If there was ever a season in your life when you need hope, it’s the season of being single and dating. Poet Emily Dickinson said that hope was “the thing with feathers that flutters in the soul,” making it almost seem like hope was a light, fluffy thing rather than an anchor for your soul, as the Bible indicates. Many singles haven’t yet found true love and have almost given up hope of finding “the One.”

Besides exposing yourself to social opportunities and doing the work of prayerfully, actively dating with an open mind, you’ll want to also monitor your internal attitude and disposition. Because without hope, true Biblical hope, you’ll find yourself battling negativity, ungratefulness and despair.

So, if you’re single and dating with the intent to find a lasting relationship, you will need to discover the powerful resource of hope that is rock-solid, stabilizing and, ultimately, liberating.

Hopefully Loved By The Good Father

After every date or evening of messaging, there is an inevitable conclusion: you will either see or talk to that person again, or it may be the end of the budding relationship. Endings are never fun to deal with, and when they occur, many feel like their hopes got dashed.

Hope is not a euphoric wish that makes things turn out perfectly, though. Genuine hope comes from a good, holy God who, as one song puts it, is our “good, good Father.” Your hope each time you date should be placed in the God who holds your future in His hands and who tenderly watches over your heart as well.

God is journeying with you on these dates. Be hopeful that regardless of the outcome of every date, you are not left as an orphan, as Scripture says, to figure this whole relationship thing out on your own. You can have real hope that there will be a day when it all clicks.

Hopefully Expectant

Nothing is more unattractive in a single person’s life (or in anybody’s life) than the presence of bitterness and ungratefulness. These negative attitudes of the heart can literally disfigure the expressions of your face. No amount of makeup can beautify a sneer or disillusioned look.

When you have hope, however, you’ll have an expectant joy in your heart that overrides the sorrows, bumps and trials of singleness. Hope is really an attitude of expectancy – an expectancy for good, not evil! This is something I have personally grown in, as I have always battled fear and anxiety from the time I was a child. You see, you never have to dread or expect the worst when you are hopeful in the Lord. He has promised He has ultimate good in store for you.

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined the things that God has prepared for those who love him…(But) God has revealed those things to us by his Spirit.”  —1 Corinthians 2:9-10

Hopefully Free To Love

But the most powerful result of having hope in your life is this: hope liberates you from despair. It’s one of the most powerful antidotes to depression.

Genuine hope recalibrates your perspective so you focus in on the obvious right ahead of you that you couldn’t see: you are loved, cared for, adored and watched over by your heavenly Father. He has incredible hopes for your future, and He will not allow His hope in you to be dashed.

Ask God to give you the hope that heals and restores faith and liberates you from despair. Lift up your eyes. No matter where you are at in the dating scene, I am hopeful for you that you will soon see God working all things together for good

Isaiah 40:31 paints a picture of what your journey will be like if you hope in the Lord. Let me rephrase it so you’ll picture yourself in these words: “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength and will to go on. They will stand out as overcomers and soar above those who keep their eyes cast down; they will get their second wind and keep going, keep reaching out to love; they will pace themselves and journey onward with God, smiling, eyes wide open to see the good He has in store ahead.”

That’s you, my friend, alive and hopeful in heart, which means you are rock-solid, stable and free.

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