Here on Marry Well, we like to go against the current of Christian counsel that would have you suppress or ignore your God-given desire for marriage. We believe that most Christian singles should live intentionally toward marriage and stop pretending that being content will produce a spouse.

But as with all ‘not-yet’ fulfilled desires in life, there is a healthy balance between desiring something and allowing it to become an idol.

A long-time single friend updated her Facebook page with a link to this blog by Libby Cannizzaro who writes about her journey to find that balance. She begins,

“If you want anything else in life more than entering into the beauty of the relationship of the Trinity, then you haven’t seen or understood its beauty.” Those were the words I heard Dr. Larry Crabb speak the first morning of his School of Spiritual Direction that I attended several years ago. Those words stung as I reflected on my journey at the time of struggling to trust God with my life as a single woman in my early forties. I thought of the things I wanted so deeply – companionship, intimacy, and connection with another – and how the pain of not experiencing these at times consumed me with overwhelming pain and fear. As Dr. Crabb spoke, I knew immediately that I must not really be experiencing and enjoying that (community with the Trinity), otherwise this (the journey of being single) wouldn’t be so painfully paralyzing and consuming. I had a sense that I was in for a transforming week as I had a glimpse of moving toward a deeper understanding of God that would move me through the pain.

Here are four principles Libby learned to help her “live more fully in [her] singleness”:

1) Be aware of two lies that come from the enemy:  either a) “I’m blowing it,” or b) “God is holding out on me.”

2) Stay soft – move toward intimacy in the way you relate to God and others.

3) Give your life away in community and ministry and be other-centered.

4) Live in the larger Story. … Don’t live in a smaller story (“I’m not married”)

I encourage you to read the full context of these principles and consider how living them might help you “live in the larger story” of your singleness.

Dr. Russell Moore, Dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, takes on this question on his blog. He addresses the timing of when to ask such a personal question in a dating relationship and steers the questioner toward more general discover early on.

Ultimately, Dr. Moore prescribes a humble and gracious approach summed up in this excerpt:

You are not “owed” a virgin because you are. Your sexual purity wasn’t part of a quid pro quo in which God would guarantee you a sexually unbroken man. Your sexual purity is your obligation as a creature of God. And you have rebelled at other points, and been forgiven. If you believe the gospel, you believe the gospel for everyone, and not just for yourself.

If your future husband is repentant, and forgiven, and yet you are “tortured” by the thoughts of his past, then the issue for you is one of personal pride and a refusal to see oneself as a gospel-forgiven sinner.

Dr. Moore’s response is Biblical, helpful and hopeful. He ends with the succinct, “Jesus was a virgin. His Bride wasn’t. He loved us anyway.”

As Christians, most of us know how to be nice to people. We know how to offer friendly smiles, hold doors open for people, and pray God’s blessing on those around us. When we enter into romantic relationships, we add to these courtesies with socially accepted demonstrations of affection — Men give women flowers, women bake men cookies.

These are ways that we show someone love in general.

As a relationship grows, it’s important to move away from the general to more tailor-made gestures of appreciation. For men, find out whether she would rather receive flowers or chocolate. Ask yourself if she would enjoy a candle-lit meal or a long chat at a coffee shop. For women, discover whether he prefers cookies or brownies and find out if he’s into action movies or crime dramas.

When going deeper, it becomes important to begin understanding each other on an emotional and spiritual level. What is her love language? What is God teaching him in his life? Ask each other for prayer requests and spend time praying for each other.

As Christians, we know we are supposed to work towards loving others as Christ loves us. Scripture often describes God’s love for us in terms of him having intimate knowledge of us. God doesn’t love us in general. Rather, he cares for and ministers to us specifically.

To affectively demonstrate love to someone, we need to know him or her specifically. Getting to know someone in this way takes real effort and hard work. It requires that we move our eyes off of ourselves and onto another person — a lot. It takes us not only listening to another person but spending time actively observing him or her.

This effort should be more than worth it if we really desire to love specifically.

Young men (and I was one once) tend to think of a universe of all the potential females on the planet, and that’s not the way we should think. That’s not realistic. That’s not helpful. What’s helpful is to think about the fact that I am in a setting where, almost assuredly, a young woman I should marry would be found here, and in a circle of friends, in a church, in an employment situation, on a college campus, there are an awful lot of wonderful young women here who would be eligible to be my wife. So then look to the Scripture and say ‘What kind of criteriology should we use?

