[Christians Only] really struggling with loneliness and a desire for a wife while also recovering from porn

Love is not just an emotion; in the marriage relationship and elsewhere it's an instruction. That means you can take steps in obedience to God in faith that He'll provide grace for you.

Ask God to give you a heart for someone, or some people, and start investing in their lives and loving them in practical ways, even when you don't feel like it. This is part of being part of church family and bearing each-other's burdens and loving one another, so even if it doesn't do anything to help your current predicament, it is responding to God in faith, which is what we are told to do.

[2 Samuel 7:18-29] is David's response to God's revealed will to him. He trusts that because God has said something, it'll happen. God has told you to love your brother's and sisters in Christ, and more specifically for your situations he has told husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church. This was talking about arranged marriage, where the parties involved had much less choice over their partners, but there is the clear expectation that it is possible and good, and something that makes sense to command that a husband loves his wife, or that more generally Christians love one another (in practical ways, bearing each-other's burdens).

You can step forward into this in obedience and you can trust that God will meet your faith in some way, whether it be softening your heart for someone, or teaching you that you will need only Him (if you are called to that, which I doubt from the way you're talking). Marriage is something we are allowed and expected to yearn for, and God said "It is not good for man to be alone" so He knows this, and provides grace for us in dealing with the circumstances surrounding it.

You are tired. In Hebrews 11 and 12, God draws our attention to the many people in the past who have trusted God (including Jacob, who had a messy romantic situation with Rachel and Leah) and accomplished great things in faith, and then goes on to exhort us to run with endurance the race set before us, considering Christ who endured for us.

/r/TrueChristian Thread