Don’t Just Pray for a Husband—Prepare for One

Join me for The Intentional Dating Masterclass 24-26th March! Save your seat!

In this episode of Single to Sacred Union, we're getting real about why praying for a husband isn’t enough—you also need to prepare for one. As a single Christian woman, you may have heard that "he who finds a wife finds a good thing," but the truth is... becoming that "good thing" starts long before you're found. Listen in and I’ll walk you through why biblical preparation in your single season matters. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hey, welcome to the single disagreeing biblical management. I mean, judging the moneless. Every week we have honest conversations about identity, female, and political steps you can take to become the women to be before you say anything. Whether you're waiting, dating, or just starting to come again, you're in the right place. Let's quit again, so the question that I think many people can ask is why am I doing this? Why have I made this podcast? Why is it important for single women to prepare for marriage whilst they're single? What's the point? You may not be in a relationship. And one of the first things that I would say is an answer is because you prepare for everything else. In life, you prepare for your future, you prepare for your career. For those of you that have listened to the first episode, I already mentioned that professionally I am a biomedical scientist. And I didn't become a scientist overnight. It took years and years of studying at university, completing a number of different qualifications just for me to get my registration, but I can practice legally within the United Kingdom. That took years. If you want to become any form of professional, or even an athlete, for example, or anyone who has a trade or a craft, they take years to practice, they take years to hone their craft, they take years to perfect their work because they're passionate about it and they desire to succeed. But whenever it comes to relationships and marriage especially, we don't really put much effort into it. We don't really take the time to really prepare ourselves. We just feel as though relationships should just work themselves out. It's not necessarily a notion that somebody has said, but our behavior as a society comes over as though relationships will just work themselves out. I'm praying, I believe in Christ, I'm a Christian, I'm praying about my future marriage, I'm praying about my husband, or if you're a guy, I'm praying about my wife, and when I meet her, I'll just know, and when I meet him, I'll just know, and we'll just settle down, we'll get married, and that's it, we'll live happily ever after. I believe that we're doing ourselves a disservice when we do that, because we're not giving ourselves fully to invest in a future that is meant to last until death do us part. So this is why I say it's important. I believe it's critical that we take time. Now it doesn't mean that we become self-obsessed and every part of our waking moment every day is about marriage, marriage, and preparing ourselves. No, not at all. But taking an hour a week, maybe reading some books, investing in ourselves, maybe watching some teachings on marriage, listening to some sermons, there are so many different things we can do just to take time to prepare ourselves for the future that lies ahead. So if we take time to prepare for our careers, if we take time to home our crafts, if we take time to perfect our skills, and we can take years to do that, investing in something that we love, why do we not do the same when it comes to a relationship that's meant to last the rest of our lives? You can decide tomorrow at the drop of a hat that you're going to change your course at university. You can decide tomorrow at the drop of a hat that you're going to change your career. You want to move from nursing to running a hair salon. You could make a drastic change and you can do that. No problem. You can go back to school if you need to, college, uni, take a course somewhere. You can completely change your career overnight, and there's nothing stopping you from doing that. You make a decision and you run with it. But the point I'm trying to make with this is that you can't do that with your marriage. You can't just wake up one day and say, Do you know what? I've had enough of this. I'm gonna just move on and I'm gonna just marry someone else. That's not what a covenant agreement is. Now I'm not referring to extreme cases where you have really serious problems within a marriage, but I'm not going to go into with this podcast episode. But for the average marriage, you don't just wake up one day and say, right, I'm done. I'm gonna get a divorce, I'm gonna move on, and I'm gonna marry somebody else. That's not the agreement that you'd made with your husband or with your wife before the Lord. That's not what the agreement was. The agreement was that you will live with your husband or with your wife, you made that covenant agreement before the Lord with witnesses, that you're gonna do life together. And I would encourage anyone, especially if you are not married and if you are single, take time and invest. You see, what I find interesting with marriage and thinking about marriage is that we look at it from our perspective, from man's perspective, as if we were the one that made marriage in the first place. But marriage is not man's idea, it's God's. It's God's idea. It was our heavenly father who said it is not good that the man should be alone. The word of God tells us that he created Adam a helper that is suitable for him. Marriage is God's institution, not ours. So we have to approach it God's way, and we have to do marriage God's way. Marriage is for life. It's not something that you can just walk out of if you've had enough. It's a covenant agreement that you will live and do life together. You think that many would take time to prepare because it's a lifelong relationship, because it's a lifelong agreement. But in reality, we don't do much preparation. We typically meet someone, we go on a date, you know, we get into a relationship, we get engaged, and then we have maybe some form of premarital counselling before marriage. But that isn't much preparation. Like I said before, if you compare it to other areas of your life where you've invested years, we don't really invest much when it comes to preparing for marriage. So marriage is not man's idea, but it's God's idea. It takes some time to prepare yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, but we don't really do