So let’s say (number 1) she has to be a believer, ok, so #1, you cut out half of humanity because you are seeking a woman, so we have that clear. And then they’re supposed to be a believer, because you’re not supposed to be unequally yoked for very good Gospel reasons and now you’ve really cut the population down.

And then you think, well, God’s sovereign and I’m here, and it’s meaningful that I’m here. It’s likely that she’s here. In other words, God does not say “Get on a tramp steamer, and buy a one-way ticket to a foreign continent and try to find a bride.” That’s just not what we would expect. We would expect that she’s probably here…very close by.

So you think about – who are you attracted to? And I would certainly hope you are attracted. In our fallenness we learn not to trust our attractions, but we also learn that our attractions can be informative. We should pray that the Lord would lead us to be attracted to just the right one.

I like to use the metaphor of climbing up a mountain. At some point a young man is climbing up a mountain trying to amass enough data to corroborate the fact that this is the woman he ought to marry. But at some very strategic point, and this is where a lot of our young men are missing the point, at some strategic point that burden has been met and he needs to start going downhill and actually go toward getting married. He has to take some initiative and do some things in order to make it happen.

The question then becomes “why would you not want to marry this woman?” Look, she is perfectly suited to be your wife. She is Biblically qualified to be your wife. You are attracted to her for all the right reasons. You can foresee her being your wife for a lifetime. You can foresee her as the mother of your children. You have a worldview compatibility. The people who love you the most, your closest friends, think she’s good for you. The people who love her believe that you are good for her. There is no Biblical reason why you should be disqualified from getting married, and the people who know you and love you the best think you would be wonderful together, then why not today? That’s the real question. In other words, what are you now waiting for?

I think this generation of young men has been scared off by the question of who to marry by a theology suggesting that something clearly supernatural is to happen for us to know we are to get married to a specific woman – when actually, it ought be the culmination of a process of just being obedient and watchful and hopeful and prayerful, and the right thing should fall into place.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to AlbertMohler.com.

One of the things we like to do on Marry Well is observe the community. So in addition to reading and responding to your emails, we click through profiles, check out the wall comments, read updates and generally just see what’s going on. We do it to get a feel for the site.

And we do it to see where the gaps are, to see if there are ways to help our members make the most of Marry Well.

Here are a few things we’ve noticed so far that may help you up your game on Marry Well:

Post a picture, any picture. We saw one photo early on of some guy’s motorcycle engine. Don’t knock it. That photo said more about him than the Marry Well avatar ever could.

Well, maybe not “any picture.” Ask a friend to look over the pictures you post. Let them decide which one should be your profile thumbnail and which one you need to drop all together. Trust us, you’ll be glad you did.

Complete your profile. C’mon, this isn’t LinkedIn. You actually have to put some effort into it if you want someone to say, “Hey, I like what you wrote in your profile.” Thoughtful comments and ideas go a long way in helping people feel a connection to you.

Make sure your email address is active. Most of the return emails we receive are from Yahoo accounts. It’s because they deactivate emails after six months of inactivity. If you have an inactive email, all of your notifications are returned to the general Marry Well email box. (Note: To change your email, send it to info@marrywell.org along with your account information)

Engage the community. Don’t be shy, we’re all friends here. Participating in The Lodge, posting status updates and writing on walls is a great way to keep your profile visible to other members. We’re starting to see members helping members connect with one another so don’t be afraid to strike up a conversation with someone of the same sex. Nobody’s going to think you’re weird. It’s what community is all about.

Change your profile thumbnail frequently. No matter how good looking you think you are in that green shirt, people will get tired of seeing it. Posting a variety of pictures of yourself, which show up on search results, give people a different perspective of you. And different perspectives are very helpful when trying catch someone’s eye.

Welcome all newcomers. OK, so I know this is our job. But some of you actually do quite well with this. We need more of the Marry Well’ers to make the newbies feel at home. Just being neighborly is great and you never know where an initial connection might lead.

Be open to long-distance relationships. It’s true, long-distance relationships can bring more challenges. But if you’re just limiting your searches to a few hundred miles, you are limiting your options of finding someone with whom you could make a great marriage. At least consider it.

Don’t dismiss someone based on their photo. Many people just aren’t that photogenic. But this doesn’t mean they’re not attractive. It really is amazing what dimension personality and character add to someone’s appearance. Become well versed on someone’s profile details and be a little more open minded about their photos.

These are just a few things we’ve noticed. But we suspect you Marry Well aficionados have some of your own suggestions for upping your game. We’d love to hear ‘em!