I’m 38 and rejection has been a consistent experience. Not a fun one either. I can tell you what it is like to go for years without a date. I can tell you what it is like to have a girl say “I’m not interested in dating anyone” when in reality they are pursuing someone else. I know what it is like to have a girl walk out right after a loved one dies.
I can also share with you moments when God sat with me. When He was there simply present in the middle of the difficulty. Here are some of my prayers after all these years of frustration.
Please Heal Me
This might seem an obvious one but it isn’t always. Healing is always needed after injury, be it emotional or physical but after rejection stacks up you sometimes feel so hungry for a person to accept you that you don’t think about healing. Jesus called for those who are weary to come to Him. In Isaiah 61:1, the verse Jesus read in a synagogue at the start of his ministry, we find this: “He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted.”
You might be sitting next to a spouse, or waiting for your next night with a fiancé, but did you ever fully heal from rejection? Did you ever deal with the pain and emotions of it? One of my experiences was a girl that I considered special and close walking away form me silently when I told her my Grandma died. She just left me standing there. I was numb from a week of dealing with that loss and a little bit socially ignorant so the emotions of the moment hid on me. I didn’t think to talk to anyone about it then. I didn’t deal with those emotions for almost 10 years and when I did it was painful. Healing can make sure you don’t have extra baggage in your marriage. Sometimes a lack of healing might impact your ability to be in a relationship at all.
Don’t expect your healing to come in the same way God brought it to someone else (and vice versa). God has a lot of variety in His works. He might keep you single to heal you or he might allow a special relationship to be part of that healing.
Please Calm Down This Hunger
Now there are a few things I hunger for as a single, 38 year old male: attention from women, affection from women, and sex. Each of these appetites is normal, but not always helpful. There are two extremes at dealing with such appetites: run from it, or dive into it. Both extremes can be devastating. A certain amount of affection attention, and reasonable touch is important for humans. We were made with that as part of our DNA. But the hunger for these can move a relationship into terrible territory. Sometimes if that hunger is obvious to people it will affect their comfort level around you. Such hunger could also push you to accept a relationship that is not healthy or not a good direction for you. I often ask God for help with my hunger for these so that I can better keep such things under control.
Prayer for My Future Wife
I don’t always feel like I have a future wife out there, but praying for her is important. If I do have a future wife, she has needs. She has her own healing to go through. So I pray for her needs, be they physical, emotional, or spiritual.
Please Speak to Girls on My Behalf
While I’m not sure how often God does this, I do pray this. God is not required to bring me a wife. He is not a genie. Nothing in scripture says that God will bring a spouse to everyone who wants one. Psalm 103:5 does speak of satisfying desires with good things, but that does not mean those will be the things we want. Might He choose to be a matchmaker? Maybe. If He chooses to. Again, He does things different for different people. Sometimes He brings a spouse, other times He lets you find one on your own.
This prayer is important because God wants us to seek Him. He wants us to invite Him into our problems and frustrations. When we feel like working on ourselves is not enough, asking God to speak to others is fully advisable.
Is there a Specific Someone I should Ask Out?
I rarely pray this, not because I’m against seeking guidance, but because I don’t think God chooses our spouses for us. It is always wise to ask for guidance, but I don’t think God has a “one-to-one” plan of who marries who. I don’t think God has such a plan that if I don’t marry “HER” I will be taken off the path. I also don’t think it is God’s job to be my matchmaker.
If you pray this, do it in a spirit of seeking God rather than a spirit of using Him as a matchmaker. Any prayer coming from an attitude of seeking Christ is commendable. Maybe one day God will give me specific leading toward a girl, maybe not. But I don’t feel matchmaking is His job or priority.