Warrior-Poet Meets God-Written Love Story
Ben Zornes is our Dean of Men and worship leader here at Ellerslie Training. He and Elsje will be married in January 2012 on the Ellerslie campus. Their testimony proves once more that God indeed is in the business of scripting amazing love stories, when we are willing to leave the pen completely in His hands. May you be richly encouraged in reading about what God has done in Ben's life this past year.
1. You recently became engaged. Can you tell us a little bit about how God brought you together?
Ironically, the way God brought us together goes completely against the grain of the modern model of instant indulgence. Most of the time, if a guy sees a girl he likes, he does backflips to try to get her attention. God would allow no such behavior from me as this relationship began to form. In my situation, you could almost say that rather than bring us together, God led us to avoid each other for a season. When Elsje and I first met it was in the context of the Ellerslie training (she as a student, myself as a staff member). As my heart was drawn to her, I realized that I needed to limit interaction with her and do absolutely nothing to pursue her in order to protect the sacredness of the Ellerslie environment, and to guard her from being distracted by me. A guy showing and expressing interest, whether the girl desires it or not, has the potent capacity to be a massive distraction. When she returned home, I had no clue of any interest on her end, and I came to find out that she had no inkling of my desires or intentions. One other thing I should probably mention is, the fact that she returned home added a huge layer of impossibility because she is from South Africa. Thus, for the first six to eight months of our acquaintance – unknown to the other – God led us both to die to the desire and the hope of anything taking place between us, and to simply trust Him with our most intimate longings.
After months of silence, the only way open to me was to petition God to open the door. I knew that the risk in a relationship should fall upon the shoulders of the man, and God had clearly hallmarked her as the one He had designed for me, yet there was no clear way to begin initiating interaction without making her feel rather awkward. Thus, I invited my family to join me in praying that God would open a door of honorable communication. At the time it seemed like a massive long shot, but I knew God had given me the confidence to hope only in Him. I had no clue of her interest, we had spent such a ridiculously small amount of time in any sort of interaction, she lived half way around the world, and I had no idea if some swanky, South African hunk had already swept her off her feet. But, as I and my family began praying, God literally opened a miraculous door. For the first time ever, she responded to one of the weekly Alumni emails that I sent out to all the Ellerslie alumni. Before I began pouring forth my heart to her, I waited and didn’t respond to her immediately, even though the door had opened. Instead, I consulted with my friend and mentor, Eric, and with his wisdom and my parents’ counsel and oversight, I began corresponding with her. Over the following weeks, it became evident that God had stirred both of our hearts for the other. Once I obtained the blessing of her father to pursue, woo, and win her heart, God led us through a rather peculiar long-distance relationship overseen by our parents; it culminated in the most beautiful night on earth, which found me alone with a girl for the first time in my life, getting down on one knee, uttering words I’d never spoken to any other girl: “I love you (in both English and Afrikaans), will you marry me?” And with incandescent happiness she said, “Yes.”