It is only through God that you can find a faithful person. The text below further shows God as the best Person for the marital setup job.

House and riches are the inheritance from fathers, but a wise, understanding, and prudent wife is from the Lord. (Proverbs 19:14 AMP)

The Good News Version of this same scripture simplifies this statement even further:

A man can inherit a house and money from his parents, but only the Lord can give him a sensible wife. 

The Message version puts it this way:

House and land are handed down from parents, but a congenial spouse comes straight from God. 

If you don’t know God, you cannot benefit from this exclusive service. More so:

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:8) 

How can you truly love the person God is going to give you, if you don’t know God? You can’t truly express and operate in love which is birthed from God if you don’t know Him. I presented some information about love, but applying them to yourself would be futile without God in your life. Trying to love without God is like having knowledge without understanding such knowledge. It’s like undergoing surgery without a surgeon, taking a prescribed drug without its prescription, or building a house without an architect. Given these situations, you’re heading for disaster.

If the Lord does not build the house, the work of the builders is useless…. (Psalm 127:1 GNB)

Unless God builds your marriage by finding the right person for you and directing you on how to build and maintain your relationship with that person, your efforts in building your marriage by yourself will be in vain. It’s to your advantage that you have God in your life first, and through your relationship with Him, He serves as an unshakable foundation for your marriage.

For who is God, except the Lord? And who is a rock, except our God?(Psalm 18:31 NKJV) 

Anyone who comes to me and listens to my words and obeys them, I will show you what he is like. He is like a man who, in building his house, dug deep and laid the foundation on rock. The river flooded over and hit that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But anyone who hears my words and does not obey them is like a man who built his house without laying a foundation; when the flood hit that house it fell at once, and what a terrible crash that was! (Luke 6:47-49 GNB)

 Without God in your life prior to marriage you stand a reasonable chance of finding the wrong person. And if you marry this individual and you still don’t allow God’s say-so in your marital affairs, the storms of life will rage and flood your marriage toward the rocks. On the other hand, knowing and trusting God as your Rock and obeying Him regarding your relationship with your spouse amongst other things, helps prevent your marriage from hitting the rocks—since it was built on The Rock in the first place. Understand? You’re standing on what you could have collided with.

The good book says that men should love their wives like Jesus loves the church and gave His life for her. But a man cannot love his wife like Jesus loves the church if he does not know Jesus. If he does not know the Lord then he does not know how to love like Him. The only way he can love his wife like God loves the church is by knowing God in the first place. This is why you date Him first. In addition, since the church is the body of Christ, a man is supposed to love his wife like he loves his body or himself. This is applicable to a woman as well.

If you don’t love yourself how can you love someone else? Why would you not love yourself? Maybe you feel condemnation due to things you’ve done in the past and even the present. Perhaps you feel you’re not physically attractive enough, smart enough, good enough and so forth. Thanks to labels that you’ve allowed others to place on you—and perhaps, you also placed on yourself. Possibly because you’ve been abused and abandoned by people who should have loved you, but their actions said otherwise and likely contributed to a low self-esteem. If these apply to you and Jesus is your Lord, you must not know who you really are—and you must not know how special you are.

Whether you know Jesus as your Lord or not, it’s imperative that you know that you’re somebody because He loves you. Since the Absolute Person of Love loves you, you must be very valuable to Him. He died for you. You must mean something to Him. This is what you should use to measure your value. Whatever you might have done wrong in the past—and even the present, irrespective of its magnitude, He took care of it—all of it—or all of them. You can only benefit from this if you acknowledge, believe and accept Christ and all that His done for you. If you haven’t, please do. If you have, know that you’re His child, His beloved and very precious to Him.

Since you’re worthy of God’s love, you’re worthy of your love. This should motivate you to view and carry yourself with the dignity and prestige that Jesus placed in you by loving and laying down His life for you. Begin to know who you are by beginning to know the Person who truly loves you. As you begin to know Him, He helps you to know and love yourself. This is God’s standard platform from which you launch off to love whomever He brings to you. So take the label off and unwrap your real self. God is love. Spending time with Him offers you the privilege of knowing true love and knowing Him intimately.

While you are single, endeavor to date God first before dating anybody else. Have a relationship with God before embarking on any other relationship. Your relationship with Him helps you understand and know love. It serves as a blueprint that defines, outlines and qualifies how you interact with your mate. Having a relationship with God first, teaches the man who did not know God, how to love his wife like Jesus loved the church and gave His life for her.

1. O. J. Toks, While You Are Single (Paoli, PA: Elevator Group Faith, 2016), 62 – 65.