Christian Relationship Advice: When You Want Divine Intervention (4 Tips from John 2:1-12)

When you are a Christian and you are having relationship issues, you want nothing more than for Jesus to intervene. Whether you are struggling in your dating relationship or marriage, whether you are in a season of unwanted singleness, or whether you are just utterly confused on what you are supposed to do with the desires you have for a Christian relationship, you need Jesus to intervene.

So how can we receive divine intervention in our lives, including in our individual relationship situations? One Bible passage that shows a pattern in how Jesus intervenes is the Wedding at Cana in John 2:1-12. This couple was out of wine at their wedding. You probably have a different issue that you want Jesus to intervene on. But by studying how Jesus intervened at this wedding, you can learn some general principles that can be applied to the unique relationship situations you may be going through right now.

So whether you are asking for divine intervention to help you meet a great Christian to date, or maybe you are dating right now, or maybe you are even married already, here are 4 principles on how to receive divine intervention in your relationship situation.

1.If You Want Divine Intervention, You Have to Invite Jesus In

On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples.” (John 2:1-2)

If this couple would not have invited Jesus to their wedding, Jesus could not have intervened on their behalf. It sounds so obvious, but the first mistake humans often make when they want divine intervention is that they don’t invite Jesus into their hearts and into their lives.

If you are a Christian, you have received the Holy Spirit into your heart. However, we must continue to invite Jesus into every area of our lives, including our relationship situations. How can we expect Jesus to intervene if we have never invited the presence of Jesus in to begin with? Proverbs 19:3 (NIV) states, “A person’s own folly leads to their ruin, yet their heart rages against the LORD.” God is never the problem. God is always the solution.

Whatever your relationship need is, take notes from this couple who made sure to personally invite Jesus to their wedding. If Jesus wasn’t there, there would have been no miracle.

Don’t keep Jesus out of your dating desires. Don’t separate your Christianity from your relationships.

2. Do What Jesus Says If You Want Him to Intervene in Your Relationship Situation

When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. (John 2:3-7)

The second common mistake people often make when they want a divine intervention is that they do not obey Jesus when he speaks to them. Christians often have a poor understanding of how Jesus’ intervention will actually look. We often expect God to show up in our lives in a certain way, but we often miss the path to intervention because we ignore what God tells us to do to receive the intervention we are asking for.

If you’ve been following AGW for a while, you probably know that one of my hang ups with common Christian dating advice is the over application of “Just wait on the Lord for a Spouse.” Of course we are called to wait on the Lord and trust him to accomplish his plan for our lives, but within the Bible the regular pattern is not that God calls his people to just sit and then his blessings just magically appear out of thin air.

Rather, the regular pattern in Scripture is that God calls us to trust him so much that we are willing to take steps of faith and move towards receiving his blessings for us even when we don’t know all the details ahead. The Bible consistently links faith with action. For example, James 2:17-18 states:

So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”

So if you want Jesus to intervene and help you accomplish your relationship goals, you should rely on Jesus for the results but you should also expect to obey the actions steps he will instruct you to take.

Perhaps you thought God would intervene by bringing a man to your church who will then ask you on a date out of the blue and then you get married. But would you obey God if he told you to online date, to build a friendship with a man first, or to take some other path that God provides? Perhaps you thought God would fix your relationship over time, but are you willing to forgive as God commands or go to counseling if he leads you that way?

I don’t know what God is specifically asking you to do, I just know that God usually asks us to do something when we request his intervention. God is still providing the help we need, but he often provides that help through giving us actions steps to take.

3. Prepare to Act in Faith Before You See the Results If You Want Jesus to Intervene

And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” (John 2:8-10)

Notice that Jesus told the servants to take the cup to the master of the feast before anyone else got a chance to test it. This is a test of faith. Jesus was asking them to trust him without knowing the results beforehand. He didn’t let the servants taste the wine to make sure it was actually wine before going to give it to the master of the feast.

When we wait to obey God until he reveals what will happen if we obey him, this is not faith. If God reveals the future to you, he has removed your opportunity to express faith in him. God wants you to have faith in him, to walk with him, and to trust him more and more as you mature in Christ, therefore God rarely reveals the future before it happens because he does not want to remove our need for faith.

When your fear of failure is greater than your faith in God, you will never be able to move forward in life. Many times when it comes to relationships, we ask God to tell us the future before we are willing to do anything. Because we fear failure so much, we won’t move forward until God guarantees our future success. This is not faith. This is actually a lack of faith. When we ask God for an abundance of confirmation to take small steps of faith in relationships, we are ruining our chances of receiving Jesus’ intervention. The rule of thumb in Scripture is that the bigger the step of faith, the more you should expect God’s clear confirmation.

For example, if you are asking God if you should marry someone, you should expect to get God’s very clear confirmation on that question. However, if you are asking God if you should go on one date with someone, it’s good to look for God’s leading but to ask for an abundance of confirmation for a very small decision is a lack of faith.

If you want Jesus to intervene in your life and in your relationships, you must prepare yourself to obey his leading before you know the outcome of your obedience. God has not called us to know everything. Rather, he has called us to obey him and trust him. For example, when Joshua was leading the Israelites into the promise land, God had to part the waters of the Jordan. But notice that God told the priests to get into the water and then he would part the waters. Joshua 3:8, 15-16 (NIV) states:

Tell the priests who carry the ark of the covenant: ‘When you reach the edge of the Jordan’s waters, go and stand in the river.’” . . . Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water’s edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away . . .”

Here we can see that God would not part the waters until the priests got into the raging flood waters. Likewise, when we wait on the banks of the river, waiting until the dry ground appears, the waters never parts. We often have to step in before God will show up.

So if you want Jesus to intervene in your relationship situation, prepare to obey him even when you don’t know the results. God won’t show you the future, but he will empower you to have faith in the present. I love the way this story ends in Joshua 3:17:

The priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord stopped in the middle of the Jordan and stood on dry ground, while all Israel passed by until the whole nation had completed the crossing on dry ground.”

This is significant because God wanted to make sure everyone knew who was producing this miracle. All the people had to pass by the ark of the covenant so there would be no mistake by what power these waters were parting. Likewise, when God intervenes in our lives, he expects us to give him all the glory.

4. When God Intervenes In Your Life, Give Him All the Glory

This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.” (John 2:11)

While Jesus helped this newlywed couple solve a mini crisis of running out of wine, the real point of Jesus’ miracle was to bring glory to God. This is always the point of Jesus’ intervention. Just as Jesus cared about the small details of this couple’s wedding day, Jesus cares about the details of our lives, including our relationships.

But we have to be careful we never lose focus of what is most important in life, which is the glory of God. Yes, Jesus can intervene in your relationship situation, but his ultimate goals is always to bring glory to the Father, and that must be our main aim as well.

So as you seek to achieve your relationship goals, never forget the true point of our lives which is to glorify God. You can do that in singleness and you can do that in a relationship. But the most important thing is that you really do give all the glory to God.