“Make sure you do not miss the will of God in marriage”
You’ll agree with me that the statement above is usually an intense concern in the hearts of many Christians. We’ve been taught that the most important part of preparing for marriage is discovering who God wants us to marry.
So we pray for signs.
We ask for confirmation.
We wait for dreams, prophecies, impressions, or that inner peace.
And when any or all of these come with someone, we go ahead and marry that person. Unfortunately for most people, not long after they walk down the aisle, things begin to spiral into intense struggles. Then, they start to doubt all of the confirmations they got about their spouse.
But what if we have been getting the entire process wrong?
What if we have been focusing on the wrong (or minor issue) rather than the most important stuff?
What if this misaligned focus is the reason most Christians go into marriage and still struggle like they never heard from God?
Hear me out. Marriage is not a two-week event. It is not even something we hope to do for just one year. Marriage is a lifelong commitment that is supposed to last a lifetime.
Sadly, something many people fail to realize is that the person you are in marriage is undoubtedly the person you have been becoming for 20 or 30 years prior. Eventually, the intricacies around this person you have been becoming will be what makes up 50% of the nature of your marriage.
So, having angels show you your spouse in a vision will not change any of these. You cannot separate the future of your marriage from the reality of the formation of your character over the years.
The Common Christian Approach to Choosing a Spouse
When most believers want to choose their spouse, the usual process often looks like this:
- A man reaches a certain age and begins to pray for God to reveal his wife to him.
- A woman starts getting suitors and starts to ask God which one is truly her husband.
Don’t get me wrong, seeking God before marriage is absolutely important. So, at first glance, this process seems spiritual and wise.
But there is a profound problem.
You suddenly want God’s direction for marriage when you have either never sought His direction in any area of your life, or you cherry-pick His leading in your life.
Meanwhile, you chose your education and career path without Him. You chose where to live, where to worship, your friends and people in your circle, the values to embrace, and how to spend your time and money — all without caring about what God wants for you.
Then suddenly, in your 20s or 30s, you urgently want God to show you who to marry so you can have a ‘perfect marriage’.
Marriage does not exist in isolation.
The kind of marriage you eventually have will be based on your obedience, growth, and maturity (spiritually and emotionally). It will be anchored on habits, your values, beliefs and convictions, and the kind of life you’ve been building.
So, even if God points you toward a particular person, your life may still be completely misaligned with the kind of marriage He intends for you to have with that person.
Because for you to have the kind of marriage God wants for you, there is a kind of person you must have become and should be becoming.
There is also a unique process you should have walked with God to arrive at that place. Not a perfect person, but someone who has built the capacity to handle the kind of marriage intended for you.
However, when you have consistently failed to walk even a single mile with God all through the 20 or 30 years before marriage, you’ll simply be like a toddler standing in the middle of a vast arid land when you start to seek His face solely for marriage.
This, here, is usually the foundation of the severe struggle most Christians have in marriage – outside the contentions of the enemy.
Marriage Needs More Becoming Than Finding
I do hope you now see that one of the biggest mistakes most of us make in dating and marriage is obsessing over finding the right person while completely neglecting becoming the right person.
The reality is this:
The “will of God” for your marriage is not only about the identity of your spouse. It is also about the identity of you.
When you ask God, “Who should I marry?” ensure that you are already getting and living the responses to:
- Who do You want me to become?
- What kind of person can sustain a godly marriage?
- What wounds, habits, and immaturity do You want to heal in me first?
- Am I emotionally, spiritually, and mentally prepared for the covenant of marriage?
Because the person God may have intended for your life could require a version of you that you have not yet become.
And if you have neglected your growth for years, your marriage will eventually reveal this gap.
Why You Struggle So Badly, Even with the Right Person
The point of this post is the main reason many believers struggle endlessly in their marriages with the spouse ‘God showed them’.
They say:
“But we prayed.”
“We fasted.”
“We got confirmation.”
“Our pastor approved.”
Yet the marriage is full of conflict, frustration, incompatibility, emotional immaturity, and misalignment.
Why?
Because divine confirmation does not replace personal transformation. Nor will it take away the work couples need to do to make marriage work.
However, many people want God to reveal their spouse while they actively ignore or resist the process of growth that would make them capable of sustaining the kind of marriage God wants for them.
Some others want this revelation with the hopes that it will completely absolve them of hard work or sacrifices they need to make in marriage.
And when you consider the fact that God’s goal for creating marriage is to foster His agenda on earth, you’ll realize that marriage between two ‘right’ people who have not consistently followed His leading will almost always be a disaster.
This is because it will be impossible to sustain that marriage (with the person God reveals to you) if you still do not make a habit of seeking His face all the time. It’s like starting a journey from point A without God until you get to point M and start seeking His will. Then after you know His will at point M, you continue to Z without Him. It cannot make sense.
Seeking God Should Be a Lifestyle, Not an Emergency Response
So, long before you ask God to reveal your spouse to you, it may be wiser to ask Him:
“Lord, who are You trying to make me into?”
Because the quality of your marriage will be deeply connected to the quality of your personal transformation long before the wedding day ever arrives.
The strongest Christian marriages are usually formed by two people who have spent years walking with God individually before they ever found each other.
They learned obedience before romance. They developed discipline before attraction. And they built character before companionship.
Seeking God before marriage is important. But seeking God should not begin because marriage is approaching. It should already define your life.
In fact, you may not even need to ask for your spouse to be revealed when the time comes. You’ll already be walking in God’s plans for you.
