Dear Awkward: Help! God said I would get married. I’m still single.

Dear Awkward,

God spoke to me in 2017 and told me that a gentleman that attends church with me would become my husband. Well, it’s 2019 and it hasn’t happened yet, although God speaks to me frequently about the situation. My question is, what does God want me to do while I’m waiting? Why would Jesus give me this information, knowing how long I would have to wait, and how frustrated and discouraged I’d become while waiting?

Sincerely,

Waiting

Dear Waiting,

Let me tell you two stories.

Story one: I once met a woman I’ll call Beth. As a teenager, Beth felt God clearly tell her she’d have a baby named Sarah. Later in life, she got married, only to discover that a) she was infertile, and b) she and her husband didn’t have enough money to pursue adopting an infant internationally. Beth sat with God’s promise weighing in her heart for ten years. Then, through very strange events, she ended up being given a baby another couple had adopted internationally and realized—heartbreakingly—they couldn’t raise. Guess what? That kid’s name was Sarah.

Story two: In college, I was tentatively dating a very nice guy who loved Jesus and whom I had had a crush on for a few years. I felt God tell me that I should stop dating him because my motives for dating weren’t noble. I broke up with him, hurt his feelings, felt terrible about it, and spent the next two years in a muddle, wondering why God would tell me to do something that had turned out so poorly. After getting therapy a few years later, I realized that perhaps I wasn’t actually hearing God, but instead following the advice of a book called Passion and Purity. I was pretty embarrassed and angry that I’d punked myself out of a nice relationship with a cute guy.

So: reading your letter, I kept thinking, Did God really tell her that she’d marry this guy?

And the very honest answer is, I’m not qualified to decide that for you. Only you are. I definitely believe it’s possible (story 1). But I also think it’s a really good idea to take our God-messages to therapy and unpack them a bit (story 2). Especially when God-messages are making us unhappy and frustrated.

Let’s start by assuming God did tell you that you’ll marry this gentleman, and that, in fact, you will marry him at some point. Like Beth, you have a potentially long waiting period ahead of you in which to twiddle your thumbs.

Quite frankly, if I were God, I would not give people messages like this. It seems cruel. I’m not sure why Beth had to sit with the tantalizing promise of Sarah for decades, or why you have received a promise about marriage that so far has gone unfulfilled.

But I’m not God. Life is strange, as story 1 and the Bible show us, and for some reason, God occasionally communicates with cryptic messages with very long incubation periods.

Assuming this is God speaking, my best advice to you comes in two parts.

1. Go about your business while assuming it could be decades before this promise comes true. In the meantime, become the kind of person who would be interesting and lovely to be married to—resolve your issues, learn how to communicate well, live a full and rich life on its own merits.
2. Consider the promise in as broad terms as you can. Beth, while she was waiting for Sarah, decided that perhaps becoming a mother was really a metaphor for caring for kids unconditionally. She became a teacher and “mothered” many kids before she adopted Sarah. She tried to live aware that she might have misinterpreted God’s message, and that her parenthood would be more metaphorical than literal. As a result, she lived a rich life before she became a parent, and blessed a lot of kids.

In your case, what would it look like to be a purely platonic friend to this man? To be interested in him for his own sake, and not as a potential figure in a romantic relationship? What would it look like to know him with no strings attached, to wish him well, and to consider how to be his sister in Christ no matter what, exactly, God intends by this promise? What would it look like to think of all the men and women in your congregation that way—to pray for them, be family to them, and encourage them wholeheartedly? In other words, what would it look like to grow into a person who loves well, and not just because you might marry someone?

All that said, I want to also consider the alternative possibility: you could be deceiving yourself. Full disclosure: I am not a fan at the parallels between God-messages and Hollywood movies, in which cliff-hangers and misunderstandings are exploited for maximum intensity and drama. I think God more often works in ordinary ways, and that we (myself included) sometimes manufacture God-messages because we want to feel important and special. In other words, I’m a terrible cynic.

God-messages are seductive little suckers. They exist, I have no doubt (I have received a couple that have changed my life). But I think overdependence on them, fetishization of them, makes us like people who watch too many romantic comedies and then turn their love lives into a hot mess. We can go wildly astray assuming that God is telling us to do anything (see story 2).

So, when we get what we believe sincerely to be messages from God, I think we need to be careful. At the very least, I think we should use some Biblical litmus tests to evaluate messages. Let’s start with Galatians 5:13-25. In it, Paul talks about how the Galatians were “called to be free”, and urges them to “serve one another humbly in love.” He then contrasts what it looks like to serve the flesh, or serve the Spirit. The flesh will produce rotten fruit: “idolatry…hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage…envy…” The Spirit produces the fruit we all know: “love, joy, peace…” and the like.

You could also look at 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22: “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.”

I’d urge you to look at the fruit this message, and to test it liberally, especially with a counselor who isn’t at your church. You sound confused, frustrated, and angry. I think you’re wondering if God is a manipulative, sadistic jerk. Honestly, I would be too. That doesn’t sound like good fruit. So I have to ask: is this message really from God? Or could other factors be at play? Might you be called to reject its seductive vision of your future?

I think you should consider very seriously whether Christian cultural pressure on women to marry, plus Christian cultural addiction for dramatic, clear-cut directions from God, plus the excitement of feeling like you have a direct line to Jesus might have as much to do with these messages you’re receiving as God does. Test the heck out of your assumptions.

If the God you think you’re serving sounds like a manipulative, sadistic jerk, then perhaps you have been deceived. And I will tell you, having deceived myself in exactly that way, this feels terrible to admit to yourself. It is like stepping off a cliff to admit that you’ve twisted faith to use as a weapon against yourself for no very good reason. It can call a lot of your theology into question. It is also worth it—it is the beginning of real trust, real wisdom in Christ.

Do I think all God-messages should be treated with cynical disdain? No. You could be in Beth’s circumstances. I honestly don’t want to rule that out.

However, the messages I have received from God that really bless me have drawn me out of small-minded, shame-filled thinking into a realization that Love was far more compelling than all the self-loathing I was rooting in. These messages came at times when I was blind and stumbling—and I suddenly got a vision of wholeness I was wholly incapable of feeling on my own power.

If God-messages are instead making you feel angry, small, abandoned, and manipulated, I have to—have to—ask: are they really God? Are they demonstrating the humble love of Jesus, the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, the deep, far-reaching wholeness of the Almighty?

It really hurt to realize that I sometimes took my earnest, sincere desire to know God and twisted it into really bad life-plans. But it’s a common problem.

I can’t tell you if you’re living story A or story B, Waiting. But I’d urge you to consider both of them seriously. Make sure the God you’re listening to is one you actually admire. And if you are called to wait, make the life you live every bit as worthwhile as what comes after the promise is fulfilled.

Love,

Awkward