She received a revelation from the Lord that a brother was her life partner. She had been a good friend to the brother prior to this time. She shared the revelation with the brother. The brother prayed about it and came back with a “No”, leading to an abrupt end of the friendship. Her question is, what went wrong in the circumstance?
One of our community members Dr. Deborah, provided a response which I consider apt. See it below.
“Personally, I believe there’s nothing out of place in the female being intimated by the Spirit first before the man. The challenge there is the wisdom to handle that knowledge especially in the face of certain sociocultural constants. By this, I mean the glaring and predominant fact in society that the male has the prerogative of taking the initiative where starting a romantic relationship or courtship is concerned.
This truth has been seared into the male psyche for generations, so much so that even though in recent times men do fantasize about bold, feisty women; in reality when actually faced with such women, they either treat her as one of loose virtue or just silently withdraw.
Most men want to be the hunter, (at least initially), not the hunted. From observation, most men prefer that bold, sassy side of their females to show up in the matrimonial chambers!
So to me, what this lady should have done is to have continued being friends (just friends) with this man intentionally, “codedly” and systematically unveil her wifely attributes while praying aggressively and constantly in the secret for his eyes to be opened so that he comes to openly acknowledge what she already knows to her.
Also, sharing with an older and/or spiritually more sensitive person, for assurance, confirmation and support factors in too.
So in the end, it’s still the lady that kinda tells him about it, but not in that way that is against the prevalent cultural and religious belief that the woman shouldn’t make the move in starting a relationship.
Even in Ruth’s case, tact and wisdom was applied. Note that Ruth said nothing to Boaz. She only conveyed her proposal by play-acting! And she used symbolisms as well…”spread your skirts over your handmaiden…” Boaz immediately understood. Well…hope this helps. Shalom everyone.
END OF QUOTE
Very good contribution isn’t it? John 15:16 is the scripture to support the proposition above. In that scripture Jesus had said, “you’ve not chosen me, but I have chosen you…” “You” there refers to the Church. In reality, a man represents to his wife what Christ is to His church. So if Jesus was the one who chose the church, it is most correct for a man to be the one to chose his wife and not the other way round.
But at least it is exciting that the sister reports that the brother prayed about it. Means he didn’t wade it off flippantly. But he didn’t receive the same conviction. A lot of factors could be responsible for this. It may be that the conviction didn’t come from God originally but from some emotional excitement of the sister.
And it could be that it was from God but the brother wasn’t patient enough to hear Him (that’s if He has even been hearing God before that time). It could be that he didn’t even want the relationship. He just used the “I prayed” thing to close the chapter. There are people who never prayed about a proposal because they themselves don’t want it but they won’t tell you because they don’t want you offended.
Lastly, he could have actually received from the Lord and still come and tell you He didn’t receive just because He himself doesn’t want it. In reality, if you’re dealing with someone who believes in getting a conviction from God about a relationship, for a relationship to take off, it requires two consents. A man must consent to what God is showing him.
He probably withdrew from you because he didn’t want to be leading you on. Didn’t want you to misconstrue his friendship for reconsideration of the proposal. It means for him the relationship was a No No, now and later.
On my part though, I don’t believe that good friendships ought to be thrown away because of a No. I personally never allow friendship to break down because I got a No or “gave a no.” I have enjoyed a profitable friendship to date with everyone like that in my past. Some of them remain some of my most committed friends and vice versa with our individual husbands and wives incorporated into the friendship (for those of them who are married.)
Every of our friends cannot be life partners – just one of them can- but we need all of our friends to make our life’s journey colourful and fun-filled. We need to be able to pick the phone in the future and laugh about those good old days while we thank God for the precious gift of the person we eventually got married to.
I hope we get to talk more about how this works in details in the course of our next series.
But there’s another way to deal with a case of you receiving and the brother not coming for so long. I will talk about it next week. Until then, remain blessed.
Your brother,
Peniela Eniayo Akintujoye.
©Peniela Eniayo, Akintujoye| hello@lovestraighttalks.com
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