God Loves Her, More Than You Do

And He loves you more than she does.

Marriages fail. Perfect couples have their own troubles. Winning in marriage is very different from winning in dating. When a marriage fails, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the relationship was wrong from the start. Marriage has its difficulties, and they should be prudently navigated. Yet surely, if from the very first day they first set their eyes on one another, if a man and a woman weren’t meant to be, the marriage won’t work. It will be among the worst things ever to have happened to them.

When I fell in love, I never really knew how difficult it would be for me to bear a rejection. I was never ready for a yes, and certainly, nor was I ready for a no. When it came, or when it seemed to have come, to put it a little more accurately, it was as if my whole world had been shuttered. I was broken, and it felt like all was lost. Maybe that was just being too naive; what’s wrong with men nowadays? But it showed me how much I had loved.

“God does not perform a routine matchmaking service for everyone who worships him. He has given us judgment, common sense, and discretionary powers, and he expects us to exercise these abilities in matters matrimonial,” says James C. Dobson.¹ That does not mean, however, that God is disinterested with whom we fall in love with. Would a disinterested God count the number of hair on our heads? He cares even for our little troubles, and being in love is anything but little.

As keen as God is about our well-being, he never meddles. Many people have asked, why in the first place, did God even put the tree with the forbidden fruit in the middle of the garden? Did he want Adam and Eve to sin? Like so many other times, once again, we are asking the wrong questions. The choice of life or death, good or evil will always be before us. God will perhaps whisper in our ear what the right way is, as He promises he will, but in the end, we will be the ones to make a choice.

In Psalms 84:11, the Bible assures us that God withholds no good thing from those who walk uprightly. Humanly speaking, as long as a child is disciplined and obedient, it wouldn’t seem right to us, that his father should deny him whatever he requests. This father would be glad to give his son whatever he wants. Whatever he wants? Will whatever the son wants always be good for him? His father would gladly give him anything, but insofar as it is good. And good for him. So it is with God, our Father, who loves us more than our earthly fathers. If we walk uprightly, scripture promises us that God would deny us no good thing.

And just as our Father loves us, so does He all his other children. Being good to us is never at the expense of another one of His children. He won’t snatch an orange from Henry to give it to Elphas simply because Elphas asked for an orange. God is good to all his children, and the gift of his son Jesus Christ, he gave to all. Now, as I look at my sister in Christ, whom I now adore all the more, whom God denied me, I think: how much God loves you! That he should keep me out of your life. God loves her so much, because she walks uprightly, and he would withhold no good thing from her.

I am vain man, and more often than I would want, I desire to have what I shouldn’t. Why should God attend to wants and whims that in the end profit nothing, but only add sorrow upon sorrow. What if God has better for me? What if that better is simply just defined by time? Jacob ought to know that he hasn’t been denied Rachel; if only he works seven more years, he will have her. Psychology teaches us that something appears important simply because we are paying attention to it, as soon as it falls out of focus, it ceases to be a bother. It’s easy to think you love someone so much that you cannot live without them, but only because that’s what is on your mind. We are not good at judging what’s good, or what’s important, it’s better to leave that to God.

God’s best doesn’t always seem as the best from the outset, but when we look back we cry: it is good that I was afflicted. Only God who knows and sets the end before the beginning knows not only what’s good for us, but what’s best. Just like a child denied permission to go out and play in the snow, you are probably sitting by the window, angry and sullen. “He doesn’t love me,” you think. There are a million things you do not have, that if you had would make your life better, but in Spurgeon’s² words allow me remind you: had any other condition been better for you than the one in which you are, divine love(God) would have put you there.

For those who walk uprightly, God withholds no good thing. It’s true you don’t have all that you want, but you surely have all that you need.

1. What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women

2. Morning and Evening Devotions by Charles H. Spurgeon; November 11, evening reading.