The bond you desire is one not of natural birth, but of deliberate, blessed choice, a union where two souls, having been drawn by a greater Love, willingly cleave to one another. Settle it in your minds that a marriage made in the sight of God springs from this mutual election, and it is a true marriage only when He is the silent third partner, turning the double cord into a threefold one that cannot quickly be broken.
Yet this cord is cemented by nothing less than mutual love. Without it, the closest proximity becomes a furnace of misery; with it, the humblest estate becomes the vestibule of heaven. But do not look to your own frail hearts to manufacture this steady flame. The love that truly welds two spirits must first be a spark from the eternal fire of God’s own heart. You are praying for Him to work on both your hearts, this is the very cry of wisdom. For the love that can bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things is not unearthed from the dust of our nature; it drops like honey from the comb of His immeasurable love, constraining us because He first loved us.
Let your prayer, then, rise into a holy practice. You ask for consistency, prove your desire by setting your love to its full exercise. Love grows not by idly sitting for a portrait, but by active, practical service. Give your affections a stage upon which to move. Tell your Savior in the secret place why you love the one He has set before you; rehearse the deeds of grace you see in that soul. And then, turn and show that same rehearsal of kindness in the daily bread of life, for Jonathan’s love was not a matter of mere talk, it was real, practical, active. Let your affection be a love which never fails in the little things, for it is in the daily drippings of thoughtful tenderness that the honeycomb is filled.
Approach this hope of marriage not as a conquest to be won, but as a banquet of love to be enjoyed soberly and with reverent delight. Our Lord invites our deepest affections, saying, “Eat, O friends! Drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.” So should it be between those who hope to mirror Christ and His church. Delight in one another, finding in the other’s character a reflection of the beauty you adore in your Redeemer. But take care never to prize the rings upon the fingers of mercy more than the face of the Giver. Let the love that draws you together drive you both closer to His pierced feet, so that your first affection, the great rudder of your soul, remains fastened upon the love of Christ which passes knowledge.
Do you truly love? Then look to Him, from whom radiates the very thought of true affection, and lament when love grows cold. If the flame within you flickers or burns low, run to the love of God in Christ Jesus. For when He chides us for withholding our love-tokens, it is because He values our love and is grieved when it grows cold. Ask Him, then, to blow upon the embers with the breath of His Spirit until a consecrated fire devours all selfishness. Pledge your fidelity not in your own strength, but by hiding yourselves in the cleft of that Rock where faithfulness was forever established. Thus, bound together by ties of mutual love that excel every earthly pattern, you shall find your union edging ever closer to the harmonies of glory, where we shall perfectly rehearse the lesson of love we but stammer here below.