Hi,
Having read this post, I also read your other one on a similar subject. I agree with your friend here. It seems, from what you've written, that you're not content with where God has you for now. You appear to be itching to be in a relationship, and as a consequence you're feeling lonely and frustrated. You're looking at your friends and colleagues around you - all the couples - and essentially coveting what they have (a relationship), rather than resting in God's timing for your life.
I apologise if that sounds really blunt. I don't mean to offend in any way, but rather to exhort and encourage.
Please allow me to relate some of my own story. When I was younger (I'm 28 now) I had a plan that I wanted my life to follow - do well at school, go to university and get a good degree, meet my special someone at university, get a good job, get married, settle down and have kids. Sounds reasonable? Several of my university friends did just that - met their spouse, got married, had kids.
I didn't.
It turns out God wanted to do a whole lot of work in me first, to make me ready for that day when He would orchestrate that relationship for which I longed. So He had me finish university without meeting my spouse-to-be. Then He put me in a Christian volunteer organisation for a year, doing door-to-door evangelism, schools work, open-air preaching, and so on. Did I meet her there? I hoped I would, but I didn't. The Lord still had things to teach me, so He then sent me to Bible College. Surely I'd meet a like-minded girl there! Um... nope. God still had things to teach me - primarily, to trust Him with everything. That message was hammered home time and time again over my four semesters at Bible College. Numerous wonderful girls came into my life, and went back out again. But slowly, very slowly, I was learning that that was okay. God would take care of me, and if I ever did meet my spouse-to-be, the best thing was for it to happen in God's timing. Maybe I wasn't ready yet. Maybe SHE wasn't ready yet!
So I went back home after Bible College. It was the last thing I wanted to do. I have a wonderful family who was pleased to have me home, but I'd been back and forth for nearly ten years now, and was used to living alone/with friends. I was also dreading being back at a church I no longer felt comfortable with, in a hometown where I had very few friends and, it seemed, virtually no chance of meeting anyone. I had to widen my circles if I was to have any chance of the friendship and fellowship I missed so much. For a while I attended a couple of other church youth/twenties groups, hoping I might meet someone there, but to no avail.
That was when I decided to "look" online. I felt pretty foolish at first, but then shrugged and thought "I might as well try!" God is, after all, the God of the impossible, right? I had one "false start", where I moved too quickly. That was when I dropped my hopes and expectations for a relationship, and decided to "let it happen if God wanted it to happen". In other words, I stopped pinning my hope of finding someone on these websites - I didn't stop looking, as it were, but the sense of urgency wasn't there anymore.
That was when the Lord had a girl named Kate look at my profile. She wasn't the girl I expected to marry - for one, she was American (no offense intended!). I had been burned by a long-distance relationship before, and wasn't intending to try another. But, once again, God's plan was not my own. We appeared to share similar beliefs, similar interests, and similar desires in life, and it was clear to me that I couldn't dismiss the possibility that this was it - this was the time God had been preparing me for. And that is exactly what we discovered.
To make a long story short, we met in person after about 10 months of communication, got engaged six weeks later, and were finally married a year after that, which was just a few months ago. I've ended up moving to the US, and married life is wonderful. We are clearly God's match, because only God could take two people from different countries, different cultures, different church backgrounds, very different families, and yet give them an almost identical worldview and such similar interests.
So, with all that said, I'd like to offer a few words of advice, if I may.
It has been my experience, and that of many of my friends, that the Lord often wants us to more fully surrender our lives into His hands before He gives us what our heart desires. This, of course, assumes that what we desire is within His plan for our lives. Marriage is one of the "big ones", and is usually par for the course for most of us. Often it is not that we desire the wrong things - such as marriage, a good job, and so on - but that we desire them at the wrong time. We want them NOW, when God knows that we couldn't cope with them NOW. So He says "Wait". Our role is to trust Him, and to humbly acknowledge that He knows best. The same is true for our career, for wanting to move out of our parents' house, and so on.
Psalm 37:3-5:
"Trust in the LORD, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the LORD, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass."
We must learn to delight ourselves in the Lord - to rest in His faithfulness to us, to take comfort and strength in His wisdom, and to commit to following Him first. Only then will we become ready to take on the greater responsibility of marriage, and/or a different job, and/or our own home.
I would encourage you to relax. That is, to tell the Lord that you accept His Lordship over your life, and that you trust His timing. Remember that it may not be His will, after all, that you get married. Would you be happy with that? Or maybe He knows that you won't be ready to marry the one He wants you to marry until you're a lot older. I always thought I'd be married by 22. I didn't get married until I was almost 28. Or maybe your wife-to-be won't be ready until you're both older. Maybe she isn't even saved yet! Only God knows.
To "stop looking" isn't to actually stop looking, in my mind. I believe we should be open to new relationships, and that in your position there is nothing wrong with actively pursuing opportunities to meet girls with whom you can form strong friendships and - in God's will and timing - potentially meet that one you will marry. While God can and does sometimes "drop someone in your lap", I personally believe that He usually wants us to be active in the search. But being active does NOT mean frantically searching high and low. It is a matter of attitude - to do the work God has for you to do NOW, while patiently waiting for opportunities (and taking them). It is to be content, while pursuing whatever avenues God opens before you.
I would recommend a couple of books for you - Josh Harris'
"I Kissed Dating Goodbye" and
"Boy Meets Girl", and Elizabeth Elliot's
"Passion and Purity". Above all I would encourage prayer and Bible study. Get absorbed in what God has for you to do right now - to study His Word, to help at church, to get experience in media, to be a good son, brother (if you have siblings), friend - and allow God to do the work in your heart that needs to be done first. Rest in His plan for you, and don't fret or allow yourself to get frustrated. You only need to meet one person, and God can bring that one into your life in the most unlikely of ways!
Well, I hope and pray that this has been helpful and encouraging. Please ask for clarification if I haven't been clear!
In Him, inhopeofglory
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