If God Has a Man for Me, Do I Need to Find Him?

The question of the ages: do I go looking for Mr. Wonderful, or is he supposed to look for me?

• Is it right for a woman to look for her husband?
• Is it okay for her to encourage someone she thinks could be Mr. Right?
• Is it right for a woman to put herself on a dating site?

What do you think?

These are all good questions.

Always, the Bible has the answer.

I know there are lots of opinions on this subject, and all of them have some validity. But, the Bible holds the answer, the key to understanding what is right and proper and what is not.

Think with me. Name the women in the Bible who went hunting for men. Let’s look at them:

• Lot’s two daughters—made their father drunk and became pregnant by him
• Tamar—wanted vengeance on her father-in-law Judah, dressed like a prostitute, and got him to sin with her. She conceived and then accused Judah.
• Rahab—a harlot by trade
• Potiphar’s wife—went after her husband’s steward Joseph, unsuccessfully, then accused him of forcing her and had him thrown in prison
• The “strange women” in Proverbs—all from the oldest profession in the world

 Would you call any of these women “virtuous”? I think not.

The kind of biblical women who went after men were always bad women. They were doing wrong. Never in the Bible is this kind of behavior smiled upon.

“Oh,” you might say, “I was only thinking of striking up a friendship with a young man.” Nothing wrong with that, of course. You should be friendly with anyone, male or female. 

I like the advice that the Apostle Paul gave to Timothy. (Timothy was a young, eligible bachelor and a church-planting pastor.) Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren; The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity (1 Timothy 5:1-2). Timothy was to treat the people in his congregation like family.

           

I think it’s a good guideline for how single women should treat single men—like brothers! (If they are Christians, they really are your brothers, in Christ.) You can laugh with them, talk to them, share with them. Notice the last part of the Bible quotation above—with all purity.

We’re not talking about flirting. Flirting is anything you do to call attention to yourself. Some girls fling their hair out of their eyes or over their shoulder. Some walk with a swing that’s overdone. Some pose with one hip up, or they bat their eyes. Please!

A Christian girl should not exhibit herself. She should exude character.

Down deep, every woman wants to be loved for who she is as a person, for who she is as a woman. She wants to be appreciated and cherished.

How she acts around everyone, not only the eligible men she knows, will determine what people think of her.

• Do you understand that biblically it’s not appropriate to flirt or come on to men?
• Do you understand that biblically a Christian girl doesn’t go “on the hunt”?

In the Bible, you will only find one virtuous woman who made herself available to a man, and that was Ruth. In my next post, we’ll explore her actions and what they mean for us today. I hope you’ll want to find out.