The words God has put on my heart today are not anything fancy. I don’t have everything figured out. But, slowly, I am learning that sharing in the unfinished is sometimes more helpful. God uses brokenness, His grace is sufficient for me, His strength made perfect in my weakness.
I don’t know who these words are for. I’m sharing from my journey, which right now includes singleness, but perhaps you can substitute your own journey in these words, and see the bigger picture of what God might be doing in your life.
Pausing to lift my eyes higher, looking to Him and being radiant, that I might become what I behold, is worth doing. So pause with me, and count the ways in which God is working all things for good, and what this might really be all about?
.
.
.
It less about getting married, and more about learning what marriage is to be a picture of, and valuing the greater reality above the earthly representation of it.
It is less about being loved by a man, and more about realizing how deeply I am loved by God.
It is less about getting my way, and more about believing that God’s best truly is best, and not lesser than what I wanted.
It less about God leading me into marriage, and more about listening to the Holy Spirit and being obedient, even when it doesn’t make sense.
It is less about everything “pointing in a certain direction”, and more about learning to see God’s fingerprints in even the smallest things, and thanking Him for His goodness to me.
It is less about God answering my prayers for the sake of them being answered, and more about believing that God listens and hears and delights in answering in the best possible ways.
It is less about what I might receive from marriage, and more about what I will be called to give within marriage, and preparing for that.
It is less about a man as my future husband, and more about a man as my friend and brother in Christ today, and learning to do what is best for him rather than seeking what is in it for me.
It is less about the future, and more about believing what is true about God today.
It is less about doing, and more about becoming.
It is less about the desires of my heart being granted, and more about delighting in Him and allowing Him to change my desires.
It is less about what hasn’t yet been given, and more about knowing my God, who gives bread and not a stone, and who does not withhold good things.
It is less about finding a husband, and more about God bringing things about in His own way and time, and trusting Him.
It is less about being delighted in by a man, and more about realizing that God already delights in me, today.
It is less about reading Scripture to find out what to do, and more about reading His love letter to me and discovering who He is and allowing Him to change me in response to it.
It is less about being a good role model, and more about allowing God to use my brokenness and weakness to display His grace and glory.
It is less about a love story, and more about His faithfulness.
It is less about wanting God to fulfill particular things, and more about believing that God is a promise-keeping God and that I can absolutely trust Him, believing what is true about His character.
It is less about knowing a man, and more about knowing Christ.
It is less about being beautiful to a man, and more about looking to God and becoming radiant, being beautiful to Him.
It is less about what a man is planning, and more about what God has already planned and set into motion.
It is less about taking control, and more about trusting both God and the man He gives me.
It is less about being understood by a man, and more about submitting and respecting and trusting.
It is less about romance, and more about love that is patient and kind, that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
It is less about being a helpmeet and bride, and more about learning my own weakness and need for Christ, and need for a man, not being self-sufficient and independent.
It is less about a wedding and a ring, and more about a covenant and a vow.
It less about hoping and waiting for marriage to a man, and more about hoping and waiting for the return of Christ and the marriage supper of the Lamb.
It is less about a man and I, and more about Christ and I.
And I am grateful for all of those things. Grateful for the way God has used this journey to point me to Himself. Grateful for the way that even in hoping and waiting for marriage, He is teaching me how to hope and wait for Him. Grateful for the picture He is painting. Grateful for the lessons He is teaching me.
God has been faithful. He is faithful. He will be faithful. I can rest in that. The lessons will continue, I know that, and should God grant it, marriage will be less about happiness and more about holiness – yet it would also be a gift. I could ask for no better story than the one God chooses to write for me, and certainly for no better Author. It is a safe thing to trust Him to fulfill the desires He creates (A. Carmichael).
So today, look up with me, and see what in your own story might be “less”, so that what God is doing might be “more”?
~Andrea
Leave a Reply