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EXCERPTS
CHAPTER 4
HOW NOT TO DO IT (Pg. 2
9 – 33)
Don’t Say “God Says It’s You”
Most Christians, fortunately, prefer to spend time in church or in Bible study; they prefer the company of other Christians and find, with them, camaraderie of the Spirit. They draw strength from each other, and their faith is renewed whenever they feel weak and tempted to give up. God designed it that way. You will be happiest, and enjoy your life as God intended it, in the company of other believers.
However, for the single Christian woman, this frequently leads to a problem of a different sort. You, along with a billion or so of your sisters, have restricted your activities to church, you date only Christian men, and now you find yourself limited to a setting that is predominantly female, where an unattached Christian male is a cause for celebration. He is usually pleasantly surprised to find that, whether good-looking or not, he is surrounded by dozens of attractive, well-dressed, friendly women, all of whom are wondering, “Is this one going to be my husband?” Subtle and no-so-subtle bids will be made for his attention, sometimes even by parents in the church who are scouting for their single daughters. He usually becomes busy and happy, and not too eager to make a final decision on a wife.
Phase 1 – The Prophecy/Prediction Syndrome
This unfortunate shortage of single Christian men leads many women, particularly in more charismatic churches, to fall victim to what I call the Prophecy/Prediction Syndrome. In the small, nondenominational church I attended for a while, where the gifts of prophecy and tongues were fully evident, the Syndrome was quite common. A typical scenario is created by a woman whose mating urge is in full bloom. She has been praying and beseeching the Lord for months, or maybe years. Suddenly a new man arrives at church, or perhaps he is already in place at a new church she has joined. In any case, he looks like the man she has been waiting for. Whether or not he shares her attraction is irrelevant. At first she tries to maintain control and not be too obvious around him, to wait on God, but she finds her prayers are taking on a new direction. He begins to show up in them sometimes, and maybe in her dreams, as well.
She decided to become a bit friendlier to him. Maybe she seeks him out for special Christian hugs, or always has a smile or a helpful word for him. Sometimes he develops a mild though not serious interest, or he may remain totally unaffected. She is undeterred from what is becoming increasingly obvious to her. She starts to ask the Lord about him, then begins to tell the Lord about him. Her prayers change from “Lord, is he the one?” to “Lord, he is the one.” If the relationship, either real or potential, seems to not be developing swiftly enough, or not along the lines she wants, a hint of doubt enters the picture. She is, after all, a saved woman…she must look to the Lord for her answers. During prayer time she once again questions, “Lord, is he the one.” The subtext to the question is actually “Lord, show me a sign that he is the one.”
And in the context of the female heart, that sign could be just about anything. Maybe it’s a shy smile from him or a vivid dream in which he stars. Whatever it is, something occurs that confirms her fondest hope. She now feels that God has spoken to her…Yes, he is indeed the one she is destined to marry. She is joyful and excited, and full of anticipation. Time passes, however, and nothing seems to be changing between them. She then enters into a period of intense prayer, from which she emerges with the conviction that it’s finally time to share God’s exciting revelation with the man.
One way or another, she finds a way to talk to him alone, and announces the fateful news, “God has shown me that you are going to be my husband.” Filled with a combination of joy and apprehension, she finds herself confronting a dismayed man whose urge is not to sweep her into his arms, as she would have preferred, but to run as fast as he can. He usually proceeds to promptly disengage her from his life.
The scenario just described normally unfolds over a period of months. It takes time to work up a fully developed belief that you have actually heard from the very mouth of God, when in reality, you have heard yourself putting words into God’s mouth.
“Well”, you might be asking, “what’s wrong with what she did? Who are you to say she didn’t hear from God? How do you know that?”
I know, because as arbitrary as my evaluation may seem, it is actually based on the Word of God.
What Went Wrong?
Let’s consider the errors our friend made in her assumptions and actions. They could not have occurred had she truly listened to God, and not acted from her own emotional desires.
