“Why do grown folks always have to spoil everything?!!!” As a teenager dating my high school sweetheart, this is what I thought to myself every time my mother commented on my future plans for marrying him. I was absolutely sure of our feelings for one another, and you couldn’t tell me anything different. Daydreaming about us, I’d write the both of our names on a piece of paper, envisioning it one day on a wedding invitation. My plans seemed just perfect, and in my mind, love was all you needed, but my mother knew this wasn’t the case. She had the wisdom of love’s mistakes and successes, and my seventeen-year-old self couldn’t imagine that she had ever been in love the way that I was at the time. My mother saw the way I’d look at him. I smiled cheek to cheek every time we were together. I was in a daze, and she’d say to me, “Girl, you better get your head out of the clouds.”

The thing that my mother knew, and that I didn’t have a clue about, is that I didn’t have a foundation. I hadn’t thought about all the ways in which life could give you a good spanking if you hadn’t prepared for its ups and downs. Thank goodness for time, maturity, and life experiences, but most importantly, thank God for ordering my steps and leading me according to His wisdom. I was young, immature, and very vulnerable emotionally. As I look back to where I was then, I realize what a drastic mistake I would have made had I been allowed to do what I wanted.

There are young women I went to school with that married the guys they dated in high school. Some of them are together to this day, but there are others that I’ve spoken to that have said they’d do things differently. Given the chance all over again, they would have been more patient to see what God had in store for them. This is a lesson that none of us should want to learn the hard way.

Romans 12:2(MSG) tells us, “Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” God instructs us to fix our attention on Him, and this is a skill that we become better and better at through practice. Relationships take a tremendous amount of focus and effort, but when we have developed spiritual, mental, and emotional maturity, we are able to handle the rigors of a relationship in such a way that it doesn’t detract from our relationship with God.

Keeping our relationship with God on point will keep everything else in our lives on point. We must never lose sight of the reality that we are products of God’s love. He tells us to flush our thoughts with His truth so that we wear His love like a uniform. Heavenly Father has commanded us to love through Jesus Christ, because the love of Christ is a fully developed, never ending love. Only the love of God in Christ has the glue to hold a relationship together.

Many of us allow our emotions to rule our choices and decisions, but God desires that the wisdom of His Word becomes the foundation on which we build our lives. His Word should govern our choices. God tells us in Jeremiah 29:11(NIV), “For I know the plans I have for you. Declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” We serve a sovereign God! There’s none like Him. No one compares, and no one can take His place. He created the universe and all that we see. It would be nonsensical to speculate for one tenth of one second that we can formulate a plan that is anywhere near as profitable and beneficial as the plan He has for us. God always knows best. The psalmist said in Psalm 40:5(NLT), “O LORD my God, you have performed many wonders for us. Your plans for us are too numerous to list. You have no equal. If I tried to recite all your wonderful deeds, I would never come to the end of them.”

Although many of us grow up and mature in every other way, sometimes our emotions get stuck. We are reminded of those days when butterflies churned in our bellies, and attachments were both sweet and all-consuming. Many of us carry those emotional impulses and responses of our younger years into our adult relationships. This means that we might make relationship choices from this same place of emotional immaturity. Instead of choosing someone who responds to our strength and confidence in Christ, many of us choose someone that responds to that part of us that isn’t as emotionally developed as it should be.

God knows we’re not perfect. He knows exactly where and how we need to grow so that we’re transforming into the men and women He desires us to be. This is one of the reasons He instructs us to let Jesus Christ guide us when it comes to choosing the person that is right for our lives. In Colossians 3:16, God commands us to let the Word of Christ dwell in us richly. We are to let the message of Christ sink into us so that we have the full vocabulary of God’s love. Then, our conversations will lead to peace and the Lordship of Christ will cause us to respond to our future spouses, and them to us, in the most loving way. God has this all figured out, and we must trust His plan for us because it will not fail. If we allow ourselves to be led of God, He will present a man that will strengthen the places where we’re weak. God knows this very moment the man that will minister and bless our lives the most. This is what He wants for us, and we should want this as well.■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright ©1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

“God’s Plan for You Won’t Fail” written by Kim Times, edited by Reverend Fran Mack, for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2021. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.