Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalms 37:4 NIVUK
I have absolutely no doubt at all how any single people will have reacted to seeing the above verse. ‘Yes! Amazing! I’m going to get a girlfriend/boyfriend!’
But hold on a minute. Wait right there.
If you are taking delight in the Lord to get something you want, are you really delighting in Him, or the thing He’ll apparently give you?
That’s a big and challenging question.
You see, the first step to finding yourself a partner is to not make it the driving focus of your life. It’s to not make it your number one priority.
It’s to make knowing God, spending time with Him, reading His Word and praying your number one priority.
It's to delight in Him, to make your relationship with Him the number one, most important thing in your life.
You see, this is where we all make a huge mistake. We all want to find someone to love who loves us. Of course we do. But we can work ourselves up into a state of obsession for it. We become like a runaway train: ‘Got to get a girl. Got to get a boy. Got to get a girl. Got to get a boy.’
The media, social media, our friends and even our family can worsen this, because often they are more obsessed than we are.
But how many runaway trains do you know reach their destinations safely?
Let me tell you something from bitter first-hand experience: this does not work.
I can absolutely guarantee you that if you don’t break away from this obsession, you will either end up with the wrong person or end up alone, bitterly disappointed and in pain.
You see, obsessed seekers after love are only attractive to awful people, who manipulate their need for personal gain. To quote U2: ‘Desperation is a tender trap. It gets you every time.’
The best way to avoid the ‘tender trap’ is to be desperate, but for God first and foremost; to seek Him, to get to know Him, to revel in His character and His goodness, to seek His leading and His guidance, to love Him and be loved by Him, and to feel loved.
This, you see, is one of the very few things I got right while I was trying to find a life partner.
I was desperate. I was the definition of desperate. And I was frustrated. I was a hormone soup in a skin suit.
My times with God kept me sane. Relatively speaking.
More than that, I met my future wife in a very unlikely situation. I was a penniless missionary to Romania on a training course in Cebu, Philippines. She was an accountant who has graduated Summa cum Laude and who had a rapidly developing career. She was always well dressed. I looked like I had been pulled through a hedge backwards.
We met in the bookshop of the MV Doulos. I had something she wanted: I knew where the washrooms were.
And that’s how we met.
Okay, so you might think this has more to do with being close to the washrooms than to God – which, let me tell you, it absolutely does not. But allow me to explain.
That night, as I lay on my bunk, I felt like a voice was telling me, ‘Do you know that girl you met today? She’s the one.’
So, having spent all those hours in prayer and Bible reading, what do you think my response was?
‘Nah! Don’t be ridiculous! I’m based in Romania. She’s here. It’ll never work.’
This year we will have been married for twenty years.
I don’t believe for a second that I would have heard that voice if I had not been seeking God first.
So before you rush out like an animal on heat to find your life partner, do yourself a huge favour.
Delight yourself in God first.
Because the dating world is a minefield. You need Him to help you through it; to make you stronger when you are weak; to heal you when you are in pain; to remind you of who you are when you have forgotten.
You won’t make it through without Him.
Questions
1. How desperate are you to find a life partner? How does this affect your approach to those of the opposite gender?
2. What difference would it make if you focus on your relationship with God instead of your desperation to find a mate?
3. What will it mean for you to take delight in the Lord?
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