This week, I met up with a fellow sister in Christ to talk about some ideas on coordinating a weekend getaway for singles.  While having lunch, she mentioned she’d just recently met someone. She met him at a car dealership when she went for her routine maintenance. He’s a mechanic there, and they struck up a conversation while she was waiting on her car to be serviced. He politely asked if he could take her out for lunch one day, and they exchanged phone numbers.

I was happy to hear this news. She’s been single for several years and has always complained about the difficulty of meeting someone new. I was struck by the fact that she immediately attempted to size up why this man didn’t have a chance with her. In her estimation, he should have been much further along in life. The respectable, highly in demand skills of a mechanic she felt was beneath her standards. I sat and listened to her requirements of what and who he should be to be with her. It became a laundry list of “not good enough”.

Everyone is entitled to their list of requirements, most single sisters I know have one, but for those of us in the Lord, we must be extremely careful. If our list doesn’t line up with God’s love, ‘Houston, we have a problem!’

If you hear caboodles of sisters spin their criteria this way, which I have, the portrait of pervasive singleness that many have painted takes on another dimension. You start to see the gaps where the love of God has not been allowed in. They chose to believe that God is withholding the blessing of a spouse, when nothing could be further from the truth. Heavenly Father designed the universe in such a way that it responds incredibly favorably to those with an abundance of His love in their hearts.

Jesus was a carpenter, and I think he would agree that being a mechanic is an honorable profession. He would not think himself above or below anyone’s occupation, but would weigh the willingness of a person to grow in God’s love.  1John 4:17(NLT) tells us, “And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.” As joint-heirs with Christ, we live in God, all of us that are saved. One, no more worthy or less in God’s eyes than the next. All of us are being perfected in Christ, and as our love for him grows, our level of genuine kindness and humility should as well.

Through the Apostle Paul, God schooled us further on the extraordinary example of faith that Abraham left for us. He tells us in James 2:22(NLT), “You see, his faith and his actions worked together. His actions made his faith complete.” This is an amazingly profound piece of wisdom and truth. Abraham’s faith strategy was a powerful combination of right believing and right actions. And these kicked his faith in high gear.

After having lunch with my sister-in-Christ, I realized how easily so many of us forfeit opportunities to share the light and love of Christ with others. Instead of seeing a person with the eyes of Christ, someone worthy to hear the truth, some of us quickly size them up for list, lust, and lost potential. It takes faith to magnetize our desires and draw the blessings we seek, and we need to make sure that our attitudes about men, marriage, and our own level of love is pleasing to God. That’s the only way that our faith is made perfect and complete.■

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.

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

 “List, Lust, and Lost Potential”, written by Kim Times, edited by Reverend Fran Mack for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2018.  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.