There is nothing wrong with wanting someone to share your life with. There is nothing unspiritual about longing for companionship, praying for a godly spouse, or hoping that God will bring someone into your life whom you can love and who will love you. Desire itself is not the problem.

The danger comes when desire quietly becomes need—when we begin telling ourselves, “I need this person in order to be happy. I need a relationship in order to feel complete. I need someone in my life before I can really enjoy my life.”

Desire can guide our prayers, but it should never govern our decisions.

When something becomes a “need,” it gains tremendous influence over our choices. We begin looking at life through the lens of what we think we are missing. Loneliness can make attention look like love. Impatience can make compromise look reasonable. The fear of being alone can cause us to overlook things that wisdom would ordinarily recognize immediately.

Need has a way of negotiating convictions that contentment would never surrender.

That is why Paul’s words are so important: “I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content” (Philippians 4:11). Paul did not say that he had learned to stop wanting things. Contentment is not the absence of desire. It is the refusal to allow what we do not have to determine the quality of the life God has already given us.

Contentment does not kill desire; it keeps desire from becoming a dictator.

There is a tremendous difference between saying, “Lord, I would love for You to bring a godly person into my life,” and saying within ourselves, “Lord, I cannot be happy unless You do.” The first is desire surrendered to God. The second is desire beginning to compete with God.

Contentment allows us to pray for tomorrow without despising today. It allows us to desire something more without becoming ungrateful for what God has already provided. And it protects us from making permanent decisions because of temporary loneliness.

Perhaps one of the healthiest prayers we can pray is, “Lord, You know what I desire. I place that desire in Your hands. Until You provide differently, teach me to live fully, faithfully, and gratefully with what You have given me today.”

Then the question changes. Instead of asking, “Who can fill what is missing in my life?” we begin asking, “Who, if God provides them, can walk alongside the life God has already given me?”

That is a much healthier place from which to enter a relationship. We are no longer looking for someone to rescue us from an empty life. We are looking for someone with whom we can faithfully share the life God has already entrusted to us.

Wanting companionship is not wrong. Longing for love is not wrong. Asking God for a godly spouse is not wrong. Just don’t allow a beautiful desire to become a demanding master.

Hold your desires with an open hand, your convictions with a firm hand, and God’s provisions with a grateful heart. ©