much. Not in this generation, anyway, largely. Premarital counselling is typically an hour session at a time, and you may have a block of maybe six to eight sessions with your pastor or your marriage counsellor or whoever that professional would be that would walk you through your premarital counselling. So six to eight sessions that are an hour each, if that's all you're gonna do for your prep for your marriage, that's not enough. Not for a relationship that's meant to last the rest of your life. So if we think about it this way, if we think about careers and skills and crafts, right? I already said to you before in the previous episode that I'm a biomedical scientist. I had to go to university, I did an undergraduate degree, a postgraduate degree, and various other qualifications. That took me years. That didn't happen overnight. So typically in a career, or when we're homing our craft or when we're perfecting a skill, we invest years developing ourselves. We invest years in learning and perfecting our craft or our knowledge or our skills. Even within our career, many of us have some form of continual professional development. Many of us have some form of continual learning. You're always learning more, you're always working on your skills, you're always working on your knowledge, you're always developing yourself. And we understand that from a natural perspective when it comes to this area of life. But we very rarely apply that to preparing ourselves for marriage. We very rarely take a minute to say, do you know what? I'm gonna just buy a couple of books and just educate myself. Let me learn a thing or two about marriage, let me learn a thing or two about dating, let me learn a thing or two about being emotionally stable, let me learn a thing or two about healing. Let me learn a thing or two about emotional intelligence. So, with all of that said, we could change our career at the drop of a hat. We could say, Do you know what? I don't want to be a nurse anymore. I want to be a hairdresser and I want to work with a particular type of hair, and I'm going to open a salon and this is what I'm going to do. And there's nothing stopping you from doing that. Even after investing years and years of learning, you can say, Do you know what? I'm I'm done, I'm gonna do something else. So if we would spend so many years working on our careers that we can just change at the drop of a hat just like that, because we've had enough or we want to change, why do we not invest in marriage and learning about marriage when this will last for the rest of our lives? And I honestly do believe that as a result of our lack of preparation, especially in this generation, many couples face problems early on in their marriage. And a lot of these problems are for various reasons. Some problems can be down to something as basic as just a lack of communication, not really knowing how to communicate properly, not really knowing how to express your opinion and express your views in a way that is healthy within a relationship. Some issues can be down to emotional problems, such as maybe childhood trauma that's never been dealt with, or issues from past relationships. Maybe some people suffer with rejection. There are so many different reasons why there can be issues early on in a marriage, especially when somebody hasn't taken time to deal with their past, especially when somebody isn't whole. This may not apply to everybody, but I'm just using this as an example. Some of us are not whole. And if we're really honest with ourselves, we can genuinely say, Do you know what? I think I've got some problems that I really should take some time to try and deal with them. Maybe I need counseling, maybe I need healing, maybe I need help, maybe I need to speak to a friend or to a pastor to try and work through some of these things from my past. Maybe it's not emotional problems, it could actually be financial. There could be financial problems that couples are struggling with, especially when they get married. There are so many things and so many areas in life that can become a problem when you get married. Because one of the things that a lot of us that are single don't seem to recognize or understand is that marriage is not just about the romance. We have such a romanticized view of marriage in our generation, and that could be because of the type of things that we watched growing up, maybe the type of content that we consumed as children, fairy tales and all those different things. You know, we are a princess and we need our prince charming to come and rescue us and we're gonna live happily ever after. So that type of mindset can make us think and approach marriage in a particular way. But unfortunately, this can lead to many issues because we believe that marriage is gonna just be a bed of roses, we're all gonna love each other, everything is gonna be nice and cozy and warm and fuzzy and flowers and roses, all of that. And then we fail to recognize that when you marry, you are completely joining yourself to another. The Bible says that the two will become one flesh. Everything about you will be joined to your husband. Everything about your husband will be joined to you. So preparing for marriage is not just about taking time to read books, but it gives you an opportunity to work on you, to deal with any areas in your life that could potentially, potentially be an issue going into marriage. Some of us, it could just be we need to grow a bit more. Some of us it could be we need some healing, some of us need to mature a little bit, and you can do all of this whilst you're single. That's why being single is such a gift. Many people think, oh, if you're single, it's the worst season of life, it's like a curse, you're on your own, you're doing everything by yourself. But if that's your perspective, I would say that you're actually missing a very good opportunity, you're missing a blessing that's right in front of you that you're living day to day. Because you have time and you have space to work on some of these areas in your lives, and you can do it, and you have the time. You don't need to be married to work on your finances. It's so much better to manage your finances and to learn about money, to deal with debts and all those things that can come along with money, doing it well before you get married, so that you'll be a good steward of yours and your husband's finances later on. So I've got three children, right? My oldest is currently four years old. My second is recently turned three, and I have a very tiny newborn baby as well. So, with my young family, myself