Does God choose your spouse or do you with God's guidance?

Really? Did God bring Eve to Adam? Did God give Rebekah to Isaac? Did God bring Ruth to Boaz? God is involved in the matchmaking business since He has given a Bride to His Son.

Good post.

A thought: we should not use the prophets as examples for daily living. God had them do EXTREME things in order to illustrate a point to His people. One prophet had to go around naked. Another had to make his bread with feces mixed in.

I'll make a point I made earlier. All of these matches you mention are involved with God's promises. Adam and Eve was necessary for the continuation of the species. Rebekah, Isaac, Ruth, Boaz were all in the direct lineage of Christ and in the case of Isaac/Rebekah part of the promise to make Abraham a great nation.

I don't think we can extrapolate that God has a singular match for each ordinary person.

Here we need to go from the particular to the general, and also remember what Christ as said about prayer in this matter. Regarding Adam and Eve, of course that was necessary for the continuation of the species. What you are forgetting is that God (Christ) was PERSONALLY involved. He could have spoken Eve into existence, but that is not what He did. Furthermore Adam is a type of Christ and Eve is a type of the Church. And God gives the Church as a Bride to Christ as He gave Eve to Adam.

Solomon's many wives and concubines were the cause of him starting to follow other gods beside the Lord. For the wisest man ever he played the fool.

Based on my own personal experience I fully concur with your estimation.

Women has in the past made me foolish. I feel for him lol

Yeah, I got burned bad in my first marriage years ago. It was my bad. Horrible 6 1/2 years that mercifully ended in July 12, 1984. Today would have been my 44th anniversary. Of course, I would probably not be alive today having mostly likely to succumb to either a nervous breakdown or heart attack. I played the fool too back in my when.

And Adam played the fool for a woman too. Eve was deceived, Adam willfully chose to listen to his wife instead of God.

May I ask what the unspeakable secret is?

(Hopefully it is not untypeable)

I read this book called 138 dates
by a type A kind of person looking for a spouse.. it took her 3 years to find one.

though in that book she wrote that when she (spiritually) let go of her dead bf the right guy appeared.

So...who knows. Might be something in it. But her partner (I dont know if they actually married, but they had 2 children together) didnt give HIS side of the story.

I hadn't seen this post, but I posted a thread in the Bible study section on how to make decisions.

I think someone could find a spouse through the Spirit speaking to the person, or there could be a supernatural answer to prayer-- like with Isaac and Rebecca. I do not believe someone must get spectacular supernatural guidance to get married. It might be wise to pray for such guidance. We can also pray for wisdom and believe God to give it to us.

An important thing for getting married and choosing a spouse is to do so Biblically. In the Bible, father's gave their daughters in marriage. This is clear of virgins in the Old Testament, and Paul even mentions giving the virgin in marriage. But he says that a widow may marry whomsoever she wills, but only in the Lord.

He did not say the widow had to have a vision of the man she would marry, but whosoever she wills. if you don't get specific direction, you have freedom to make decisions, but it is wise to pray for wisdom.

I remember in Sunday school when I was a child that a teacher said he believed that for every man there was just 'Eve' out there, one match for him. I don't think that's right because widows and widowers are allowed to marry. If there were one spouse out there for every person, then it does not make sense that widows and widowers can remarry. Let's say a man marries a woman and she dies in childbirth... as happened so often in previous centuries. Two years later he marries a woman who was alive when his wife was still alive. That's allowed, so it is not the case that there is one man for each woman and vice versa.

As for dating, we have a pretty-messed up courtship culture in the west that has degenerated since times past. US culture, much of it, grew out of English culture. The Jane Austen novels of the early 1800s show some of the courtship customs back then. Young men and women were chaperoned. People would open up their homes for balls or playing the piano and singing on Sunday afternoon. Singles would go to these events and talk with each other. At some point, a man might declare his intentions with a woman. If she agreed, he would ask her father. I read that a woman in the 1800's might meet with various suitors in her home who would drop by. One might make a proposal for marriage and the family would consider it. In the early 1900's, spouses met through networks of friends and relatives.

