I'm 20 years old, just as single as the day I was born, and there's no sign of potential suitors in sight. Yet, here I still find myself praying for my future husband all the time. Why is that? What's the point in wasting my time over someone I don't even know yet? Aren't there other more important things I should spend my time praying about?

Each of those is valid questions that even I have asked myself time and time again. The thing about asking myself those questions is that I'm limiting God's ability to hear my prayers. Asking those questions means that I'm doubting that God hears all of my prayers and that I have a limit to the number of times I can pray or the number of things I can pray about. That's just not how God works.

I suppose I could answer those questions anyway, just to illustrate the importance of why we should all stop and pray for our future spouses.

First, the why. Why should we pray for our future spouses? Whether we know it now or not, the people we will one day end up marrying are living life and going through things right now. Just as we struggle through monotonous daily routines and major life events, so do they. So to have someone out there praying for you, for your health, for your future, for your benefit should mean the world to you. The why is simple really. We should pray for our spouses now because we care about them and in the future, we will pray for them once we are together. Why not start praying for the things they're going through now as well as the future you'll have together?

Now for what's the point, that's a bit harder. The point of praying for your spouse is different for everyone. Some people start it out as a plea to God to place someone in their path to show them a glimpse of His love in earthly form, others merely want to pray for the well being of the significant other. Either way, we each have our own reasons for stopping to take the time to ask God for things in regards to our future spouses.

Now, that being said, if we are using our prayers to stop and ask God to give us a 6'5, professional athlete, with perfect everything we are not making the most out of our prayers. Also, we are putting our wants before God's needs and that's not how God works. While Psalm 37:4 says that if we "delight ourselves in the Lord, He will give us the desires of our hearts." Prayers asking for our "perfect" spouse aren't the desires of our heart this psalm is referring to. Don't be misconstrued, God wants us to ask Him for what we desire, but He also wants us to realize that His desires for us are greater than our own desires. When we realize that we are able to realize that God's desires to further His kingdom will become our own.

The final question of aren't there more important things to pray about is probably the most important. Yes, in the scheme of life there are more important things we should be praying about instead of for our future spouses. There are riots in Haiti, children being separated from their parents, children and coaches being trapped in caves for days on end... that doesn't mean that God doesn't have time to hear ALL of our prayers. God wants us to talk to Him about the big things and the small things. That could mean from the state of our world at the moment to an exam we have coming up in the next 45 minutes. There are no limits to God. So, yes, praying for our spouse is not the only thing we should spend talking to God about, but it should be a topic for discussion. Our prayers should be like talking to a best friend, and we all know we talk to our friends about our significant others so why not talk about it with God?

I could continue on about how to pray for our future spouses, but I'll keep it simple. Start by praying for their well being and the things they're going through right now. As you continue to pray for them you'll realize that it's no different than stopping to pray for any other loved one. You may not know who you're praying for in name or appearance, but one day you will. On that day when you find that person that you've been spending time talking to God about, you'll realize that the time you spent wasn't wasted at all.

So, for now, you and I both need to start taking a few minutes every now and again to talk to God about our future spouses.