If you are one of those seriously thinking of getting hitched because you feel it’s time, I’ve listed a few pointers below. They are not exhaustive and I do not include aspects such as intimacy but you may find them helpful to consider in order to experience God’s best life. You Are Complete
Just because Eve was made from Adam’s side, you don’t have to go around searching for your lost rib to be complete. You are complete in Christ and being perfected everyday. When you marry, you compliment each other and make the ONENESS in marriage a strong foundation. If you still haven’t found a partner, you are more than capable of living a successful and happy life without crying out, “I’m so lonely, nobody loves me, I’m gonna eat some worms!”. Stop that nonsense, enjoy your single-hood, have lots of good friends and live life to the fullest because happiness is not dependent on having a husband or wife. It is dependent on what you make of it, even while you are still single.
Love Not Lust
Every time someone says, “I love that girl or guy”, I wonder if it means “I lust after him or her”. “Come on, are you saying we’re incapable of loving?” No, in fact we are made in such a creative way where we want to give love and to receive love. But it doesn’t happen overnight. It is nurtured, unconditional, unselfish and sets boundaries. An individual needs to examine his or her motives i.e., lacking family love, insecurity, peer pressured or sheer impatience. Love fuels integrity and is patient to wait without demanding.
Take Your Time
What’s the hurry? Enjoy pure, inspiring and educational guy/girl relationships without the attraction signals coming on. Learning to communicate with the opposite sex is a skill in itself. It is developed over time so you just get better. It’s so fun to be able to talk and spend time together in a group rather than pair off and isolate yourselves. Leave the excitement of romance and wanting to belong to someone outside and keep to building strong friendships that last. Only time will tell whether this particular person is whom God is leading you to. Don’t just dive in. It may be shallow and you’ll end up wounding yourself.
Romance Evangelism
Cut the crap about evangelising the other party because he or she is not in the faith. Lead him or her to the Lord, not to yourself. How many times have we heard someone say, “Oh, but I love him/her... so how?” No matter how much you feel attracted to that person and can’t live without him or her, don’t mix your priorities. Evangelism means reaching people to know God, not fall in love with them. If you can’t handle your feelings, always try to arrange for a group of friends to befriend him/her and let evangelism work from there. Meanwhile, be true to your God who will never short change you.
Respect
There must be mutual respect between the parties. Ladies, you need to respect the man you are marrying because he will be the head of the home. If you can’t respect him, you’ll end up running the whole show. That’s domineering in nature - bad move. Guys, respect the ladies so that you don’t take advantage of her. And if you do - it’s chauvinistic.
Develop Yourself
If you’re not currently involved, take the season of your single-hood as a time of self-development. Having vision for your life and developing yourself intellectually and spiritually is important. If you spend all your time worrying about who you will marry, when, why not, etc., you will eventually find that you've lost precious time on mere questions and fears. Instead, aim to be useful and productive everyday. If you are pursued, you wouldn’t just date every Tom or Jackie that comes your way because you already know what you want. Keep your standards high and either wisely turn the person down or decide to prayerfully pursue the possibilities.
Pray
If you can take so much trouble to research on which college to enroll in, how much more a life-partner. Pray and commit your desires to God. Let Him bring you to that person.
When you do find the dream person of your life, it is pure bliss. Marriage is sweet even when you learn to adjust to the differences. However, the right person at the wrong time or the wrong person at the right time will cause you to stumble and thinking that marriage is not for you. Therefore, carefully tread the fragile surface of relationships and you will find you |
