the Lord about this and be wise. Don’t share nitty-gritty details that just needlessly fuel the imagination. But make sure this person knows what they’re getting into so they can make an informed decision. This will then increase your security in their love for you when they know your story and choose to be with you.
For more on this, you can read my article called When, Why, and How to Talk About Past Sexual Sin with Your Christian Partner.
5. It Will Be Stressful When You’re Trying to Figure Out When You Two Should Date and Then Get Married
Perhaps the biggest stressor in relationships is the timing. Is this the right person but just the wrong time? Or is it always going to be the wrong time because this is not the right person? And when you do start dating, how long is long enough before you should get married? You don’t want to date too long and expose yourself to unnecessary temptation; but you also don’t want to date too short and miss something God might be trying to tell you.
My general advice is to only date when you are in a season of life where you are prepared to get married if God was to reveal the right person to you. And you should get married as soon as you know this relationship is biblical and you want to marry this person. My personal opinion is that this process should last between 6 months and 2 years. Getting married before dating at least 6 months can lead to missing red flags. And waiting to get married after more than 2 years of dating usually leads to sexual sin.
Do what you believe is most pleasing to God. Do what is wise. And ultimately, it comes down to doing what you feel led by the Holy Spirit to do, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).
Here’s a playlist of videos about how to know when God is revealing “the one” to you: How Will God Reveal The One to You?