Getting a Man for 2009
Thanks Yakuti for a great website. My name is Angela… I’m 24, when I was a little girl my dream was to hit the alter by age 21 and be done with the three children and pickett-fence dream by the time I’m 27. Boy did I not see what was coming. I have been single all my life, two guys have approached me but imagine my reason for saying no was because I was afraid I would not know how to fit into the quote on quote “woman in courtship” role! My girlfriends say that women are supposed to be proactive in finding relationships, that we have to do our own form of chasing in form of looking good, being confident etc, is it true? I thought men are supposed to do the looking and women are supposed to wait for mr. right? My confidence has gone down because I now feel unattractive. I want to work at getting a man for 2009. What tips can you provide, what does it mean to be proactive and how can a woman best fit into the role of being more than a friend, but, less than a wife?
Hi Angela!
It’s interesting; I got your email a few days after a friend of mine joked about being past his sell-by date. This same friend of mine said to me, “If you want to make God laugh, show Him your plans.”
Thanks for writing!
Angela, why are you afraid? God has not given you a spirit of fear, but of power, of love and of a sound mind. You have power to live glorify God in the now; love to endure all things, and a sound mind so nothing that befalls- or doesn’t befall – you will drive you crazy.
It is biblical for men to do the looking and finding, but that does not mean women should sit in a corner and laze around, waiting to be found. I agree with your girlfriends in that sense; we are not supposed to do any chasing, per se, but we should not put our lives, hopes, dreams on hold as we wait to be “found”, so to speak. We should not wait as we go about our daily lives; we should go about our daily lives as we wait. In other words, waiting should not be the prime activity. It should be a “by the way”. It does help to take care of yourself and be confident, but where does confidence come from? We cannot accomplish it without God.
You feel unattractive because you are waiting for a man to come and confirm your attractiveness to you. There is a difference between attractiveness and beauty. Something may be attractive at the first glance and turn out to be atrocious on close inspection. I will tell you that it is better to be a beautiful person than to be pretty/attractive. Your significance should not be derived from what people say or what is going on around you. What does God say about you? He does not base your value on the presence or absence of a man by your side. To Him, you are precious, royal, wonderfully made. If your spirit does not grasp the hugeness of this fact, you will never be comforted by the fact that God loves you. But if you work at your relationship with Him, then you will find that nothing anyone says can shift your confidence up or down. What He says will be what you believe, and nobody will be able to convince you otherwise.
Simply speaking, Angela, you are thirsty, but you think your thirst can be quenched by a man. This is not true, and even if you find a man tomorrow, you will realize that he cannot affirm you like Jesus can. “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again,” meaning that if you look to superficial cisterns for satisfaction, you will keep coming up empty. “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.” (See John 4.) As soon as your eyes are opened and you have a “eureka” moment and understand your worth and authority in Jesus, and as soon as you begin to believe His words and allow yourself to be led by Him, you will see that it is not really a man you have been looking for, but The Man. Not being in a relationship will not bother you so much. You will come to trust God to bring the right man, at the right time, at the right place, in the right manner, for the right reasons – to achieve the right goal.
Working at getting a man is a worldly principle. And sure, you may get one in 2009 or even before that. But will it be the man God desires for you? And what will you be putting aside or doing less of in order to find time to work at this? The only tip I can provide is this: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. Delight yourself in Him, and He will grant you the desires of your heart (check out Proverbs 3 and Psalm 37). The only man you are supposed to chase and seek is Jesus Christ.
When you think about it, being “more than a friend but less than a wife” is not too different from being more than anything and less than anything else. The principles are the same across the board, whether you are a mother, sister, wife, aunt, doctor, patient, evangelist. We should be Christlike. Love is the beginning and end of all the commandments. If we love God with our all, and if we love our neighbour as ourselves, then we will fit into any role God calls us to fit into.
Merry Christmas, my dear, and Shalom.
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