Your mom and I are leading a new Single Adult Community at our church and we love it. The next three weeks we are talking about dating and it’s been a lot of fun. The first night was helping the group to see that while many of us see that God is 100% for us; it’s easy to get caught in a trap of sitting around and waiting patiently for God to bring something to us.
In other words, we follow a basic routine: wake up, go to work, eat lunch, go home and go to church and we expect God to throw someone in our path for us to marry.
This can be the case. But for many, it’s not.
God can only open doors we that we walk up to.
God is 100% for you
In the garden of Eden, we screw up right away. Instead of submitting to God’s authority we want to be equals. Our arrogance gave us the separation from God we feel today. What does God do right away when we make this horrible mess? His first act in Genesis 3 is, “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” So God kills his own creation, from Genesis 1 & 2, to cover our sin. As Christians, we know this is foreshadowing of what is to come: that someday God will himself cover our sins with his own blood to cover our shame permanently.
The Old Testament is full of stories of God relentlessly pursuing us in spite of who we choose to be. Over and over we see that God is 100% for us. Romans 8 (one of my favorite chapters in the Bible) says it perfectly: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
We are also 100% responsible
Jesus tells us in Matthew 6, “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” I was struck by this recently reading a book by Dr. Cloud. He highlighted something very simple but important: God provides for the birds but when you look outside your window, you don’t see birds sitting in their nests and seeds and straw fly through the air into their nests. No, we see birds leaving their nests and working. But God provides. Birds still have work to do. All of life comes with it a natural sense of responsibility. Sure God wants to see the whole world change; but if you and I don’t leave the safety of our nests and step out in faith and hard work we will die in our nests wondering where God is.
Just like all of us. The question could be, “why can’t I find someone to marry?” or “why am I still in this dead end job?” These are important questions but we have to be careful to be wise enough to distinguish our role vs God’s role.
There are times to wait and listen for God; and there are times to leave the nest and step out in faith.
When it’s time for you to date mom and I pray that you will experience both God’s love for you that causes you to respond with wisdom and courage.