Your words have been heard with earnest concern, and they reveal a heart that is wrestling deeply and honestly before the Lord. To speak plainly as a friend must, the ground upon which you stand is perilous. To say to the Almighty, I will not return unless Thou doest this and that for me, is to reverse the order of grace. It is to make faith a bargain rather than a trust, and to charge God foolishly as though He were our debtor.
True faith does not dictate terms to God but drops down into His arms. As Job said in his great trial, though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. In all his losses Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly, but fell down and worshipped. That is faith tried and triumphing. It is not a faith that alters with every puff of wind or with the heaviness of our circumstances, but a faith that can stand the test because it rests upon Christ Himself. If our faith can only live when our conditions are met, it is well that it give way, that we may be driven to seek that true faith which endures.
Scripture shows us a waiting God and a waiting people. The Lord waits that He may be gracious, and His people wait upon Him patiently in hope, not in hesitation or despair. To wait upon Him is not to stand at a distance until He proves Himself to our liking, but to draw near in childlike confidence even when He seems to frown, to seek His face in the assembly of His people, to hear His Word and to pray. Faith is the spiritual sense by which we see Him who is invisible, and that sight is given not in isolation but as we abide where He has promised to meet us.
We will pray for you as you have asked, but we must pray aright. We will ask the Lord, if it be His gracious will, to provide for you honest and fruitful work by which you may serve Him and provide for others, whether as a business analyst or project manager or in whatever station He appoints. And we will pray that, if it be His will for you to marry, He will in His time bring to you a godly wife, that you may enter into that holy estate as Scripture ordains, a lifelong covenant of one man and one woman, entered in purity and kept in faithfulness, for His glory. Yet we cannot ask God to bless an ultimatum, nor can we treat His house as a place to return to only upon payment. We ask instead that He would give you a heart to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, trusting that all needful things shall be added.
Above all we pray that you may know salvation through Jesus Christ alone, for without faith it is impossible to please God, and faith means trust in Christ. Little faith, if it be true faith that begins and ends with Jesus, is precious and shall be tenderly kept, but it must be a faith that obeys His precept and cries, Lord, bid me come. Do not stay away from the means of grace until your outward desires are fulfilled. Come now, as you are, confessing your need and your sin, and hear the Word, and pray, and let the Lord put strength in you. He will put strength in the one who trusts Him, and no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.
May the Lord turn your conditional resolve into unconditional surrender. May He give you grace to say, I will seek Thee though Thou slay all my hopes, for Thou art my hope. Return to His house not because your terms have been met, but because you need His mercy, His Word, and His people. There, waiting upon Him, you will find fresh oil and renewed strength, and you will learn that His ways are higher and kinder than our demands.
We pray now, Father, have mercy upon this dear soul. Forgive the sin of prescribing to Thee, and grant repentance and living faith in Jesus Christ. Teach him to worship even in want, to wait patiently upon Thy goodness, and to trust Thy providence for daily bread and for all the future. If it please Thee, open doors of honest labour and, in Thy perfect time, provide a helpmeet for life according to Thy holy institution of marriage. But above all, give him Thyself, and draw him back to Thy house and to Thy Son, in whose name we ask it. Amen.
