Many Christians have been taught that the best way to find your spouse is to stop looking – almost like trying to play reverse psychology on God. They think that if they want a spouse too badly, God won’t give it to them. But if they let it go and stop trying to find someone, then God will give it to them.
What makes this even more confusing for Christian singles is that it appears many married people used this method and it worked for them. Their married friends say, “When I finally gave up and stopped trying to find my spouse, that’s when God finally brought them into my life.”
I have many thoughts about this! While I can’t argue with people’s personal experiences, I do believe there is more going on behind the scenes that leads God to bring some people’s spouse once they stop looking.
Therefore, here are 3 reasons God often sends your spouse once you stop looking.
1. If No Longer Looking for a Spouse Is Also Being Combined with Repenting of Idolatry, This Is Often the Real Reason It Works
Wanting to be married is a very good desire. However, as we all know, it’s easy to want a good thing for a bad reason. If you want a spouse to fill you in ways only God can, then that is a form of idolatry.
When Christians become aware of this internal idolatry of a relationship, they rightly have a strong urge to repent. However, sometimes Christians repent of a bad motive by stopping good behavior.
For example, in Matthew 6:1-18, Jesus warns us about having a bad motive in our giving, in our prayers, and in our fasting. He warns us not to do these things to be seen by others. Rather, we should do these things for God. However, nowhere in this passage does Jesus tell us not to give, not to pray, or not to fast. Rather, to repent of the false motive of being seen by others, we must repent of that specific internal sin, not of the good actions that are being tainted by those bad motives.
Therefore, sometimes God blesses people with a spouse when they stop looking not because they stopped looking but rather because they stopped idolizing marriage. They wrongly attribute their passivity as the change that led to God’s blessing. In fact, the real change that led to God’s blessing was repenting of the idolatry so that they could become blessable.
This isn’t to say we need to be perfect to earn God’s blessings. However, in love, God will not bless us with gifts that will hurt us more than help us (Matthew 7:11). God won’t bless you with an idol. He will only bless you with a spouse once your heart is in a place to properly handle this blessing for his glory. James 4:3, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”
So, with that said, I think there is value in pursuing marriage less frantically if that is the way you feel led to repent of your idolatry (1 John 5:21). But, big picture, I would think of this more in terms of fasting rather than never being proactive again. Being less active for a period of time can help you sanctify your motives to pursue marriage in a holier way. But being less active forever will usually lead to never getting married.
Wanting to be married is good (Genesis 2:18). Being active in pursuing open doors is good (Ecclesiastes 11:2-6). God didn’t condemn Abraham for sending his servant to find a wife for Isaac. God actually blessed this proactive plan (Genesis 24).
As I’ve discussed at length in many previous articles, Scripture is full of principles that encourage waiting and going, praying and acting, having faith and having good deeds. One way or another, for a relationship to work, both you and your future spouse will have to do something to meet, date, and marry each other.
2. No Longer Looking for a Spouse Often Leads to Your Future Spouse When It Leads to a Fuller Lifestyle
So what about all these examples of married Christians who think they were blessed with a spouse after they stopped looking?
What usually happened in situations like this was that, in the process of letting go of the desire to marry, these people began living a more balanced life. They started doing more things than just looking for a spouse. And when you really understand relationships, you will discover that this is exactly the key ingredient to making deep connections.
In C.S. Lewis’s book The Four Loves, he explains that wanting friends is not the way to get friends. He points to the need for common interests: “The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one.’” Without common interests, friendships can’t happen. He then writes:
That is why those pathetic people who simply ‘want friends’ can never make any. The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends . . . There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow travelers.
When the two people who thus discover that they are on the same secret road are of different sexes, the friendship which arises between them will very easily pass – may pass in the first half hour – into erotic love. Indeed, unless they are physically repulsive to each other or unless one or both already loves elsewhere, it is almost certain to do so sooner or later.”
Did you catch the pattern Lewis highlighted? He said that pursuing your interests helps you have friends. And when you make friends from the opposite sex, those often turn into romantic connections. Therefore, we can say that one key ingredient to making a romantic connection is to first have a full life. Having interests and passions helps you make connections with others.
Think of all those love stories in the Bible that involve two people meeting and getting married. They all involve two people doing something. Even if they are directly looking for a spouse, they aren’t actually just looking for a spouse. Rebecca was found by Abraham’s servant when she was out watering her camels (Genesis 24). Rachel was found by Jacob when she was out watering her sheep (Genesis 29). Moses met Zipporah as she was watering her flock (Exodus 2). Each of these men left their homes, and each of these women was out doing something besides looking for a husband.
Ecclesiastes 11:6, “In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.” We don’t know how God will introduce us to the right person. But by living a more active lifestyle, you will naturally plant many more seeds than if you focus only on getting married.
Therefore, this is often what actually happens when people stop looking for a spouse. It’s not the “not looking” that results in them meeting someone. It’s what they are doing instead of looking for a spouse.
If you stop looking for a spouse but don’t start living life in other active ways, this new approach of not looking for a spouse will get you the same results as before.
When they stop focusing so much on romance, they are accidentally actually producing the ingredients needed for romance to take place. When they live an interesting life pursuing their passions, they go out into the world and meet like-minded people who are also pursuing those same passions, which leads to real connections.
3. When Jesus, Not Romance, Is at the Forefront of Your Mind, It’s Easier to Connect with Someone
As Lewis explained, friends need something to build their friendship around. That’s why we had so many friends in school. School was the common interest. The pressures, the socializing, the sporting events – they gave us common bonds to connect over.
As adults, we need these same elements to have a healthy community. As Christians, we are bound together by Jesus. But to have deeper friendships, we need to be pursuing Jesus and the passions he’s given us in specific ways. These outlets for our passions then give us bridges to other people who share in those same passions.
Think of Paul and all those people he would mention at the end of his letters. He had built so many deep friendships because he was out there serving Jesus. And others who were serving Jesus were on the same road as him. Thus, they got connected.
Slowly (or sometimes quickly), when a man and woman connect over a shared interest, their bond builds through that interest, then progresses to the point where they become more interested in each other than in the common interest. Of friendship, Lewis said, “Friends [are] side by side, absorbed in some common interest.” Of lovers he said, “Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other.”
Just wanting a spouse will not lead you to a spouse. In fact, if you spend too much of your time and energy focusing solely on that desire, you are actually making it much harder to connect with someone.
Rather, when you spend your time following Jesus, serving God, and enjoying the other passions the Lord has put on your heart, you will naturally start meeting people you connect with easily. And often these connections become the bridge to the person God wants you to marry one day.
