Ryan Swanson: Welcome back to the Satisfied program here on the Thee Generation Podcast. This is Ryan Swanson, and it is an exciting time for my wife and I. As you’ve heard from Dr. Jim last week, he explained that my wife and I just had a son, Parker James, and it’s been nothing but joy here. He’s, he’s doing well. He eats well, sleeps well, and what more could you ask for from a little one week old. So we’re really, really enjoying our time with him and praise the Lord for that blessing of giving us a son. 

He is named after Dr. Jim, as many of you have been impacted by the ministry of Dr. Van Gelderen and I can relate when I was a teenager and a young adult the time that Dr. Jim, just as an evangelist at that point, not as a father-in-law, that he invested in my life. And it was probably about five years ago, I would guess, I decided that I would love to, if it was good with my future wife, I would love to name a son after him. And so then, of course, when I married Dr. Jim’s oldest daughter, she was also thrilled with and had the idea herself to also name a son after Dr. Jim. So we named him Parker James, his grandpa, Dr. Jim is James Parker, and I’m sure that with a name like that, young Parker will grow up to be a true Thee-Gen-ner. He will be the greatest fan of these podcasts, I’m sure. 

Well, we have a very important discussion to get to today, but it’s really going to lead us just to one primary point I want to drive home. This is something I’ve been wanting to get to for a while, and we’ve gone different directions, covered a few tangents, which is fine. But, it just came up with another question somebody asked, and that is, is it okay to pray about a future spouse? Is it okay to pray for them? Or is that going to set yourself up for emotional failure? Is that categorized as focusing too much on them or fantasizing on that person if you’re just praying about a potential future spouse? 

Well, I wanna dissect this carefully, and it’s not going to be a discussion so much on the elements of prayer and what to say, what not to say, but rather your focus in doing it, and I trust this will be helpful. First of all, let me say that if a guy told me that he was convinced about a young lady and I asked him why, and he gave all his reasons and said nothing about prayer, I would actually be very concerned. I think every one of our decisions should have any significance, should involve a conversation with the Lord, but especially this one, the most, one of the most important decisions you will ever make, in choosing and finding a spouse, I would have a really hard time if a guy did not have some kind of a transaction that came from his time with the Lord in prayer — that is how God speaks to us nowadays. He can do it in other ways. He can do it through Scripture, authorities, but your personal prayer time is where transactions like this happen. This is where we find God’s will. This is what it comes down to. And so prayer has to be the thrust of your search for a life’s mate. It has to be. 

However, and I can say this by experience, it is so easy for the line between prayer and meditation to be blurred. In other words, when I’m praying, I’m praying for the benefit of someone else, or I’m praying seeking God’s will. I am attempting to find, to discover, to discern what God’s will is. It’s not about me. It’s not about my own benefit, my own good. It is about the good of someone else and the will of God. But, when we are stirred by our own feelings, our own emotions, our own desires, then we come to prayer really more focused on ourselves and it becomes a time to talk to God about what we want. Hoping He’s gonna step in and make that happen This is where prayer and meditation can be blurred. What starts off maybe as prayer eventually it just become we get so excited and carried away and now we’re focused on ourselves and it just becomes a time set aside in our day where we can, fantasize really, about this person that we’re interested in. It is from that danger that we coined our title for today’s podcast. Are you really praying? P-R-A-Y-I-N-G, or are you preying, P-R-E-Y-I-N-G? Is this about them? Is this about the benefit, the good of someone else? Their desires, God’s will, or is it about me? Is it preying on someone else because they have something that makes me feel good? Or because just the thought of them somehow satisfies something in my soul that I feel like I can’t get anywhere else, or at least not as quickly or conveniently as when I am fantasizing on that person. Am I preying on them? 

