So what's a more practical ways I can put into action, or if you're going to give scripture, give me exact ways to apply in real time please. And what are some secondary things I should look out for that I may not catch on the initial screening test if that makes sense.
I'm assuming that you want God's will for your life, including marriage to a lover of Christ/servant of God. The best way for you to find yourself within God's will and thus most likely to marry such a person - really, the only way - is as you're walking with God according to His biblical prescriptions. Are you clear, then, on what these are?
I don't know if this is the case for you, but for many Christian young people, Christian living boils down to "read your Bible, pray every day, and you'll grow, grow, grow." To be frank, this is very poor, or, at least very misleading advice, because it conflates effects with causes. Is there anything that must be true of me prior to doing these things, something in me, or about me, that prompts me to do them? Yes, absolutely.
The matter of God's First and Great Commandment (
Matthew 22:36-38) is a good way, I think, to explain what I'm getting at here. In my experience, when I ask Christians to tell me what it is to love God in the way He commands, they almost always reply, "To love God is to obey Him." They then refer to verses like:
John 15:10
10 "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love.
1 John 2:5
5 but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him:
The idea that Christians who respond this way have, generally, is that by obeying God, they love Him. Essentially, obedience to God and love of Him are synonymous. What often results from this sort of thinking is a very cold, obligatory and very legalistic maintenance of Christian living that is mostly superficial. At least in part, this is the case because effect has been put in the place of cause; obedience - the
effect of love for God - has been made the
cause of love for God. But the Scripture above is quite plain that love for God is distinct from obedience to Him, coming before and giving rise to obedience.
John 15:10 speaks, not of
our love for God, but of
God's love and how it is we can "abide" (remain, continue) in it. In the verse, John doesn't actually say, "Love God by obeying Him." He's just explaining that our obedience to God keeps us in a place with Him where His love can be enjoyed in an unhindered way. But what prompts us to do so when obeying God interferes with things we really want to do?
1 John 2:5 doesn't say, "Love God by obeying Him," either. Instead, John is explaining in the verse that the love God imparts to all of His children in the Person of the Holy Spirit (
Romans 5:5; Galatians 5:22) is "perfected" (brought to full completion) by the Spirit-indwelt person "keeping God's word." In other words, the Christian's obedience to God is just an expression, or manifestation, of the love of/for God present within them in the Holy Spirit. But this is rather different than asserting that we have love for God because, or through, obedience to Him.
So, what's this all got to do with the price of tea in China? Nothing. But the common confusion I've encountered among Christians about loving God
does illustrate what often happens more broadly in the thinking of Christians where the effects of spiritual living are made to be causes of spiritual living and a flat, cold and hypocritical walk with God results.
The Pharisees of Christ's time are an excellent example of why obedience to God's laws (an effect) is not necessarily indicative of a heart that desires God (the cause). Professionally obedient though they were, so in love with law-keeping were they that they made up a bunch of their own laws to keep, the hearts of the Pharisees were, nonetheless
far from God (
Matthew 15:7-9; Matthew 23). The Christian who thinks that, by virtue of being obedient to God's rules, they are loving Him needs to consider the example of the Pharisees. Many are the Christians who obey God (at least, externally) whose hearts are cold toward God and far from Him. These same Christians would declare that they love God, however - just as the Pharisees claimed they were well-aligned with God. This is what happens when effects are confused with causes in Christian living.
You and I were made by God to flee pain and to pursue pleasure. Doing so is a primal, visceral, and thus very powerful state-of-affairs within us. It's no surprise, then, that this fact of our basic nature figures heavily into how we walk with God. If we find pleasure in God, if we find fulfillment, joy, peace and love in Him, our desire for Him expands and we move toward Him, as a result, into ever-deepening fellowship with Him (
2 Corinthians 13:14; 1 John 1:3; Revelation 3:20). And the more delight and fulfillment we enjoy in communion with God, the more we act to do all we can to preserve that communion. It is this
over-riding desire for God - what the Bible means by love for God - that is supposed to cause Christian living (
Psalms 42:1-2; Psalms 63:1; Psalms 84:2; Philippians 3:7-14).
Psalm 36:7-9
7 How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God! And the children of men take refuge in the shadow of Your wings.
8 They drink their fill of the abundance of Your house; And You give them to drink of the river of Your delights.
9 For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light.
Psalm 16:11
11 You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.
Is this your experience of walking with God in any degree? If you've had something of this sort of experience with God, is that experience growing over time?
If it isn't, you're badly missing out on what it is to be a child of God and you cannot be properly in God's will. The ever-enlarging, over-riding, positive desire for God that arises from this experience of God is supposed to be "ground zero" for all Christian living. It is what produces obedience to God's First and Great Commandment (
Matthew 22:36-38). In fact, Paul the apostle wrote that no matter what a believer knows, or says, or does - even to the point of martyrdom - if love for God, first of all, and then love for others is not the motivation, it is all spiritually
useless (
1 Corinthians 13:1-3).
In such a condition where love for God, where a deep, over-riding desire for Him is not within you, what good reason do you have to think you'll be attractive to a godly woman in whom such a love
does exist? Almost by definition, a godly woman would be one who avoids a man who is not also godly, who does not truly love God. But such a woman is to be prized far above a merely pretty one. Good looks fade over time, but a beautiful (that is, godly) heart and character, just grows more so, as the years pass. And it is such a heart that makes marriage the amazing and wonderful thing God intends it to be.
So, then, my advice to you as a young man searching for a wife is to be a man who loves God, who desires Him, with all of his heart, mind, soul and strength, casting aside anything that hinders or diminishes your pursuit of that desire for your Maker. Such a man cannot help but attract the very best (and sometimes the very worst) of women.