59. NINE (9) TIPS FOR THE SINGLE WOMAN HOPING TO BE MARRIED

(The Single Woman Series – Batch 2)

I was searching through one of my flashdrives for something and found this Article, that I had written exactly a year and three days ago on the 6th October, 2015.

It was a list of home truths God revealed to me during my period of singleness (which I am still in at this point), that women who wish to marry one day should consider applying to their lives immediately.

If you are single and have already begun to apply these things, then once it is the will of God for you to be married, you are well on your way! If you recognise however, that you need to work on these things, then don’t be ashamed. This information is for your edification. Some of it may seem harsh but don’t take it personally. I began to apply it for my improvement when God revealed it to me and whatever applies to you, you should too.

NINE (9) TIPS FOR THE SINGLE WOMAN HOPING TO BE MARRIED

1 – Pray for self less and for PEOPLE MORE

There are people around you that are going through the same thing you are going through and some even worse. There are people with problems that you know of. Pray for them. There are people in your family, in your workplace and at your Church, in need of prayer. Pray for them. Pray as well for your enemies, that God will bless them and change their hearts.

Take the focus off of you and esteem others better than yourself. Let your prayers no longer be saturated with ME, ME, ME. Those are selfish prayers and this life is not all about you. Be Kingdom-minded. (Philippians 2:3-8)

2 – Eat less and FAST MORE

This may not be talked about much at some Churches but it is important. Some things will not break until you combine prayer and fasting together and as a Preacher once said, the purpose of biblical fasting is not so much to ask God for stuff but to ask him to reveal what needs to be changed in you, to remove the blinders from off of your eyes, to confess your shortcomings and seek repentance and ultimately, to become more like Jesus.

The emphasis is on biblical fasting. Any kind of food abstinence will not do. Biblical fasting requires the believer to come to God with his or her whole heart, being honest with him as to his or her wicked ways, being genuinely sorry for them, asking God for forgiveness and having a genuine desire to make an about turn from evil practices.

It requires for example, genuine sorrow for being a gossiper, talebearer and malicious person. It involves taking an honest inventory of ourselves and of everything we have been doing that does not measure up to his Word and therefore displeases him and asking him to make us over anew, to break our will, so that his can be established in our lives.

Biblical fasting is painful, not necessarily because you get hungry and weak but because it requires you to see your shortcomings and your own wicked ways before God. It requires you to stop pointing a finger at others and to engage in self-analysis and self-criticism. It requires you to say to God, “Lord, I am guilty of this. I have messed up. I acknowledge that this way that I have is not pleasing to you. Please forgive me and help me to change.”

Biblical fasting should be done according to Jeremiah 29:13, Isaiah 58:1-14 and Isaiah 1:11-20. Any attempt to fast outside of what these verses call for us to do is an attempt to dupe and manipulate God and it will not work. The more you fast (in the correct way), the more you should see fleshly habits and attitudes like gossip, talebearing, malice, envy, strife, anger, contention and other fleshly ways, dropping off of your life. Make biblical fasting part of your lifestyle.

3 – Complain less and PRAISE MORE

The Bible is full of examples of people who got their deliverance and breakthrough through praise. There is King Hezekiah, there is David and there is Paul and Silas.

Praising God in song and in word just because he is God and irrespective of where you are or what stage you have reached in life is powerful. God inhabits praise. He loves it. He hates a complaining, dissatisfied and discontented spirit. Ask the children of Israel in the wilderness.

Cultivate a spirit of thanksgiving. See all that the Lord has done in your life and give him praise. Of a truth, he daily loadeth each and every single one of us with benefits. Take some time out each day and praise him.

4 – Gossip less and EDIFY MORE

Completely cut out gossip, talebearing, newsmongering, envy and malice. You don’t need to investigate everything that is going on with everybody. Practise minding your own business and getting your heart right with God on your own life’s journey.

The more you focus on other people’s business, the less you will work on your own issues and the less you will advance. God will most likely not give you your own script if you are busy meddling in someone else’s story. These practices are displeasing to God and can keep you stuck in life.

Every time you open your mouth to say something nasty about someone or to slander him or her or to make him or her look bad or be the object of ridicule in the eyes of others and every time you use your mouth to stir up trouble or to sow seeds of discord, God takes note and you get demoted one step backward.

God is not mocked. Whatever you sow you will reap. Sow seeds of righteousness therefore, if you want to reap a harvest. Use your mouth to build people up, to encourage and support others, to pray for them and to edify. If you must rebuke, do so with a spirit of meekness, being mindful that you too could fall into the same temptation your fellow brother or sister has.

5 – Worry less and TRUST MORE

Trust God to the point where you completely let go of your craving for marriage. You may still desire it but you must get to the point where you trust God enough to leave the decision completely in his hands.