So if there’s such a big, drastic difference here, then what is that difference? What’s it going to look like? Somebody challenged me on this years ago, as I would spend hours and hours praying about my future spouse, and somebody challenged me on this — are you keeping your girl on the altar? And I really had no idea what that meant. So. I asked him to explain and he responded in a way that only he would. with a full several page essay on the topic. It was really well written and very helpful. But one thing he focused on was — how much of your walk with God is defined by your conversations about your future spouse? Ooh man, that hit home when he said that. That one really, really hit home. How much time that I’m spending in prayer is really just talking to God about this other person. It really is not about a pursuit of God’s will, it’s a pursuit about them. 

Young people, if you could just come to understand one thing from this podcast, it would be this. God is more than your matchmaker. Have you realized that maybe some of your most intimate times with the Lord the vibrant times, the times that you meet with him, have you noticed that maybe they’re always when you’re discussing your future spouse or something to do with that? Now, I’m not saying this is every listener, but I think there’s a few that this would be the case for them. I know it was for me at this point. When I read that essay and read that statement and the question was posed, how much of my time with the Lord is just about her, man, it was a lot. It was a lot. And God was a matchmaker to me. Now, I loved the Lord. I loved my relationship with Him. I really did. But yet, I began to see that it was kind of focused on just what God was going to do to me, what He was going to do for me. I was happy to talk to Him, but it was so much just about what I could get. 

Let me read to you a little bit more from this essay, which goes on to describe the importance of the sovereignty of God in this, and in the release of your future spouse to God in prayer. He says this, “total trust in the sovereignty of God means that I take my hands off. It’s easy to stake your claim on a beautiful young lady. It’s easy to stand on promises about her and claim her for yourself. It’s much harder to tell God that He can have her if He wants her. But this again is necessary and imperative. Tell God that He can have the girl you’re interested in. Release her to Him every day. She is His. This practically means don’t fear rejection Because it is in God’s hands You don’t need to impress her. She is in God’s hands. You don’t need to manipulate authorities or parents — she is in God’s hands and His hands take much better care of her than yours can. To recognize God’s sovereignty is to put the girl in His hands and trust Him to bring the right thing to pass even if it means release. Only this attitude is indicative of true surrender.

Now, I think that’s really helpful, but I’m hoping you caught at least the gist of it. That is that our prayer time with the Lord is not about a pursuit, it’s about a release. When you recognize that you are beginning to have feelings, that you are wondering, maybe it’s this one, I think I may be being led in this direction, then you need to stop, go to the Lord, and release. Not grab ahold of more, not continue to pursue. I need to release. God, I’m recognizing desires here. I want to surrender them over to you can have them. God, there’s this person here that he or she is on my mind and it’s really hard to think about anything else. I know now is not the time to be so focused on them and, I know my own emotions could get carried away and God I want to surrender them over to you. I want to release them. They’re yours. They are not mine. And when you have a season of releasing someone over and over back to the Lord, whenever they come up, God I’m here again. I’m releasing them to you. They’re yours. They’re not mine. And then in God’s time, if it’s the right one, and He decides, no, you know what? I am going to give them to you. Then it’s Him that does it. Again, I’m not saying don’t talk to God about your desires, but what I’m saying is come to God to release them. 

God is so much more than a matchmaker. The danger that comes with just viewing our Heavenly Father as a matchmaker and having all of our wonderful, intimate times with Him somehow revolving around our future spouse is that it’s very likely that your desires are going to be shaken at some point. In other words, this pursuit is probably not going to go how you think it is. You may think you have figured out who it is, but I guarantee you there is a rougher road ahead than you know. Somehow, we come into this and as soon as we reach puberty, we think we have it figured out exactly who it is, exactly when and how this is going to happen, and everything’s just going to be golden and roses. And we think we have it figured out, and it basically almost never happens that way. So can we just prepare ourselves for that? So when somebody has their entire relationship with God built around this and then something stumbles, they end up doubting God. They end up losing faith in God when it wasn’t His fault. 

