Acts 21:19-20
If you are someone who wants to be married one day but you currently feel stuck with no options, here are 5 things God may be telling you to do.
1. Don’t Become Pessimistic About Love
One thing I tell people a lot in the comments to these videos I make is, “It only takes once.” I say that to people because many people leave comments like, “No matter what I try, nothing works,” or, “I’ve never been in a relationship,” or “No one ever wants to marry me once they get to know me.”
All of these types of statements can be true of someone. These things are very hard to go through when you want to be married but you are still single with no current options. But you have to remember what you are actually aiming at. You are not aiming at a relationship that will have a spark that then quickly fades, a relationship that will start strong but end in a few months, or a relationship that will last just a few years.
You are looking for something to happen that only needs to happen one time in your life. So it’s not logical to think you will not achieve this goal because you have not achieved this goal in the past. No one has been married before they get married for the first time. Your lack of meeting the one God has for you should never cause you to become pessimistic about the future probability of meeting the one God has for you; because, again, you should expect to have many failures when you are looking for something that will only happen once.
Don’t wait on “the one.” Wait on the Lord, for as Isaiah 40:31 states, “But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
If you become pessimistic about love because you have waited so long, all you are doing is walling yourself off from the one lover God may have for you in the future.
2. Don’t Become Apathetic Towards Meeting Singles and Dating
Waiting on the Lord is key. But I’m not a big fan of the advice to “just wait for the one.” Of course this is true when we mean we must wait for God to arrange the right timing to meet the person he wants us to marry one day. You can’t force this to happen. We have to wait on the Lord to arrange this meeting.
But the advice to “wait on the Lord” should not be turned into the advice saying, “Don’t do anything. When it’s time God will make it all clear. He will give you a spouse when it’s the right time.” Again, this advice isn’t “wrong”; in my view of Scripture, this advice is just woefully incomplete and inadequate.
You wouldn’t tell a farmer that God will just bless him with crops if he just waits for the harvest. A farmer who didn’t plant any seeds, remove the weeds, fertilize the soil, water the ground, and do all the other many steps needed to create a good crop would have no one to blame but himself when there was no harvest.
God needs to bless his work and still cause the seeds to grow. So in that sense the farmer must wait on the Lord and trust him to provide (1 Corinthians 3:7). But it is a big misapplication of Scripture to say that faith means doing nothing but waiting for God to do everything. As Acts 21:19-20 states of Paul:
After greeting them, he related one by one the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. And when they heard it, they glorified God.”
God worked “through his ministry.” God rightly deserved all the glory for the good that occurred through Paul’s hard work because God used his ministry efforts to produce what he wanted to produce.
Likewise, if you become apathetic towards love and dating, God can’t use your efforts to produce the good he wants to produce. God will do it, but he will work through your efforts.
3. Keep Doing the Wise Things You Know You Need to Do Even If They Have Not Worked in the Past
As I mentioned in point 1, meeting your future spouse is something that will only happen once in your life. Therefore, even if you have done many wise things that have not worked for you even though these things have worked for many people in the past when it comes to meeting and dating the person God had for them, the wise thing to do is to keep doing them.
Going back to the farming analogy, just because a farmer has a few years of drought thus producing a poor crop does not mean God wants this farmer to stop doing all the wise things needed to be done in order to reap a harvest (Proverbs 20:4). One day God will send the rain again on this farmer’s land and then those wise steps will produce a harvest.
Likewise, even if you feel stuck with no options right now, you can’t stop doing the wise things you need to do to meet people. In essence, there are basically three approaches you can use to meet the one.
- There is the random approach, which is where you just hope to meet someone randomly at places you shouldn’t expect to meet other Christian singles (like the grocery story, the gym, or at the dog park.)
- There’s the natural approach, which is where you go to places where you would naturally expect to meet other Christian singles (like church, mission trips, service projects, Bible studies, and so on).
- And then there’s the intentional approach, which is where you do things where you intentionally go out of your way to meet other people to date who are also intentionally going out of their way to meet someone to date (like a blind date or online dating).
God has used all three of these approaches; but depending on your unique variables, one of these options is the best option for you.
And on a quick side note, I go over these three approaches in much greater detail and help you decide which option God is leading you to try in my courses at AGW University. The deadline to enroll is actually ending tomorrow at 11:59pm. So if you are a Christian single person who wants deep biblical training about relationships, feel free to click here to see if this opportunity would be a good fit for you. It’s not for everyone, but for some of you this is exactly what you need to get unstuck. Here’s what one of my past students said about their experience:
4. Patiently Prepare While You Wait Out the Dry Seasons
I love the story where Jesus is sleeping in the boat while is disciples are panicking because of the storm. In Luke 5:16 it says of Jesus, “But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.” In Luke 8:23-25 (NIV) it then states:
As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger.
The disciples went and woke him, saying, ‘Master, Master, we’re going to drown!’
He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. ‘Where is your faith?’ he asked his disciples.”
Jesus prayed when things were calm so he could sleep when things were crazy. The disciples slept when things were calm so they panicked when things were crazy. We often do the same thing when it comes to relationships.
When things are slow and there are no options, that’s your time to get yourself ready for the relationship ahead. When crazy stuff starts happening in a relationship, you should have already prepared your heart for that in prayer when your life was calm.
If you want to be married but you feel stuck with no options right now, use this season to patiently prepare in prayer for the hard seasons that will happen in a relationship in your future.
5. Be Proactive When You Have an Opportunity
It’s a little like fishing. You have to keep throwing that hook into the water time after time; but then when you feel a fish nibbling and you see that bobber start moving, you have to pull at just the right moment to hook that fish. If you just throw your hook out there and never do anything else once you get a bite, the fish will just take your bait and leave the hook.
The point I’m making is that it’s probably very true that you don’t have lots of options right now for dating. But when you do have an opportunity, an interest, or you sense someone pursuing you that you would like to get to know more, you can’t let those opportunities passively pass by you.
2 Timothy 4:2 is talking about advancing the kingdom as God’s servant, but the principle of preparedness certainly applies to our topic at hand. It states, “Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season . . . .”
When it comes to pursuing the ministry of marriage, you should also “be prepared in season and out of season.”
And if you are someone who is interested in learning more about AGW University, feel free to click here before the deadline passes by.