As I have grown to learn and have advised people, have a heart’s desire but don’t set your heart on it. Stop looking for someone and just focus on God’s Kingdom business and on your relationship with him, confident that in His time, if it is his perfect will, he will send that darling man to you.

God is a jealous God, so he insists on being first in your life. When you obsess over getting married, you make an earthly man or achievement your idol and that displeases God.

Most happily married Christian women will tell you, that when they decided to let go and to focus only on God, two things happened: They no longer cared as much about getting married as before and it was when they cared less about it and more about God, that he decided to send them their husband.

6 – Sulk less and PREPARE MORE

If you have prayed believing that God will send you your sweetheart, then you can start preparing to be a wife before the man even approaches you.

What you understand by ‘prepare’ may differ to someone else’s understanding of it. Nonetheless, start working towards it because faith without works is dead.

It may mean that you need to spend more time in the kitchen to master a wider variety of dishes because your husband will need to be fed. You may take it even further and begin to compile your recipe book (like I did) with a wide assortment of meals you know how to cook and are daily adding to. It may involve you attending marriage seminars, listening to marriage advice on a Christian radio station. I did so from 2009 to 2015 on a particular programme, learning all that I could learn about men and marriage, for when that time came.

I have never been one to write a list of what I wanted in a husband but in 2015 or thereabout, I felt God urging me to and I finally did. I did not regret it because it really focused me on what I needed in a man and what I could not deal with, so that I would be better able to identify THE ONE when he eventually came along. I also did a list of what I thought he would want in me and then started to work on the areas that I needed to improve.

Some may begin to focus on their health and fitness, while others may start envisioning what kind of Wedding day they would like to have. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. See yourself as already where you want to be and believe that God will get you there, in his time, if it is his will to grant you what you desire.

If you busy yourself preparing, you will have no time to sulk or to feel depressed or to envy others. You are too busy working on yourself and on your plans for the future as a blessed wife and maybe even mother! You will find that you are excited about the future and you see it clearer and clearer each day. Then, provided that God has purposed that you should be married, watch him take your faith and make it a reality.

Someone once told me a true story of a lady who was praying to God for a husband and decided to start conceptualizing the Wedding day she would like to have, in a folder. One day, while waiting at a train station, a train stopped, her file of Wedding plans fell to the floor and all her documents scattered. At the same time, a man alighted from the train just in time to witness the embarrassing spectacle and helped her pick the pieces up.

Guess what, she ended up marrying him!

You don’t have to start planning before hand if that scares you but the point is there are things every woman desiring to marry can do during her single years, to better prepare her to be a wife and even a mother, by the grace of God. See the time you have now as an investment that will yield returns later. You may have your down days. I certainly did. But stop sitting around sulking. Start preparing.

7 – Socialize less and SEPARATE MORE

Nothing is wrong with spending time with people. Fellowship is good. However, there are some people in our lives that are a hindrance to our purpose and who encourage or tempt us to do what is not pleasing to God.

Separate yourself from anyone that hinders you from obeying God and draw closer to God instead. Sometimes God will call you away from the masses, just so you can focus on him and find his rest. So for example, if God tells you to watch the things you say with your mouth and a friend of yours loves to discuss people’s business, then you need to avoid that friend tactfully and politely. She is not a good influence in your life.

God is willing to take you somewhere but you have to let go of the dead weight first. It will only keep you down with it. Misery loves company, so you have to decide whether you are willing to wallow in the mud with some people who are not interested in moving forward or whether you will separate yourself so that God can properly mould you into who he wants you to be and take you where he wants to take you.

At one point when I was on Facebook, I heard this still small voice (although not audible), beckoning me to come away and find rest in HIM. At the continual urgings of that voice, weeks later, I decided to shut down my account temporarily. I felt God saying to leave all that and come spend some exclusive time with him. I did and I do not regret it. There were things in me he wanted to change, to remove, to strengthen and to recharge and he needed me to himself to do that.

8 – Fear less and FAITH MORE

Have faith when you pray, that God will do it. If you doubt that he will because of your age or because of your past or the competition or the seemingly limited supply of quality Christian men or because you don’t get out much or for whatever reason, then it is a waste of time praying. Believe that he has already done it and tell God thanks for it and that you are willing to wait, confident that he will provide in his own timing.

I used to tell God that I knew that it was already done in the spiritual realm and that I was just waiting on it to manifest in the natural realm. I believe that God took my faith and then converted that into some very specific promises for me to hold on to. I believe that he literally spoke those promises into my spirit in 2013 and in 2014, as I was meditating on his Word, the Bible.

In both instances, I felt that the verses I was reading, rose up from off the pages and hit me in my heart. If I recall correctly, I jumped up and called my mother immediately on both occasions, to tell her what the Lord had just told me. It was a wonderful experience, although she probably thought I was mad at the time, unlike any I had ever had before.

