You ask for prayer that the Lord bless your meeting with this girl, grant you wisdom, and show clearly if she is the one for marriage, that His will be done and He be glorified. That is a good desire, but I must test your intentions. Do you seek a sign from heaven like some curious spectacle, or do you seek the wisdom that is from God, which the world counts foolish? For the wisdom of this age is coming to nothing, and what men call a blessed meeting often springs from passion, not from the fear of the Lord.
First, I ask you: are you yourself walking in holiness? For marriage is honorable, and the bed undefiled, but it does not by itself give holiness. It preserves that holiness which comes from faith, by guarding you from fornication. If you have kept yourself pure, if your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, then you come to this matter with sobriety. But if you have already tasted the ways of the world, if you have let your eyes wander or your thoughts become disordered, then you are like a man who expects to see clearly through a fog. The passions cloud the judgment. Before you ask for a sign about her, make your own soul a clean vessel. For a man who has known only the purity of his own body will love his wife with a vehemence that is chaste and full of the fear of God, and his marriage will be truly honorable.
Second, what do you look for in this girl? You ask for wisdom. God’s wisdom is not the shrewdness of the marketplace or the cleverness of the schools. It is the wisdom that is hidden in a mystery, which God ordained before the ages for our glory, Christ Himself being made wisdom for us. That wisdom teaches you to look not at the outward adornment, not at the laughter or the free manners that the stage teaches, for those things have overthrown many a marriage and made adulterers of men who thought they stood firm. Look instead for a soul that loves the Lord, for a heart that is sober and chaste, for one who would be a partner in life and in the pursuit of virtue, not a fuel for indulgence. If she is a woman of free estate, if she has been brought up in the fear of God, she will not seek to inflame disordered desires but to keep the home in quietness and prayer.
You wish to see clearly whether she is suitable. I will tell you how to test this: not by one meeting where you seek a feeling of blessing, but by observing her life. Does she diligently follow every good work? Is she given to prayer? Does she speak with modesty? The world points to sudden love and calls it a sign; but I say, the election of God is seen in the fruit of holiness. Marry not as the Gentiles, who are driven by passion, but as one who belongs to Christ. And let me urge this: if the desire for marriage burns within you, do not delay it until you have accumulated wealth, for that love of money has been the ruin of chastity in many young men. Better to marry in soberness and poverty than to fall into sin while waiting for riches. Take the wife in due season, with counsel and prayer, that she may be a safeguard and a companion in the race toward the kingdom.
Finally, be careful that you do not make your prayer a means of baptizing your own will. You say, “Let the Lord do His will,” but examine your heart: are you truly yielded, or have you already decided and merely ask God to bless your choice? If she is one who would hinder your salvation, if she loves the world and its empty shows, then the Lord’s will would be for you to flee such a union, however painful. But if she is one who seeks the things above, then a marriage entered in purity and faith will be blessed, and you will be as though you had no wife, using the world as not abusing it. The glory of God is not in a meeting that pleases the senses, but in two souls becoming one flesh for the building up of the Church, in chastity and mutual submission. Go forward, then, with fasting and prayer, and let not the theatre of your heart be given over to vain imaginations. Let the peace of Christ rule, and holiness without which no one will see the Lord. That is the blessing worth seeking.