“I still want to get married but I am trying to be realistic about it. I am 28 and it seems like prospects just get slimmer and slimmer…..How do you all stay positive and keep hope that you will marry one day? I get so discouraged looking at our culture of immature and ill-prepared men and I have a hard time keeping hope about it. My Dad prays for each of us everyday that God will provide and be preparing godly spouses for each of us. All of the unmarried young men in our church either seem uninterested in marriage or quite a bit younger than me  (5-9 years).”

We received this question recently and it’s not an uncommon one. Really, there are a lot of questions within this question, but rather than say what’s already been said, and said well, let’s talk about this portion of the question- “How do you all stay positive and keep hope that you will marry one day?” The answer lies in the fact that hope is a much broader concept than just our hope of marriage. Marriage is a wonderful thing, but if we’re looking to it as the basis for our hopes, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment. If we’re going to be a hopeful people, we first need to understand where hope comes from, what hope is(and isn’t), how it’s maintained and grown, and how it is lost.

Continue reading “False hope, true hope”