The first time, I believe that God told me through his Word and the particular scripture that he led me to, that I would marry one day. The very next day, I received some news that at the time was so devastating and completely unexpected, it seemed to suggest that God had not promised me a husband and that I had gotten it wrong. Yet, I found the strength to hold on to the promise, though it made absolutely no sense in light of what had happened.

The next year, something similar occurred. When reading the Word, I believe God planted yet another promise of marriage in my heart. Within about three days after that, someone I was speaking to, who was not a Christian, picked a fight with me and gave the ultimate insult, telling me that I would never marry.

Instinctively, I rebuked those words out loud in Jesus’ name because I knew that it was the devil using the person to try to take my faith away, in what God had just said he was going to do.

I again got a third attack in 2015 from yet another person who was supposed to be my friend (a non-Christian), telling me, during an argument that seemingly came out of nowhere, that I would never get out of a direly adverse situation I was dealing with, that I would also never get married and that I would remain stuck in life forever.

Believe it or not, that person had paid for and boarded a plane spontaneously from the island where she lived and came to the island where I was living, just to visit me for the day and to catch up on our friendship. She just woke up that morning and decided to visit me on the island where I was living and so she did.

The day was going well until an argument suddenly erupted, as I was talking about my one-day Wedding in which we had agreed before, that she would be one of my bridesmaids. Us talking about marriage was a normal conversation. Yet, on that day, having made a comment that I deemed to be innocent, I could not understand why she got really angry and used words to me on other matters that were spiteful and intended to hurt. She told me that I was brainwashed in my beliefs (she was a Hindu), to which I replied that I was happy to be brainwashed in truth. She also told me that the problems that I was facing at the moment career wise, I would never get out of and that I would remain single forever.

I later remembered that this lady was not a Christian and therefore was within the devil’s clutches. He used her to attack me with words that were completely contrary to God’s promise. It hurt but I resolved to hold on to what I believed that God had told me. Interestingly, some years prior, that same person had also once told me when we had had an argument and she was throwing one of her usual tantrums, that I would end up in a rocking chair.

The devil was not giving up and was after my faith in God’s promises but yet, I held on to them tightly. God does not lie. Everything in my life had to line up with what HE said he was going to do.

He didn’t tell me when, so I just had to patiently wait. I had my faith and I had his beautiful promises and that was enough. When the devil sent people to tell me that I would never marry (and he did), I rebuked the devil and kept focusing on what God told me. I believe he said I would and once he did, so I will!

The enemy choosing to relentlessly attack me in this area, confirms that my God has called me to be married some day, something that the enemy does not want to happen…but by the grace of God, it will!

9 – Self less and SALVATION MORE

Now I am very against the view of many in the Church, that all the work that is to be done, the single person should do it. Whether a Christian is married or not, he or she is mandated to spread the gospel and work as a humble servant for the Lord.

Just because a woman has no husband as yet or a man no wife, this does not mean that the Church has an excuse to lay heavy workloads upon them, while excusing married couples.

Nonetheless, this ninth tip for women who want to get married is important. It does not guarantee that you will get married but if it is God’s will for your life to be married, then this is the right approach to take.

In Luke 12:15-21 and 29-31, Jesus was speaking when he gave the parable about a rich man whose field brought forth even more than he had anticipated. Instead of sparing any thought for the poor or anybody outside of HIMSELF, he pondered as to how to solve his problem, which was that he had too much and more than he had space for. He then came up with the bright idea to break down his present barns/storehouses and build bigger ones to store all of his produce and told his soul that it had much laid up for the future, so it could take its ease and relax. However, God took his soul that very night, saying to him, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?”

From this account, Jesus impressed certain lessons of wisdom on his disciples, which are relevant to the unmarried woman today. He cautioned that we should avoid becoming covetous, which means a desire to get. For, life and life’s worth is not determined by what we have or don’t have. He also stated, that when we seek to lay up treasure for ourselves and are not focusing on being rich towards God, we are like the rich fool who perished in his folly.

The principle here can be extended to say, that when we focus on acquiring what we want in life, like a husband and a family and a house and a good job and education and more money and our secular business and put God’s work on the backburner, we become like the rich fool.

In speaking of the selfish (all about me) rich man who foolishly met his demise, Jesus said:

“So is he that layeth up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God…And seek not ye what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind, For all these things do the nations of the world seek after and your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things. BUT RATHER seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

God is saying that even as single women, we ought not to get anxious, worried or preoccupied with getting a husband or anything in life. We ought not to exert effort in pursuing this, especially when it takes our eyes off of God.

We must passionately seek after God’s things, promoting his Kingdom, spreading his gospel, reaching people for him and when we are busy doing that, he will add everything else that we need to us.