I also read that the concept of the one 'boyfriend' was developed in the early 20th century and promoted by women's magazines. The boyfriend grew to be someone who could fulfill the emotional needs a woman got from having a husband, decreasing the need for marriage. Eventually, for many, the boyfriend became a full-fledged sexual partner without marriage. We see a lot of that. if two people are dating, other people just assume they are having sex. That's actually insulting, but it's a common assumption based on the way many people behave. There are people who will just date for entertainment with no desire to marry at all. Some men and women will waste months or years of courtship time and emotional investment. IMO, it makes sense to get the marriage objective out on the table early in the dating process to scare off those who have no interest at all, not too aggressively of course. If a new dating partner has no interest in marriage, just sex, and the person they are dating is clear on wanting to marry and no chance of sex outside of marriage, it might deter the timewaster from continuing the dating relationship.

Interpreting Paul's words to mean God never does matchmaking is quite a stretch, IMO.

I am not sure why its always tradtionally the father that has to give the daughter away cos in the Bible its the SON who leaves his mother and father to go to his wife not the daughter. This is in Genesis 2:24

When it says 'Man' and 'his' I assume its the son anyway not just all offspring

The it was the sons who saw the daughters were fair and took wives of all they chose...God didnt have a say in any of that they just took, whoever they wanted. No parents to say what they could or couldnt do. And the daughters werent choosing they were just taken and chosen by the sons.

Noah was righteous but nothing is said much about his wife who isnt even named in the story.

marriage is actually more about inheritance than emotions!

People that dont get married just live together and they are seperate and legally they dont have any obligation to stay with each other or look after each other or be faithful to one another...and any children they have wont inherit anything...people used to call them illegitimate (or another word) and they never got the blessing that children of married parents did

though it isnt a hard and fast rule because your parents may be married but they can still hate you and disown you which in some ways is worse (eg Jacon and Esau) esp if you are not the firstborn.

Though God did know Rebecca was going to have twins and they were to be two nations
Just as Ruth and Boaz were to have Obed, who had Jesse and then David

Note in Judges how the elders organised wives for the tribe of Benjamin after all their women died ...and they wouldnt give them their own daughters so they went and killed the inhabitants of another town but left the orphaned 400 virgins and organised a dance. This. was so the tribe could continue their inheritance and not be cut off.

The reason they did that was the benjamites disobeyed God and didnt protect the wife or concubine of a guest from the sons of belial, just like Lot said you can sleep with my daughters instead (even though they were supposedly already engaged) and that was just a totally WEIRD passage of the Bible like...why would a father prostitute or pimp his own daughter? But they did.

Ummmm....
Actually Adam used Eve as a guinea pig. He was right there with her watching to see if she died or not.

She didn't deceive Adam in any fashion or even coerce or entice him.


But more to the OP:
There exists an old theology that Jesus talked about that gets twisted and misused. And it's about being Called vs Chosen.

Most of us are simply called. The vast majority simply are. Very few are actually chosen.
What this has to do with marriage is that most of the time WE are responsible for choosing our spouses. God doesn't do it for us.
That doesn't mean that He doesn't bless our choices or that we pick a good spouse and then curse ourselves with our attitudes and behaviors. Or we make a lousy choice for a spouse.

There are extremely rare occasions that God does it for us. But just ask Hosea how much fun that was.

God knows what our choices will be looonnng before we even knew that there was going to be one.
And like always God does what He can, in spite of us, to bring out the best outcome possible.

In Genesis 34, Shechem violates or seduces Dinah, but even the pagans knew better than to marry them without Jacob giving her in marriage. In Deuteronomy 22, the laws about marriage involve the father giving the virgin daughter in marriage. Matthew 24 mentions marrying and giving in marriage. I Corinthians 7 mentions giving the virgin in marriage, also. Women who did not have living fathers married to like Esther. Rebecca's father and brother consented to her marrying Isaac, and so did she.

I read a book once that said that one of the words used in Genesis to refer to God presenting Eve to Adam was the word used when a father gave a bride in marriage.

That is an extreme view. Do you even allow for some sovereign activity behind the scenes?

An angel spoke to Joseph in a dream to take Mary as his wife. Abraham prayed that God would send an angel before his servant. Rebecca married Isaac after Abraham's servant prayed a very detailed and specific prayer and it was answered and her family recognized that the LORD was at work.

I am noticing an attitude among those who believe that God is responsible for our love life's.

As if we don't get a choice in who we love or not. God either makes us love someone or not.

Or that we will find a spouse irresistible...and therefore not responsible for loving them.

That's kinda nuts. Just saying....