Why wont god let me find love

Im a 23 year old guy and my last girlfriend was almost 5 years ago and I haven't met anyone that vibed with like with her. I know I'm still young but it scares me to think that I could go another 5 years without finding someone like her that I connect with. I don't want to go another 5 years feeling the way I have these past 5. Im posting this here becasue being in a Godly relationship is really important to me. I could really use some advice.

Written By Debra W., Malaysia

I have a confession to make: I turn 25 this year, and I have never been in a relationship. It’s not just because I haven’t met the right person; it’s also because no one has ever pursued me before.

While most girls were befriending guys in high school and college, I was socially awkward. To me then, guys were different; they were “aliens” whom I was too afraid to talk to.

Thankfully, I came around in my earlier 20s, and have since opened up and gotten to know several quality friends. However, it still stings that I’m late to the relationship party that all my peers seem to be a part of.

Every time a friend or family member starts dating, I cry on the inside and quickly become overcome with bitterness, self-hate, and ultimately, anger towards God because I’m not in  a relationship like everyone else.

What’s a bitter single girl to do?

Why, God?

One particular day, while I was upset over yet another friend becoming “Facebook official”, I sat down and talked to God. Clenching my fists, I muttered through gritted teeth: Why, God? Why can’t I find a boyfriend? Why can’t I achieve a relationship like everyone else my age? It’s bad enough that I don’t have many friends. Now you’re going to let me look like a loser that no guy ever wanted to date?

It was during that bitter rant that God opened my eyes to three truths that I realized I needed to deal with.

1. I wanted a relationship for the wrong reasons.

To me, life comprised a series of boxes that I needed to check off in order to feel like I had lived it well. Do well in school? Check. Get a good job? Check.

Get a relationship? Not checked.

By checking off boxes, I wanted to prove to everyone around me that I had “arrived”, that I was finally an adult. See, I can snag myself a boyfriend just like you! He thinks the world of me! Just look at my arm candy!

However, this is not God’s design for marriage, and by extension, the relationships that lead to it. In the Bible, husbands and wives are called to sacrificial love and respect, to put the needs of the other above their own (Ephesians 5:21-33).

While a dating relationship is not yet a marriage relationship, I was certainly not looking to encourage and build up another person. Instead of seeing a boyfriend as God would see him―a child of the King, made in His image (Genesis 1:27), I simply wanted a boyfriend to validate my own worth. All in all, I was being selfish.

I am now learning to rest in the fact that God sees me. When time and again I long for someone to notice me, I remind myself that God does not just see me for who I am right now―He sees my future potential and will finish the good work He began in me (Philippians 1:6). If marriage is in God’s plan for me, at the right time He will open the eyes of the right guy to “see” me too.

2. God’s plans for me are good―whether or not they involve a spouse.

Doubting God’s goodness was the root of the very first sin recorded in the Bible. When Satan asked Eve, “Did God really say . . . ?” a seed of doubt was planted, and Eve believed that God was withholding something good from her. He wasn’t―but she fell for it anyway.

I needed to be careful that I wasn’t swinging from the statement, “God is good” to the question, “Is God good?” One change, big difference. Although my limited experience had caused me to doubt, it does not change the fact that God is sovereign and that His plans for my life are infinitely better than my own (Romans 8:28).

It can be hard to believe that God’s plans for my love life are good when no prospects lie on the horizon and when other girls seemingly have it easier. But when I doubt what the future holds, I meditate instead on how intimately God knows me, loves me, and holds me in His arms.

3. It is not good for me to be alone.

When God gave Adam the task of naming all the animals, He realized that none of them were suitable partners for Adam. So God took a rib out of Adam, fashioned a woman from it, and brought her to his side as a human partner (Genesis 2:22).

Though I have yet to find a suitable life partner, God has given me an extended family―His people. By serving and interacting with fellow believers, I get to give and experience relationship.

When I wallow in self-pity, God’s family invites me into their lives, to worship Him, and live out the Gospel together. When I invest my time in the lives of other people, I don’t spend as much time dwelling on my singleness.

Investing in other relationships helps me even when the lights go out and I’m alone in my room. That’s when the timely words of fellow brothers and sisters come to mind and build me up in the midst of my disappointments. Truly, no man is an island!

Do I still mope about my singleness? Sure, the temptation to doubt is strong. However, trusting God is a choice that I can make daily, and I rest in the knowledge that God has great plans for my life, with or without a boyfriend.

Why wont god let me find love

To the Girl Without a Boyfriend

Believe it or not, I’m now the girl you envy: the one with the boyfriend. He’s a couple of years older than you and treats you real nice. Of course, you don’t have the hindsight I now do—and it’s hard to imagine yourself in a relationship when singleness is all you’ve ever known.

When I was 5 years old, I tried to move out of my house. 

