Why won't God just take away my desire for marriage?

Many a single woman has thought to herself, "Lord, if I can't have marriage, can you please just remove the desire for it??"

And while sometimes God says yes, many times He doesn't. I don't know all the reasons why God does what He does. But perhaps this thought from Elisabeth Elliot will help you as it has helped me:

My heart was saying, "Lord, take away this longing, or give me that for which I long." The Lord was answering, "I must teach you to long for something better." - Elisabeth Elliot

Maybe God doesn't take away our desires, because He knows that if we never had to go without something we long for, we would never learn to long for Him.

If we got everything we desired in this life, maybe heaven would lose it's sweetness.

If we got all our earthly desires granted, we might never experience the joy of having our deepest longings fulfilled by only Jesus Himself.

When our hearts can harbor both earthly longings and heavenly peace, contentedness and joy, we become living proof that Jesus is enough to satisfy. But if we never wrestle with earthly longings, the fulfillment found in Christ won't mean as much to us. If we never thirst, we won't feel our need for the Living Water.

Let your earthly desires prove Christ's sufficiency. Because of Jesus, your heart can simultaneously experience both desire and satisfaction, both longing and fulfillment, both wishing and complete content.

Jesus doesn't suddenly become enough when He gives us all our heart's earthly wishes. He is enough in Himself alone. Jesus plus nothing equals perfect satisfaction.

What if we saw our earthly longings not as a pit of despair, but as a path of opportunity? A path that, when we walk it, will bring us closer to Jesus?

Sometimes it feels like life would be easier if God would just take away these desires for marriage. But what if we learn to see them as a tug on our hearts for something (or Someone) better? What if we learned to take our earthly longings as cues that we are in need of our all-fulfilling Savior?

If He truly is enough to satisfy, then no matter how we long for marriage, Jesus is all we need to be perfectly fulfilled.

Let's look at our longings as a gateway to a closer walk with Jesus. Let's allow our earthly desires to push us into His arms.