Men - The Woman of Your Dreams

You have inspired me to write something very interesting…well I hope you find it interesting, maybe not what you are expecting but these are God’s principals in finding a “wife” and if you follow His path you will have success and be blessed i.e. you will “birth” an Issac (which by the way means laughter)….but on the other hand, if you choose to do it your way, you will most definitely “birth” an “Ishmael” i.e. you will have difficulties and problems and it will be extremely painful. All this talk about “birthing” yes it’s “Birthing Your Dream”. God will but a desire in your heart as a seed, you then go through a whole process of actually bringing that dream or desire to “full term”. Unfortunately most people are in too much of a hurry and are impatient to wait for God to work out this process in your life. If you try to “help” God along and hurry up the process you will fail and have disaster. It’s like the story of the “Prodigal Son” (Luke 15:11-32) the son took his inheritance before he was ready to receive it, his character had not been developed enough for him to be able to handle success, he then squandered and lost everything. The same thing happens to us if our character has not had the chance to develop before we are ready to receive what God has for us (He develops your character through hardships and adversity). And this particularly applies to men as they are the spiritual leaders of the home and family and God will not give you a woman to lead until you are proficient in being led, directed and submissive to your heavenly Father. The main verse on this subject, I believe is Ps 37:4-5 “Delight yourself also in the LORD; and he shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.” The key phrase here is “DELIGHT” yourself in the Lord…you see God will NOT take second place in your life He wants and deserves FIRST place in everything that involves you. Why should He give you a wife (or a business) if you are going to just ignore Him and maybe even idolize and worship your wife instead of Him? Can you see and understand my point here? Once you have put Him in first place and love and delight in Him (Mark 12:30) “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength: this is the first commandment.” He then can trust you with other things…the desires He has already put in your heart. You see when you love Him like that you will want to please and obey Him and a woman can feel safe and secure in the knowledge that you will seek His council and lead her correctly and also treat her well. Whew, you see not what you were expecting eh? But there is more wisdom to add to this if you’re willing to listen? I just want to add a quote I wrote:- “I just want to add here that the enemy will do anything to try and distract us from God’s perfect will (Rom 12:2) and purpose for our lives and to move us in another direction, getting us to birth an Ishmael which will only bring huge problems, anxiety and stress into our lives. It may seem right and look and feel right but its way only ends in destruction and death (Prov 14:12). A sure and full proof way of “steal, kill and destroy” (Jn 10:10; 1 Pet 5:8) tactic. All I can say here is this “FOLLOW YOUR HEART” for this is where the Lord speaks, this is where He will lead and guide you – follow His footsteps and the promptings of the Holy Spirit and He will never, ever guide you into the wrong path as He only has a good and perfect plan for your life. One that will bring you great joy, peace and prosperity (Ps 16:6,11).” What I was trying to say here is that there are counterfeits out there which the enemy of your soul is longing for you to take the bait…to be lured away from God’s plan for your life because he knows it will bring great destruction to you and totally lead you in the wrong direction. Some wise words once told to me were “how can you ever find the right relationship if you are in the wrong one?” i.e. if you are in the wrong relationship, the right one can slip away. I know this is a very hard pill to swallow for guys, it’s much harder for you to “wait” but I promise you it will be worth it in the end. The other point I made here is “listen to your heart…the Holy Spirit will direct you". Many times people will mislead us and give us wrong council (Ps 1:1). A story here of a couple I know that had great opposition from even church leaders and were told not to marry…but they listened to the Holy Spirit’s guidance and obeyed Him rather and today 15 years later are still happily married. You see people do not know God’s plan for your life…He will reveal it to you not them. A word of warning here…having said that, God has put safe guards in place in the form of your family, especially your parents who He has given godly wisdom to, to guide you (and also your spiritual authorities). They are able to see things that you might not. You know the saying “love is blind” so relying on their wisdom is paramount. But again the Holy Spirit is your final authority and He is the only One to obey in the end (if you should be put in a very difficult situation where people are totally against your decision…but most of the time your parents will somehow “know”). Another point…write the vision and make it plain (Hab 2:2)write down the qualities you are looking for in your “Dream Girl” you will be amazed at how God will bring all those qualities before you when the time is right…but you have to first be clear and know exactly what you want…this is another “safe guard” as if a woman comes along that distinctly doesn’t have the qualities you’re looking for, even though you like her, I promise you, you are on the wrong track as remember God gives you the desires of your heart. So once again be clear and distinct and know exactly what you are looking for in “your woman”, and don’t be tempted to settle for second best. Another word of warning here, of course NO-ONE is perfect…you will not find a perfect woman, remember we are ALL works in progress…even you! But you must still know and be clear of what qualities you are looking for as God is a very specific God, He needs to know exactly what you want (eich be careful here what you ask for or forget to ask for...story of a woman who said I forgot to ask that he would also like my friends…her husband hates her friends). Ok can I add something personal here? This also relates to the part on the counterfeit….my experience in this journey is that God gives you this vision or dream and in this process of birthing your dream, there seems to come a point when your dream or what you are believing God for, actually dies, right in front of you, it dies. To your absolute horror and dismay and confusion you begin to wonder what on earth is going on….why has this died or come to an end…wasn’t this what You have promised me? All these questions begin to arise and you are in a state of shock! But this quote explains it quite clearly:- “God often births a vision in our lives only to allow it to die first before the purest version of the vision is manifested. This has happened several times in my own journey. Oswald Chambers observes, "God's method always seems to be vision first, and then reality, but in between the vision and the reality there is often a deep valley of humiliation.” Os Hillman You see the way I see it…God’s vision and plan for you is far greater and bigger than we could ever imagine and is often too overwhelming for us to handle at that time so He allows us to see our vision the way we want to see it…the way we can handle it. In parallel to this is His vision…running parallel to yours at the same time and as you are walking through your vision, He is working His vision into being. And at some point your vision has to come to an end so that His can begin. Wow does that make any sense? It will when you have to actually walk through it. But my point I just want to make here is don’t panic and be dismayed when this happens…don’t worry it’s all just apart of the plan, just keep holding on and keep trusting Him, remember Prov. 3:5 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; and lean not to your own understanding” often our understanding is not reliable as we cannot see what He sees (Isa. 55:8-9). I wonder if any of this makes any sense but hopefully some point I’ve made will jump out at you and maybe give you some insight to this journey that you are on? May God bless you with wisdom, insight and vision and may He bless your hands as instruments of kindness and grace and bless you with a heart full of love, compassion and understanding. But hey most of all may He bless you with a wonderful, gorgeous and godly wife!