I had been punished for something and in turn, I decided in my 5 year old logic that I had, had enough of ‘these people’ (my family). They simply didn’t appreciate what an angelic child I was and they insisted on correcting me when I did wrong, so I was moving out. So I packed my little suitcase and headed for the door, certain the world would greet me with open arms and with people who were ready to appreciate me. With my parents watching, both of them holding back laughter, I swung the door open and remembered. We had no street lights. I looked out into the pitch black abyss, grabbed my suitcase walked back upstairs to my room, and went to sleep.

The funny thing is, in my relationship with God, I’ve had more than a few days like this; particularly when I vent to Him about my love life. I came to Christ at a young age, and was (mercifully) the non-cliché preacher’s kid. I’ve enjoyed a vibrant, loving relationship with God for most of my adolescence and young adulthood.

For better or worse, I gobbled down as much fundamentalist dating material as I could get my hands on, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye, The Bride Wore White”…etc. They wrote it, I read it. I tried to implement every principle to the tee, “no kissing, no random dating, no unsaved guys”… and so on.  So when I found myself in the years after graduating from my conservative Christian college, with no money and no man. I had more than a few things to say to my Lord.  

Earlier this year I had to talk a friend of mine off the ledge who vowed that this year after her 30th birthday with no sensible, Christian prospect in sight, her vow of chastity to Christ was going to expire. If God didn’t come through in time, she was giving up and taking her love life into her own hands. I told her she was being ridiculous and that she’d come much too far to turn back.

The truth was though; it was hard for me to reason with her while finding myself, with deferred hopes and growing discouragement. Most recently, after finding myself reeling after a the sudden loss of several loved ones, a bout with anxiety followed by a  (thankfully short) emotionally abusive relationship with a guy whom I initially thought was God’s way of rescuing me, I decided, enough was enough. God didn’t appreciate how loyal, faithful and conscientious I’d been. He refused to reward me with my heart’s desire for how carefully I’d followed the rules. Even worse he let me endure unwarranted cruelty and wind up more bruised than I’d ever been.

So I told him, “Jesus I’m moving out…” I packed my things, and started for the door with Him silently watching. And opened the door, to my world without Him, filled with nothing but danger, darkness, emptiness and despair and I dropped my suitcase filled with pride, self-righteousness and self-pity and turned around.

Try as we might, we can’t deny the fact that, there is no better alternative. Just like I had to open up my eyes and value the shelter, warmth, light and love in my home as a five year old, we each have to realize that God shelters and provides for us, and sometimes that means not giving us what we want when we want it.  Being obedient to Christ and trusting in God’s plan for our lives, more specifically our love lives is extremely difficult, but so is the alternative.  

When I think over the past ten years, and my interactions with guys, and how many times I thought some guy I was dating could have been ‘the one”,  I’m actually glad my rules were so set in stone so firmly.

I’m grateful that most of my wounds are surface deep…because the boundaries on physical intimacy which I thought were keeping me back, have been protecting me all along.  

So if your current situation or relationship status has you ready to throw in the towel on God’s leading, let me encourage you with 3 thoughts.

  1. Our God is good. The end. Through hardships, uncertainty and suffering, He is good. He takes pleasure in being trusted as such. Plant your confidence in His character and His goodness, not in your feelings or your situation.
  2. His ways are higher and His thoughts are higher than ours. He sees things in the scheme of eternity, not just in the moment. So in the face of disappointment, be it a job, project or relationship, sometimes, rejection really is God’s protection.
  3. Seasons change without warning. After months of winter, suddenly spring arrives. Even if things look endlessly cold and dark, things can and will change, all at once. Be open to the “suddenly’s” God is working in your life. Most people have no idea they’re about to meet the love of their life up to the moment before they do.

Romans 5:3 “Not only that, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not disappoint…”

Davrielle Burrows is a writer, songwriter, host, speaker and entrepreneur from Nassau, Bahamas. She holds a BA in Mass Communications from Oral Roberts University.  She serves as a youth leader at Bahamas Faith Ministries and P31 Young Ladies Fellowship and currently works in management at a media company. One of Davrielle’s biggest passions is encouraging young people to develop healthy self-esteem and make positive choices to help them fulfill their God-given purpose. She has been a TrueLoveDates reader for the past year and a half!

Welcome to TrueLoveDates.com! I’m Debra Fileta, Professional Counselor & Author of the book True Love Dates, and I created this blog as a space to pair psychology and Christian spirituality to address all things love, dating, and relationships.

This month, I’ve invited some of my faithful TrueLoveDates readers to share their heart with the rest of our blog community for my #GuestPostSeries!! There are some AMAZING singles out there, people!!! I’m choosing 10 guest posts to share with you over the summer. I’m so excited to hear their stories and share their messages with you as well! Enjoy!! And be sure to leave them some love in the comment section below.  — Love, Debra

Why wont god let me find love