Not every word you receive from God is meant to be shared. Most of God’s words to you are for your edification alone, and should be kept between you and God. David, in Psalm 141: 3 prays, “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips.” Proverbs 29: 11 says, “A fool vents all his feelings, but a wise man holds them back.” Sharing an intimate revelation of this sort is almost always a major mistake. All men, Christians included, prefer to make their own choice of a woman. They like to think it’s their decision, even when it’s been the woman’s goal all along. The man’s need to feel he is the decision maker, the leader, is part of his nature. We’ll discuss this in more detail in chapter 14. By verbalizing her prophecy, our friend has taken away his option – he seems himself to be a pawn in a plan concocted between her and God; and he will almost always automatically reject it because his input in the matter seems to have been disregarded.
God will not tell one person without telling the other. Just as He revealed His plan to her, He will also open the man’s eyes to the revelation. It is not her place to try to open up his eyes. God will notify the man Himself, since the wills of both people are involved. If the prophecy was truly from God, it would not take the guy totally by surprise. He would already have received at least some indication that marriage to this woman was possibly in God’s plan for him. And she would have felt no need to prod him into action by making her announcement. God will not manipulate a man and his desires to suit another person’s will. The man’s own choice is a critical factor.
She stepped outside His will when she decided to stop waiting. Whenever you receive a message from God, the Bible says you must wait for Him to bring it to pass, in order to know that it is truly from Him. First John 4: 1 instructs is. “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” Acting on your own, in an attempt to speed God up, can short-circuit God’s plan, making it null and void. When you try to take it away from God and run with it yourself, you have already blown it.
Her apprehension alone should have served as sufficient warning that all was not right with the action she was considering. God never lets you just blunder ahead without warning you and trying to prevent you from acting rashly and getting hurt. She forged ahead on the erroneous mental assumption that the man’s response would automatically be positive, even though her intuition (God’s spiritual prompting) told her it would not be so. She felt that if she verbally expressed the thought, it could become reality. In fact, she was practicing a form of magical thinking, which holds that you can speak a thing into existence. Although it is loosely based on the fact that God spoke and all things were created, in most instances, it is an attempt to manipulate God and a situation by wishful thinking. It is a belief commonly held not only by Christians, but by all sorts of people, including New Age philosophers. It doesn’t work. You may speak forth all you want, but unless God wills a thing to be, nothing will happen. Speaking out your revelation will never prompt God into action, or a man into marriage.
Phase 2 – Post-Revelation Anxiety
There is a Phase 2 of the Prophecy/Prediction Syndrome. After erroneously sharing her revelation with her intended, and watching in dismay as he heads in the opposite direction, many a woman takes a stand, defiantly waiting for the man’s attitude to change. (continued)
EXCERPT FROM:
CHAPTER 13
WHAT SHOULD HE BE? (Pg. 88 – 89)
The wisdom of the Bible is all-inclusive. There is virtually no subject of concern to the Christian that is not addressed within its pages, either directly or indirectly. For you, as a Single Christian Woman, it contains a wealth of advice on what constitutes the characteristics of a good man, and therefore, a good mate. Throughout its chapters we are given not only illustrations of the lives of good men, but specific descriptive verses on their attributes, as well. We need to consider these Scriptures because, as with everything in it, the wisdom of the Word is absolute truth, and you ignore or disregard it only to your own detriment.
CLUES/DESCRIPTIONS
There are several major areas of concern that God addresses regarding a man’s basic personality traits. It is essential that you pay close attention to how the men in your life respond in these areas:
Anger
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Proverbs 22:24. “Make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man do not go.”
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Proverbs 29: 22. “An angry man stirs up strife, and a furious man abounds in transgressions.”
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Proverbs 14: 17. “A quick-tempered man acts foolishly, and a man of wicked intentions is hated.”
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Proverbs 15: 18. “A wrathful man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger allays contention.”
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Proverbs 16: 32. “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.”
Laziness
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Proverbs 14: 23. “In all labor there is profit, but idle chatter leads only to poverty.”
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Proverbs 24: 33-34. “A little sleep a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest; so shall your poverty come like a prowler, and your need like an armed man.”
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Proverbs 19: 15. “Laziness casts one into a deep sleep, and an idle person will suffer hunger
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Many more traits, both good and bad, follow in the book, with scriptural confirmation for all…please refer to Table Of Contents for a complete listing of chapters.
Thanks for sampling A Good Man Is Hard to Find…Unless You Ask God to Be Head of Your Search Committee.
Jo Lynne Pool, Author
The Macedonian Call Ministries
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