and my husband, we don't sit down and wait until our child starts reception when they turn five and expect the school to do everything. Now, that may be some people's approach, but that's not our personal approach. But we train our child and teach him some of the skills that he needs before he gets to school. So that by the time he does get to school, he's able to navigate the changes and the experiences and the learning that he will experience at school a lot easier. He'll be able to navigate that season a lot easier. So we prepare him to dress himself, to put on his shoes, to brush his teeth. All of these things we do to prepare him so that when he does get to school, it's an easier transition for him. So we understand it from these different examples that I've given, but some still struggle when it comes to marriage. So preparing now shows that you desire a good and healthy marriage later because of the investment you're making now. Just like how if you want to have a really good, successful career, you work on your craft now, you work on your knowledge now, you work on your skills now, you work on your abilities now, you don't wait until later on to do it. So I encourage every single one of you to do the same. If that's what you desire, and I'm sure everybody would say that they want a good and a healthy, happy, long marriage. So invest in yourself. Invest in your emotional health, invest in yourself spiritually, invest in your knowledge in the word of God, invest heavily in your prayer life, invest well financially, learn about money, learn about how to manage your finances well, getting yourself out of debt if you have any debt. Preparation now demonstrates that you're serious about your own self-development and healing. It puts you in a better position to make life decisions and helps you to navigate the seasons of life whilst you're single. Investing in yourself is key. Investing in your future is key. Because ultimately, it's your life. Ultimately, it's your future. So you are going to get out of your marriage what you put in and what you invest. If we just put marriage to one side just for a second, and think about other types of relationships, so relationships within your family and friendships, you will get out of those relationships what you put into them. You can have a best friend, and that relationship with your best friend doesn't develop because you knock on each other's door in the morning and say good morning. That's not how it works. You invest time, you invest energy, you invest effort, you work on compromise, you work on understanding, you listen, and you develop a bond and a relationship over time that gets deeper and stronger until the stage where you can say, Do you know what? This is actually someone I consider as being my best friend. What am I trying to say? What I'm saying is that it takes effort. You have to do something in order to have a good relationship. You have to do something in order to get something out of a relationship. Whether it's a romantic relationship that leads to marriage, whether it's a friendship, whether it's a family relationship, whether it's a work-based professional relationship, it takes effort, and it's something that you have to do. One of the things that I've always said is that you cannot change another person, but you can change yourself. Working on you as an individual is one of the best investments that you can ever make for your life. One of the best. Working on me because I had a vision for the type of marriage that I wanted to have. I wanted to have a successful marriage. Now, some might say, Well, why did you think about it so much? Why did you think about your marriage so much when you were single? And the reason why I did is because I saw so many marriages around me crumbling. Not every marriage, but enough. I saw enough marriages around me not work or fail or have major problems, and I never desired that for myself. And I would sit there and think, you know, as a young person, what can I do now to help prevent that later? And I understood that I needed to study hard at school and at uni and all of that in order to do well in life. So I applied those same principles as the Lord gave me wisdom to learn about marriage and to work on myself. And I'm passing this on to you, and I'm encouraging you to do the same. Look around you, learn from others. Maybe the marriages that you've observed in life are not bad. Maybe they're really good marriages, and I think that's brilliant if they are. What can you learn from those good examples of marriage? What can you learn from those good examples of wives that are in your life? What can you learn from them? What can you glean from them? What can you understand? What can you write down and take away that you can use in your own life? Developing our knowledge of the Word of God is something else that is so key. Jesus Himself said, Man should not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. The Word of God is our foundation. The Word of God is the very blueprint. For the life that we are to live, we should consume it every day more than our necessary food. The word of God is so important, is so key. So, one of the questions that I would ask in this whole topic of why should we prepare is because if the word of God is a lamp unto our feet and a light onto our path, how many of us can sit down and say that we've actually taken time to really study what the word of God says about marriage? It's another reason why we should prepare. Because we need to know what His Word says. How can we enter into a covenant relationship and spend the rest of our lives with our husbands when we have no idea or just maybe a very basic understanding of what the Word of God says about this covenant relationship that the Father has instituted? That the Father has made, that He has created. Marriage, like I said before, is God's idea, not our own. So how much do we know about God's idea? How much do we know about the marriage covenant that the Father has instituted? How much do we know? How many wives in the Word of God have we taken time to study? Have we looked at these women and studied their lives? The Lord has given them to us in His Word as examples for us to learn by and to learn from. Have we taken that time? Have we studied them? So once again, I encourage you, these are some of the reasons why you should take time to prepare yourself for marriage whilst you're single. Take time. Invest in yourself, invest in your future. Your future marriage will thank you for it. Until next time, may the Lord richly bless you.