Let me show you, let me explain what the problem is. The problem is we are terrible at finding a spouse. We are. There’s a phrase. I used to use back in school whenever I was doing something that I was not made to do. All odds were against me, whether it was trying to make a pan of brownies and burning them, or whether it was staying up all night working on a seminary paper, and then still ending up nowhere close to getting it done by the deadline. And I would say at that point, “man, I stink at this game.” I stink at this game. It’s just not for me. I am terrible at this. And it became kind of a phrase we would use at the time when all odds were against us and it just wasn’t our thing. “I stink at this game.” Let me tell you, when it comes to finding a spouse, you stink at this game. You do. Everyone does. When it comes to discerning God’s will, it is no easy task to put aside our own, biased opinion. And we have an opinion on about everything.

Now, it’s not having a different will than God’s that makes it wrong. Jesus himself, if you remember, in the garden asking for the cup to pass from Him as he’s facing the crucifixion, then said, yet not my will but thine, speaking to His Father. Not my will but thine. So He recognized there could be a difference in our wills at this point. And so God, I want to make it clear that it’s not about my will. If there is a difference, we’re going with yours. and I’m going to surrender, place my will under that. 

But the stronger our will is, in any scenario, in any decision, the more difficult and more impossible it’s going to be to objectively discern God’s will. And you tell me of another decision where you will be more biased than deciding who your future spouse is going to be. There isn’t going to be one, I guarantee you. There is not going to be another decision where you will be this biased than who you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. And you know what that tells me? You stink at this game. No one is good at finding a spouse. It’s not like something you’re going to practice and get good at. You’re not good at it — you’re terrible at it. So when you’re coming to prayer understand that. God, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m lost. I’m sunk. I don’t know where to start. I’ve got to find the one in a billion and try not to have any scars, broken relationships, or regrets at the end of it. How in the world is that going to happen? It’s impossible without God. 

So should it really surprise us then when we get it wrong? Someone who spends so long committed to one person and then, they say no, and God—whatever that means, God makes it clear that they were not focused on the right person. Should it really surprise us that much? Or should we just go back to God and say, you know what God, I’m terrible at this. I stink at this game. I really, really need you. I need you to show me. I need you to direct me. I do want your will. I got off somewhere. Can we go back to our relationship and just focus on that? And then when you think I’m ready, we can talk about someone else, but let’s just focus on a relationship because I got it wrong somewhere, God. 

Friends, God is more than your matchmaker. It’s a dangerous thing to have your entire relationship with God hanging on the thread of your emotional love life. He is so much more than that. Don’t allow that to be everything. Don’t allow that to be your focus. Instead of coming to God day after day just to discuss again what you’re already assuming is His will and find out how you’re going to get it, instead of that, why don’t you focus on your relationship with the Lord? 

Focus on who He is, not who she is. Look, He that findeth a wife findeth a good thing. But God is going to withhold no good thing from them that walk uprightly. Focus on your walk with Him. But I’m not saying either that the answer is just to totally forget about it, and not to bring this up to God at all. That is definitely not what I’m saying the answer is. Now some of you have no idea where to start when it comes to praying about this. And that’s where the Holy Spirit comes in. He’s promised to take the groanings which cannot be uttered to the throne, to bring those up to the Lord. And sometimes we’re in a position where that’s all we can do is groan. But even that, God can answer. 

So friends, if God does have marriage in your plan, then He has a way to do it. He has it figured out. Your goal is not to get better at finding a spouse. It’s to find His will. Your goal is not to figure out how this is gonna happen. You don’t, no. Leave it in his hands, release it to Him. Continually, daily, release it. And ask yourself how much of your time you’re spending, how much of your prayer time is just focused on this. God is more than your matchmaker. Pursue Him in other areas of life. And as you come to know Him, you will better be able to discern His will. And as you are able to discern His will, then you will be able to follow as He does direct you towards that person. 

I hope there’s something you could take from this today. I know it’s kind of a fine line issue and maybe could be open to interpretation a bit on where our praying for moves to preying on, but my purpose is not to try to dictate exactly what is right and wrong in that area. It’s just to focus on your relationship with God. You’re not going to go wrong. He is much more than your matchmaker. Pursue your Creator, not your spouse. Well, thanks for listening and we’ll look forward to next time as we continue to learn to be less gratified and more satisfied with Jesus Christ.