If you want to know who God wants you to marry one day, you will also have to be very aware of “the timing.” God will actually speak to you through the timing, using this variable like a compass that points you to the right person.
How? Here are four ways God uses timing to reveal your future spouse to you.
1. God Will Reveal Your Future Spouse By Allowing You Two to Connect When You’re Both in a Season Where You’re Prepared to Date and Get Married
It’s certainly possible to meet the right person at the wrong time. However, if this truly is the right person, eventually you two will meet again at the right time. If you never meet at the right time to date and then get married, this means this person was never actually the right person for you.
In other words, when God is truly revealing your future spouse to you, he will do this by allowing you and this person to be in a season of life where you are prepared to become a spouse. If you are not in a place to date and fulfill the biblical roles of a husband and wife, God will not lead you to romantically connect and commit to someone. Rather, God wants his people to use romantic desires in very intentional ways – to lead to marriage.
If you’re just sexually, emotionally, and romantically attracted to someone but neither of you is prepared to actually get married anytime soon, I believe it would be biblically unwise to date.
While you can be ready to be a spouse and meet plenty of people who are not right for you, when you actually meet the right person God has for you, you two will both be ready to date and get married in a healthy way.
As Ecclesiastes 3:11 states, “He has made everything beautiful in its time.”
2. God Will Reveal Your Future Spouse By Allowing You Two to Have a Season of Being Disappointed Before Meeting Each Other
God often uses disappointment like a farmer uses a tiller to cultivate the ground. As he breaks up the soil, it is then ready for the seeds to be planted. Likewise, to get your hearts ready to receive each other, oftentimes the Lord allows a season of disappointment. Many times, we need to first learn what we don’t want before we will have the ability to really identify what we do want. For example:
- Perhaps you both will need to date other people and go through some painful breakups. But through these trials, your heart will gain the ability to recognize the right person.
- Perhaps both of you, or just one of you, will have a long stretch of having no romantic options. Through this difficult season of loneliness, your heart will be prepared to see the value of companionship you two can bring each other.
- Perhaps you both get really tired of the whole “dating game.” And then the Lord allows you two to meet each other, which allows you to progress much faster through dating, so you can enter into marriage more efficiently.
As Isaiah 48:10 states, “Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.”
3. God Will Reveal Your Future Spouse By Allowing You Two to Meet When You Both Have the Emotional Energy to Invest in Each Other
As Christians who know we need God to give us the good things we desire, it’s tempting to mistake this idea with the lie that we just need God to give us what we want, as though we won’t be required to invest our blood, sweat, and tears as well. While a relationship from God should “just click,” it’s also true that everything good in life also requires a lot of hard work to receive and maintain. As the Proverbs highlight:
- Proverbs 12:11 – “Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense.”
- Proverbs 13:4 – “The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.”
- Proverbs 14:23 – “In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.”
While these principles are referencing material blessings from manual labor, it’s not hard to see how they directly relate to relationships as well. If you want to have a rich relationship with someone, it requires diligent work.
For whatever reason, sometimes we simply lack the emotional energy needed to invest in a relationship to make it work. And that’s okay. It just means that this was not the right time or not the right person.
However, when you meet the right person at the right time, this will be marked by both of you having the proper energy levels to invest in each other.
4. God Will Reveal Your Future Spouse By Allowing You Two to Meet When You Have the Ability to Get Married
Sometimes a man and woman have the desire to be with each other. And sometimes they even have the emotional and spiritual maturity to get married. However, sometimes they lack the practical ingredients needed to make the relationship a reality. For example:
- Perhaps there are current time commitments that are making connecting impossible.
- Perhaps there are financial barriers preventing them from being independent enough to form their own family as husband and wife.
- Perhaps there is physical distance keeping them apart.
However, when God is truly revealing your future spouse to you, this will be marked not only by emotional and spiritual indicators, but also by practical indicators too (Proverbs 16:9). Not only will God give you the desire to do what he wants, but he will also give you the ability to do what he wants (Philippians 2:13).
