Prodigal Magazine

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I am a twenty-two year old college student who is somewhat socially awkward and I’m still trying to figure myself out in many ways. One thing I do know, however, is that I tend to over-think things just a wee bit too much. Recently, one of those over-thought topics has been marriage.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “you’re only twenty-two years old, what in the world are you doing thinking about marriage?” Well…you have a point. Regardless, the point of this isn’t why I was thinking about it, but what I was thinking about it.

Good old chivalrous tradition states that the man (myself in this case), if he intends to marry a woman, should first ask for her hand in marriage from her father. This tradition has slowly died with time, but there are a few of us who still hold to a lot of the “old-fashioned” ways. (Personally, I think asking her father is going to be a lot more intimidating than asking her. If you don’t know if she wants to marry you, don’t ask yet…it should be obvious what her answer is going to be.) Asking the father is more than just asking him to give away his daughter, it is asking for his blessing as well (blessing by a parent, yet another dead good tradition).

In thinking about all of this, I realized something: as a Christian, God is your father. Not just your father either, He is also your love’s father. If we, as humans, ask for the blessing of a human being (who is not able to wield any kind of supernatural blessing-power); should we not ask the blessing of our heavenly Father, the creator of the universe, first before all others? This requesting of God for His blessing and for the hand of the woman in marriage (because, ultimately, she belongs to God just as everything else does) should not be an event characterized by sheepish asking or sly wordplay — it should be an occasion of joy and of peace.

I think my absolute favorite illustration of God in a way our human minds can grasp is one of a little child. We are the small children, exuberant and joyful, walking through a store (aka, life with all its amusements and paths and distractions). When a little child, walking through a store like a Wal-Mart or a Target, sees a toy or something he/she wants, what do they do? They run and grab it and come running back to their parents. Sometimes they just throw it in the cart and don’t even ask, expecting their parents just to buy it for them. Sometimes they stand there, in euphoric excitement, and entreat their parents to buy the toy or whatever it is. At that point, the child is filled and is bouncing with expectation, happiness, joy, and the daydreaming of what life would be like with that item. The child’s parents, because they love their child, want to give him everything he asks for and then some. But because they love their child, they cannot. More often than not, the parents tell their child “no” — dashing the hopes of the child on the cruel rocks of reality — because it is not in the will of the parents. But sometimes, when it is in the will of the parents, they will say “yes”. At that moment, the child’s sense of happiness — that euphoria — instantly doubles, despite seeming to have already been at a peak. For the rest of the day / week / month / etc, life is good for that child because he or she got that certain toy.

It should be the same way with marriage. When we [guys] fall in love with the woman of our dreams, we should go running to God (that is not to say the relationship up to that point has been without prayer and study of the Bible, but rather I am denoting a turning point in the personally spiritual side of that relationship), face full of smiles and heart full of joyous expectation, asking, “God, can I keep her?!?!”. We should run to God, our loving Father, and ask for our heart’s desire. God is not a mean, cold or cruel God. He is a God of love, and a Father that loves to see His children happy and full of joy. Read what Zephaniah 3:17 says:
The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.
God delights in you! How utterly mind-blowing is it to think about the God of the universe singing joyfully over his children?

Psalm 37:4 says that if we delight ourselves in the Lord, then he will give us the desires of our hearts. Read that phrase again, the desires of our hearts. He wants to give us what we want and what will make us happy! So many people, in an attempt to become all-powerfully non-self-centered completely deny themselves happiness and only seek what God wants…but God also wants to give us what we want!. If we, as children of God, follow after Him and find our delight in Him, He will give us what our hearts most desperately desire. For the man completely in love with a woman, that desire is to be with her the rest of his life. If she is truly what his heart desires, and if she is good and perfect for him, then God wants to give her to him! God takes pleasure in giving to his children! There are many, many verses in the Bible that deal with God giving, and there is a reason for that: God loves to give to us! James 1:17 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” Notice the words “good” and “perfect”. Those words are descriptors of the gift, but they are also conditions. What we ask for of God MUST be good and perfect, in and of itself and for us. Luke 11:9-13 says:
So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!
Jesus flat-out tells us to ask God for whatever we desire. No secret language or convoluted wording, just regular, plain and in your face. “Ask and it will be given to you…” is so simple. Ask, and you will receive.

God wants to give us our deepest, most desperate, and most fulfilling desires contained in our hearts; all we have to do is ask. If they be good and perfect, and good and perfect for us, then He will give them to us. Do not be afraid to be like that child in the store, asking his parents for something. If you want to marry the love of your life, run to God. Don’t walk, don’t be timid, and don’t be shy. Hebrews 4:16 says we should “…approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” We need not cover our faces or cower in fear and shame before God, but rather come to Him as sons and daughters, righteous before Him, full of smiles, giddy with anticipation, and with all joy and happiness in our hearts. God is our father, we are His children and He delights in us and in giving us what we ask because He loves us. So ask.

I know I will.