https://withinreachglobal.org/7-tongue-in-cheek-ways-to-survive-being-single-on-the-mission-field/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=7-tongue-in-cheek-ways-to-survive-being-single-on-the-mission-field Mon, 14 Sep 2015 16:40:21 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.5 https://withinreachglobal.org/7-tongue-in-cheek-ways-to-survive-being-single-on-the-mission-field/#comment-2912 Tue, 08 Sep 2015 15:08:00 +0000 https://withinreachglobal.org/?p=5607#comment-2912 I lived single for God since my twenties, until God led me to marry a missionary, I had prayed for, when I was 3 weeks before 60 and to go with her to the mission field. During my time as a single I found the following things most helpful:
1) To love Jesus and to receive His Love. For that it is very helpful to spend much time together with Him, to pour out my heart to Him and to really be open for the things which are important to His heart.
2) God’s Love is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. To let out that love to the person, that encounters you right now is a wonderful and fulfilling experience.
3) To spend time with brothers and sisters, to share and to listen and to be simply around can be a great help.
4) If you really want to follow Jesus it is very difficult to be one flesh with a person, who doesn’t want to follow Jesus totally or not at all. Better no partner than a wrong one.
5) To prepare you for certain tasks, God needs sometimes very long periods of time, times, when you don’t see much happening in His Kingdom through you, when you don’t receive the honor you think you are entitled to. We both went through long difficult times, but we see the things we learned then as a very great help for our ministry now.
6) If you find a person that might be you partner for life: Talk a lot, a lot, a lot about what you believe, how you handle money, how you want to raise children, how much do you live by faith, what you expect from your partner. Would he/she be ready to put Jesus first and you second? What will you do, if your ministry becomes dangerous? Are you both really ready for every way God leads you?
I went with my wife to a village in western Thailand, and we both had a very big surprise: God had prepared my by my background and my life and experiences so much, that I hadn’t any difficulty to cope with the new situation there at once, and I am at ease with the mentality here, and are able to understand lots of things in the mentality here from within. We had written a lot via SKYPE, before we married, and in our marriage we were very much surprised by the fact, that we have been one in Jesus in so many aspects of our life and our ministry. We only can say: The long time we had to wait was worth while.
When we married, I had some severe deficits, but God has changed me a lot for the better during the 5 years of our marriage, and we love each other now much more than at the day of our marriage.

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