What To Do Before Finding The One (part 2) by Pastor Kingsley Okonkwo: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

A real relationship is never one person persuading another to pity them into it; there has to be something genuinely seen and valued on both sides. Having established that the first thing to find is God, this continues with the second thing worth finding before anyone else.

Find Yourself

Before finding someone who matches you, you have to know who you actually are. Nobody completes another person, marriage was never designed to be the fix for an empty life. Explore your own personality, purpose, and passions before ever entering the search for a spouse. Someone who has genuinely found their own happiness only considers a partner because that person adds to an already fulfilling life, not because they are needed to create one. Ecclesiastes 4:9 says two are better than one, a partnership meant to multiply something already good, not patch something broken.

A person who wants to change everything about you is not the person for you. How you walk, how you laugh, how you smile, these are not flaws to be corrected into someone else's preference. Someone determined to reshape every part of a partner should look for someone else to marry.

Purpose Makes a Person Attractive

Marriage should never be someone's only dream. People whose entire life goal is simply "to be married" tend to end up disappointed, because they arrive at marriage expecting a spouse to be their whole world, and no spouse can carry that weight indefinitely. That same emptiness often resurfaces later as controlling, over-involved parenting once children arrive, an attempt to finally have something to manage. Purpose is what makes a person genuinely attractive, far more than looks or money ever will. Someone with real clarity and passion about their direction in life draws people naturally; someone with nothing to say about their own future, no plan, no direction, becomes far less compelling regardless of how they look.

Purpose also functions as a filter. A pastor who marries someone with no genuine passion for ministry, drawn instead by attraction alone, often finds out only after the wedding that they never actually married someone suited to walk that specific life beside them. Knowing what actually matters personally narrows the field naturally, before a wrong decision gets made.

Know What You Actually Value

Physical attraction alone cannot sustain a marriage across decades. Two people can be drawn together purely by appearance and discover, once the initial excitement settles, that they have nothing left to talk about, no real friendship underneath the attraction. Intelligence, a genuine sense of humor, the ability to hold a real conversation, these are things that have to be specifically valued and looked for, because they are what carries a relationship long after looks alone would have worn thin. A shared reverence for God is not something to leave open to negotiation, since spending even a short amount of time with someone tends to reveal fairly quickly what actually governs their decisions and priorities.

Don't Search From Desperation

Being genuinely happy and fulfilled while still single is not optional, it is essential to choosing well. Desperation negotiates badly, every time. Someone rushing to marry "before it's too late" accepts things a settled, secure person would immediately recognize as wrong. The right posture is never "I need to marry now," it is "I am already fulfilled, and I am only considering this because it would make an already good life even better."