To My Future Wife

So I know I haven't posted anything in a while, and I promised that I had some cool stuff that I wanted to post. Well, in response, I just want to say that I am an engineer. That really should explain that. But in all reality, I have just been very busy with homework, my church, and Impact, and the posts I want to write take more time and research than I have time for right now. So maybe I will hold off on those for a while, and get back to just blogging my thoughts as they come to my head, and doing this every week. We'll see how this goes..

But for now, there is something that I have been seeing on Twitter pretty frequently that I want to address. Before anything, I want to say that this is my opinion, that there really is no Scriptural backing for what I am going to say, and as such I could be completely in the wrong with what I am about to say. Nevertheless, it is something I want to talk about.

I am referring to people posting on Tweets about how they are currently praying for their future husband or wife. And how they can't wait to meet their future spouse. And how they are excited for their wedding day/night. And specifics about how they are going to spend time with and serve their spouse. I see this a lot on anonymous accounts, but they are by no means the only ones hashtagging #ToMyFutureHusband.

I am going to be completely blunt with this: I think your intentions are good, but I do sometimes question your motives behind these tweets. Now I am not an expert on relationships or prayer, but God has been showing me a lot about both this past year. And one specific truth he has taught me is the power in waiting on Him. With relationships, this means just sitting back and knowing that God has a plan for you, and that may even be that you never get married. And you should be okay with that; read 1 Corinthians 7, Paul goes off on this very topic. "Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife." Getting marries or staying single are both honorable, but you have to understand that God has put you in such a position, and if that should change it should solely be by His discretion.

And so if you are in college and constantly posting about your future husband or wife, are you truly content to be single? And by that, I mean are you content with Jesus and him alone? Are you truly happy being single at this very moment, so much that you don't need to be married, you don't need to have a girlfriend (or even a crush)? Because if you are not, then you are not ready to date. At all. If you think you need a woman in your life, it speaks truth about how much more you have to grow with Jesus. He is the only thing you will ever truly need. We live in a broken world, separated from the God who created us and loves us, and we are helpless to bridge that gap. We are condemned to an eternity in Hell because we have broken the Law set down by God, and only by living a perfect life can we get into Heaven. But none of us can ever do that, and so God sent Jesus to this earth to live that perfect life we cannot, and he was murdered by those he came to save, but death could not hold him. He had done no wrong, had never broken that Law, and so was not condemned to that death. But even greater, he took upon himself the sin and death of the whole world, and even that could not keep him down, and he rose again three days later, bridging the gap between God and man. We are only saved from Hell by believing in Jesus; nothing on this earth can do that: no amount of good deeds, or money, and certainly no woman. Only Jesus.

But that is not to say that it is wrong to desire a relationship with a woman. God gave Eve to Adam so he would no be alone. He gave Sarai to Abram, and Rebekah to Isaac. God gave us a book, The Song of Solomon, to show us how to do marriage right, and it starts with the two completely enamored with each other (think of the level of desire in any Nicholas Sparks novel, multiply that by like ten, and you get these two). They were crazy about each other, and it was good, it is the standard of romantic love! God wants us all to be joyful, he wants us to share life with a community, with best friends, with a husband or wife. God gave us sex as an incredible gift that is beautiful and sacred when enjoyed in the context of marriage. And so I am not saying these tweets are necessarily bad and that you should not be tweeting them. What I am saying is that if you are posting things like this, or even just praying for your future spouse whom you haven't even met, or think that you would like to have a girlfriend, you need to make sure your heart is in the right place.

A relationship should be completely loving and honorable, it should be about serving one another humbly. It should be about helping the other grow with Christ, and it should happen as a result of you growing with Christ. You should be willing to wait as long as it takes for God to show you the right person, and you should not let that waiting make you weary or worry. But by all means, if you are following Christ with your all and He is leading you to pray for the woman you will one day be spending your life with, do it. If He shows you who that person is, go ahead and get to know her, ask her out. Enjoy the pursuit, because it is enjoyable! But if you are not in a point in your walk with Christ where you can say, "all I need is you, Lord," then you really have no business getting into a relationship. If God wants you two together, she will not go anywhere; you need to get yourself figured out before anything.

And I can say this with personal experience. My entire freshmen year I was still an infant in my faith, and there were many times when I thought that I liked a girl because I wanted a girlfriend. It wasn't until the end of summer, after I would consider myself mature, when I was able to say that I was totally fine being single, which I hadn't been able to say the entire past year. And it was only then that I started to like a girl, but as I prayed God showed me that the feelings were good. And with the end of that, I was still fine being single, because I knew that God had other things planned for me, and if He wanted us back together He would bring us together. And that's where I still am; I would really like to date this girl, and she knows this, but she also knows that I will wait on her to be ready, and more importantly that Jesus is the foundation of my life and the only thing I truly need. And it has been so blessed the whole time, because my heart is right with God: I know this, because He has shown me this.

But I will say this to my future wife: Above all I promise to love Jesus every day of my life, and then I promise to love you, serve you, honor you, and cherish you as the daughter of our Lord. I have prayed for you, and I know that God has brought us together. And while I may or may not know who you are right now, I know that I am the bride of Christ, and that is all I need. But the thought of a life with you is very exciting.