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As a young single man, I came to dread Valentine’s Day. Over-the-top marketing emphasised this day as a wonderful moment to celebrate love with your significant other, yet here I was, alone.

It seemed so easy for friends around me to find love, but my own 13-year journey had been disappointing, heartbreaking and unsuccessful. Valentine’s Day was, therefore, a day I grew to resent, as others got to celebrate what I yearned for but couldn’t for the life of me find.

Nevertheless, God had a plan for me concerning marriage, and in this article, I’d like to share with you some of the keys He gave me, which turned my situation around.

Having a Clear Promise From God

My first question to any person facing the same struggle I was facing would be, “What has God said to you about marriage?” I believe God wants to lead His children personally, and that He wants to be involved in all areas of our lives, especially in such important matters.

It can be really difficult to hear from Him in matters of the heart, as our own will and desires can so strongly get in the way. If you are uncertain about God’s plans for your life in this area, the first step would be to completely surrender your own wishes, desires and dreams to Him, and ask Him to reveal His plan in His own way.

When I was 20 years old, I was visiting a church in our local area. At the end of the service, the minister asked us to close our eyes and invite the Holy Spirit to speak to us. I certainly didn’t expect to hear anything, but I did! In my spirit, I heard five simple words that changed my life: “Are you ready for marriage?”

I now had a clear Word from God that He wanted me to get married, but almost immediately I made a huge mistake. I began to expect the Word to come to pass shortly, although He had not given me a timeframe. My own expectations and desires became intermingled with His genuine promise, setting me up for many disappointments in the years ahead.

After a particularly disappointing relationship came to an end seven years into my journey, I began to realise my folly. I repented of mixing God’s promise with my own expectations, and to help me keep focused, I wrote down a prayer based on God’s promises to me. This prayer became my guiding light in the years yet to come, as I continued to wait for God’s word to come to pass.

So, my advice to you if you are longing to be married, is to first have a clear Word from God, and secondly to be very careful not to confuse His promise with your own expectations.

Are You Content?

I spent the next six years waiting for the promise to come to pass. Were they happy years of waiting? No, not at all! I was discontent, I was impatient! I wanted God’s promise, and I wanted it now!

Being a man, I knew I have a role to initiate and take the lead, but time and again, I rushed ahead of God, trying to work out His plans for my life, falling flat on my face in the process. My mentor kept telling me just to wait and trust God, but I found it so hard not to try to work it out for myself. Deep down, I was afraid that it would never work out, which is what made this journey so hard.

One day, a verse in the Bible jumped out at me: “Now godliness with contentment is great gain” (I. Tim. 6:6). I had always been doing my best to be godly, but being content was another matter altogether! I realised that the source of my struggle was my discontentment and my lack of trust in God. I had a promise and a hope for the future, but the enemy of my soul was using this very promise to make me miserable in the present.

I repented of my discontentment, committing myself to wait with expectation for the promise of God, while at the same time enjoying life today. “Thank you God for the promise of marriage,” I prayed, “but I also thank you that right now I am single, and I am going to enjoy my life today.”

This commitment to being content in the present helped me stop the never-ending search for “Miss Right”, and it was only a few months later that I finally met my wife-to-be.

It turned out, that at the very same time when I wrote down the prayer on my bedside table in Melbourne some six years earlier, that God had spoken to her. At the time she was living 1500 kms north on the Gold Coast! God had truly heard my prayer all along, but it was only as I repented of discontentment that He finally brought us together.

Trusting God is hard, especially when it comes to the matter of finding a life partner. But may I encourage you to surrender the journey into His loving hands, and also to repent of any fears you may have that He will not provide. As you truly surrender it into His hands, you can finally find peace and contentment for today, while also waiting with expectation for tomorrow.

Hope Fulfilled

I hope that the keys which I have shared above will be of help to you in your own journey.

If you would like to know more about our journey and further lessons my wife and I both learnt on our journey to marriage, have a look at our book Hope Fulfilled: Finding Love God’s Way, available via major retailers or at Olive Tree Ministries.