Hi Ladies,
Finding and marrying the mate of God’s choice is like taking a lovely journey into the unknown…you’ve never been there before, but you anticipate what appears to be waiting on the horizon. Every step you take forward toward “I do” is a step into your future, and you know that if our Father has ordained it, the trip will be worth it!
Let’s return to RB’s testimony, and her hesitation about making a marital decision.
YIELD TO GOD
JP – “Why were you hesitant about David?”
RB – “Well, things slowly started happening to open my eyes and change my mind. David was my best friend. One of the ladies at the office asked about him, and said ‘Why don’t you marry him?’ I was surprised, and she said. ‘You should marry your best friend.’ That stuck with me, even though at the time I thought, ‘No way!’
When he started pushing me to get married, I had to stop to think about my criteria, and if he met them. One of my main prayers was ‘Lord, You know me and what I need. You know my personality and the man who’s best suited for me. You choose the husband.’ I got that from my mother because she always told me she had let God choose her husband, and I always thought I had the most wonderful daddy in the world. God knows you on the inside better than anybody else, and when you get married, what’s on the inside is going to come out.”
JP – “What were your criteria?”
RB – “Well, I asked for a tall, slender man, but David is medium height and a heavy build. I asked for a jack-of-all-trades, and David does a little bit of everything. I didn’t want a minister or a lawyer and David is neither. I wanted a very clean and meticulous man, but David is messy. I wanted a man who loved children, and David and his family are the most children-loving people I’ve ever met. He is very caring, loving, and kind. And although I didn’t know it at the time, I also need a patient man, which David has definitely shown himself to be.
I also wanted a man who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. That was one of my major concerns and I wanted us to be members of the same church. He would go to my church every Sunday, but he just would not join. He did pray, and I could talk freely to him about the gifts of God and the fruit of the Spirit, but my church was really different for him. They always told us in the singles ministry to make sure a man’s been a Christian for at least a year before you marry him. David finally decided to join, and he’d been a member for just over a year when we got married.”
JP – “Was this your first marriage?”
RB – “I was thirty-eight and he was thirty-seven, and it was the first one for both of us. I’d been engaged twice but they didn’t work out. However, my first question to David was ‘Why haven’t you ever gotten married before?’ I wanted to know what was wrong with him.”
JP – “Had you been praying for a husband?”
RB – “Not really. I was never concerned about it. A lot of single women are always worrying about it, always praying about it, but whenever I would think about it, I would pray then drop it. I would hear women saying, ‘I’m going to be married by such and such a time’, but I was never worried about that. What concerned me was that I wanted to be happy, and I knew if I got married and I wasn’t happy, I would leave the marriage. I planned to do this only one time, so I was willing to take my time. I knew that it was very important to be happy in a marriage and satisfied with the mate you have, so I was determined to let God do the choosing.
JP – “So how long were you celibate?”…
Until next week…Joy and Shalom!
jo lynne pool - Love in The Book.org 