Michelle McKinney Hammond - What to Do Until Love Finds You: The Bestselling Guide to Preparing Yourself for Your Perfect Mate

Unless otherwise indicated all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Verses marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Verses marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version , Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. The NIV and New International Version trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society.

Verses marked AMP are taken from The Amplified Bible, Old Testament, Copyright 1965 and 1987 by The Zondervan Corporation, and from the Amplified New Testament, Copyright 1954, 1958, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Cover by Koechel Peterson & Associates, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

WHAT TO DO UNTIL LOVE FINDS YOU

Copyright 1997 by Michelle McKinney-Hammond
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishing.com

McKinney-Hammond, Michelle, 1957

What to do until love finds you / Michelle McKinney-Hammond.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7369-1718-6

ISBN-10: 0-7369-1718-7

1. Single peopleReligious life. 2. Single peopleConduct of life. 3. Christian womenConduct of life. 4. Man-woman relationshipsReligious aspectsChristianity. 6. Mate selectionReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Title.

BV4596.S5M35 1997

248.8'432DC20

96-41550

CIP

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 / DP / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my eternal husband

and the true lover of my soul,

JESUS CHRIST

To my parents:

William and Norma McKinney, and

George and Charity Hammond

To my wonderful sisters:

Nicole, Ayodele, Annette, Jacqueline,

Karen, Yaaba, and Anna

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Alda Denise Mitchell, my patient confidante, who tried to tell me, then let me learn the hard way.

To Philomina Bunny Wilson, my friend and wonderful example, who challenged me to do this.

To Karen McDonald, my precious bud, who, quite literally, made me finish what I had started.

To my sister, Nicole Neal, who cleaned up my grammatical faux pas.

To my editor, Lela Gilbert, who made me feel like a for real writer.

To all my loving sisters in Christ, too many to name, for all their enthusiastic encouragement.

To Bill Jensen, who caught the vision and ran with it, I offer a very sincere and inexpressible thank you.

Your love and support have humbled me.

CONTENTS

Someone once said, Men are like busesyou miss one, theres always another. I dont think that remark has any particular scriptural basis, but it does trigger another train of thought (no pun intended): We have to wait for the bus to come.

Now there is more than one way to wait. You can passively waitand perhaps miss the bus because you werent prepared to get on. Or you can actively waitpoised at the curb with all your packages balanced, ready to make the leap when the bus arrives. How you wait is up to you. Are you waiting in doubt and resignation? Or are you waiting in anticipation of your mates arrival? Who sits down on the bench when they think the bus is coming?

If youre sitting down on the job, its time for you to get up. You can do a lot to prepare your heart, your soul, your head, your everything for a mate. He could be here any minute!

In one of His parables, Jesus says we are to occupy until He comes. By this, He means that we need to be actively and productively waiting for His return. And preparing ourselves for the day when well meet Him face-to-face can be exciting and fulfilling! In Psalm 37:4, we are told: Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

This same occupying also applies to waiting for a mate. If you are like many single women, the desire of your heart is for a husband. In fact, if youre reading this book, I assume thats true of you. If your longing is based on what Gods desire is for you, then God has a man for you. Where he is and why he is taking so long, I dont know. But that doesnt mean hes not on his way.

Meanwhile, like I said, theres more than one way to wait

The Gift

For years I walked in adamant denial of my singleness. I refused to attend singles events, read singles books, or accept the apostle Pauls rationale that we should all be single crusaders for Christ. After much discussion (I came to call them moan sessions) with my other Christian sisters, I was forced to ponder another question: Was I the unsuspecting recipient of the gift? The gift was the capacity to walk through life being totally sublime and undisturbed about ones marital status. Those possessing the gift were busy being concerned with spiritual things. They had spiritual battles to fight, Scriptures to explore, unsaved souls to conquer!

Of course I was concerned about spiritual things. I devoured Scriptures, and, yes, I was even actively involved in winning souls for Christ. But there was still an undeniable void in my life. I decided that the answer, for me, was no. I was waiting for God to give me the desire of my heart, and I was not going to try to beat myself into submission to a gift I had not been given. I felt that I had been created to be a part of someone elses life, and no how-to-be-happy-and-single manual was going to remove my frustration over my other halfs late arrival.

Learning to Listen

Youre not ready, all my married friends said. Yes I am, I angrily answered, and proceeded to careen through one painful relationship after another. My diligent search for my mate led me into dangerous territory: the land of compromise. Against the warnings of my friends, I decided I could probably convert one of those handsome, witty, unsaved men I knew and be done with it. But after emerging bloodied and discouraged, from what I decided was my last traumatic romance, I waved the white flag of surrender. I sat down at the feet of Jesus, finally ready to hear what He had to say.

To my relief He agreed that I did not have the gift. However, He enabled me to see that I had a lot to learn before He could send me into the arms of the man He had designed me for. He encouraged me to begin my preparation by studying the Old Testament heroine Esther. As I studied, to my surprise I learned that there was a time of preparation, 12 months to be exact, before Esthers king would even see his potential bride-to-be in order to determine whether or not he wanted her to be his wife! Those 365 days were called the days of beautification. There were six months of treatments with oils, then six more months with spices and cosmetics before Esther was ready for her unveiling. Meanwhile, she was receiving instructions on how to please the king.