I know it can be hard because there are days when the single woman feels down, rejected, alone, unwanted, forsaken, undesirable, old, unattractive, unloved, uncared for, invisible to men and that time is passing her by. I know because I go through this sometimes and so these tips are for me as well. I understand and God understands but he still wants us to get up from our depression and sadness and go do his work, by reaching lost souls with the gospel.

I am not saying that it will be easy. There are times I know, when we single women want nothing more than to lay in bed crying and feeling sorry for ourselves and our situation. Nobody seems to get the pain that we are going through and the extent to which our hopes that we would have been married by now and with children, have been dashed. We feel like we have lost control because life is not going at all the way we had planned or hoped.

Yet, we must arise in obedience to the Lord. We must find ways to reach others with the gospel and to edify the Church with what God has blessed us. Trust me, writing these Articles are not always easy. Sometimes I do so in tears.

Let’s take the focus off of finding MR RIGHT and put it back where it belongs: On God’s Kingdom business. When we are busy putting him and his business first, he will see about the rest. When we are busy spreading the gospel, then we don’t have to take any thought for where the husband will be coming from or when. God has that covered.

I speak to my own soul with this one because lately, I have been feeling down. But my dear sisters, we need to refocus, recharge and do God’s work. Doing his work is not based on feelings. Whether we feel a bit sad or are exuberant, we are to be Kingdom-minded and our feet are to be ready with the preparation of the gospel.

We ought not to be marriage-minded but Kingdom-minded. We ought not to selfishly go after the things we want in this life such as spouse, children, house, career, power and monetary advancement, while neglecting the work of the Lord. His work should be first and foremost and everything else after.

Of all the tips I can give to unmarried women hoping to be married one day, this I think is the most important. Take care of God’s business and he will take care of your needs. Let go of what self wants. Self wants a husband…now! Self craves intimacy and companionship and the nice fancy Wedding. Self longs to be wrapped in a husband’s loving arms but we must be selfless.

Put those desires on the backburner, get up and go and SERVE the Lord. When he is ready and if it is his will, he will cause the man that goes beyond your dreams to appear and will present his KINGDOM-MINDED AND HARDWORKING daughter, to his similarly minded son.

(Written on 9^th October, 2016)

Dear Reader, if you found the above Article to be interesting, informative, edifying or beneficial, you may also be interested in reading the following under the ‘BIBLE-BELIEVING Daughters of God’ Page:

Note 7 – ‘God Loves Persistence – Fight On!‘
Note 14 – ‘Praying – How To Get A Yes From God’
Note 26 – ‘Please…Allow Him To Blow Your Mind’
Note 36 – ‘Faith In God vs Faith in Circumstances, People’s Opinions And Our Own Feelings’
Note 37 – ‘When God Calls Us To Separate Ourselves’
Note 49 – ‘Claiming The Promises Of God (Part One)’
Note 50 – ‘Claiming The Promises of God (Part Two)’
Note 51 – ‘I Know The Plans I Have For You’
Note 52 – ‘The Sins Of The Tongue’
Note 53 – ‘The Sins Of The Tongue Reloaded’
Note 54 – ‘Taming the Tongue – What The Bible Says About Gossip’
Note 55 – ‘Self-Inflicted Wounds?’
Note 74 – ‘Whose Report Will You Believe?’
Note 82 – ‘Unbelief Cannot Come’
Note 97 – ‘Seven (7) Mindsets That Will Keep You Stuck In The Land Of Sterility’
Note 148 – ‘Just One Thing May Be Holding You Back’
Note 150 – ‘Faith – Do You Have It?’
Note 151 – ‘What Is God Calling You To Cast Out Of Your Life?’
Note 149 – ‘Suffering? Bad Attitudes That Will Only Make It Worse‘
Note 160 – ‘Biblical Fasting – What Is It And Is It Important?’

Additional Articles under ‘SINGLE Daughters of God’ Page:

Note 9 – ‘Tidbits God Deposited Into My Spirit As A Single Woman’
Note 56 – ‘Rebekah, Zipporah And Ruth – How They Got Found’
Note 136 – ‘How I Used My Single Years To Pray, Preach, Plan and Prepare‘
Note 137 – ‘Serve God Wherever And In Whatever You Are Called‘
Note 253 – ‘Seven (7) Practical Things You Can Do While You Wait On Your Prince Charming‘
Note 254 – ‘Seven (7) Reasons Why You May Still Be Single‘
Note 257 – ‘Looking For A Husband? God Will Not Send…‘
Note 261 -‘Seven (7) Ways To Do Single With A Good Attitude While Hoping To Be Married‘
Note 264 – ‘Lord, Why I’m I Not Being Blessed?‘