Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

by Marshall Segal

Not-yet-married Christians are not junior varsity Christians. You’re as Christian as any other Christian—the same Savior rescuing us from wasting our lives, the same Spirit making us new and equipping us to make a difference, the same mission to tell the whole world about Jesus.

And if, in his wisdom and his unfailing love for you, he chooses not to, not-yet-married you will enjoy more than you ever could have dreamed or found for yourself apart from him.

The problem is not that we are hungry but that we’re hunting in the wrong pantry. The cravings deep inside us are a mercy from God meant to lead us to God. God is trying to give us unconditional love, indescribable joy, and unparalleled purpose, but many of us are just trying to get married.

Also about identity- you are what you eat type of thinking. Do we seek out what we want to become

At least part of what makes singleness so lonely and miserable is that we have such a hard time believing someone like God could really, genuinely love someone like us.

Its even easy to say... anyone at all, especially after a break up or during a time where we feel down or depressed.

God found you dead in your sin, in full rebellion against him, utterly hopeless, and he loved you to life and made you his own.

What are we doing to accept it? Do we?

Every single person on the planet was made to say something about God.

The earlier we answer the biggest questions about our life, though, the better we’ll answer all the smaller ones—like what we will study, where we will work, and whom we will marry.

!!!! "Smaller." Its amazing we see these as the BIGGEST parts of our life. Perspective

That question is infinitely more important than asking whom we will marry (or even if we will marry). The shortest answer is that we were meant to show others a bit of who God is, to share and display the love we’ve experienced with him. We’re seven billion Instagrams of God.

“God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”

Conversion is about commission, not just salvation, because we’re not saved to be saved, but saved to be sent.

Because we take the simple instruction to teach others what Jesus says and instead make it our Christian mission to be good neighbors, good employees, and, Lord willing, good spouses and parents one day.

We strip the gospel and the Bible of its authority, its clarity, and its urgency to make it fit into our small, comfortable American dreams and priorities and put off getting more serious about Christianity until we get married and start a family.

He isolates us from the people around us—those who can encourage and challenge us in our walk with Christ, and those who need us in their lives. He distracts us, persuading us to pour ourselves into school, or work, or entertainment. But God intends to use you, your faith, your time, and your singleness in radical ways right now, as you are. You don’t have to wait to get to the most important work you’ll ever do.

Maybe temptation overwhelms us, and we need a God-honoring way to satisfy that longing (v. 2). Maybe it’s abundantly clear that we need a helper to carry out God’s call on our life (or it’s abundantly clear to others that we do). Maybe we want to have kids and realize that we need some help with that. Maybe we just have a deep, undeniable desire for a loving, committed companion.

After all, as any single person knows, a desire for marriage does not a marriage make. Some do not feel any discernible call to singleness but are still single.

Satan waits in our waiting to discourage us and to make us feel immature or incomplete—like a junior varsity Christian.

And nothing in marriage is necessary for a meaningful and fruitful Christian life. Otherwise, Paul (and Jesus) just drew short straws.

All Dressed Up and Everywhere to Go

Perhaps the greatest temptation in singleness is to assume marriage will meet our unmet needs, solve our weaknesses, organiz...

A season of singleness is not the minor leagues of marriage. It has the potential to be a unique period of undivided devotion to Christ and undistracted ministry to others. With the Spirit in you and the calendar clear, God has given you the means to make a lasting difference for his kingdom. You’re all dressed up, having every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (Eph. 1:3), with literally everywhere to go.

If we aspire to be great, we need to give ourselves to the small, mundane, easily overlooked needs around us.

Paul says that God “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him” (Acts 17:26–27).

Notice the people God has put in your life, however he has put them in your life, and do whatever you can to encourage them to seek Jesus.

selflessness

Maybe especially time and energy.

One of your greatest spiritual gifts as a single person is your yes.

When the spouse doesn’t exist yet, you cannot hurt him or her with the selfless, impulsive decisions you make to serve others. If you get married, you will not always have the same freedom.

Do radical, time-consuming things for God.

Just as you are free to say yes to spontaneous things, you’re also able to say yes to things that require more of you than a married person can afford. Dream bigger, more costly dreams.

We might call it resting, but too often it looks, smells, and sounds a lot like we’re wasting our singleness—

The problem with so many of us today is that we have close to no anxiety about spiritual realities and endless anxiety about the things of this world.

Those who live for God’s glory—who live for the next life in this one—will feel a persistent, even painful urgency.

Unlike you and heaven, earth is expiring, and relatively quickly.

This world—its promises, its experiences, its priorities—are not the best investment of our energy and anxiety.

Everything in the world is teaching you to stretch out every moment as long as possible, to soak up every last drop from your time here on earth. But you weren’t made for this, and you won’t be here long.

start thinking of everything we have here as something to invest in what’s to come.

We also have to be reminded that Jesus really is coming back.

Life is short, Jesus is coming, and heaven and hell are real. Simple, weighty truths like these are our weapons in the war against distraction.

That means we’re free not to have to know, or own, or experience everything in our seventy or eighty years here. We’re going to get it all (1 Cor. 3:21–23).

Lie 1: The world needs me. For some of us, a savior complex tethers us to our phones. We’re afraid something will happen and someone will need us—and only us—immediately. What could they possibly do if we weren’t available?

God has governed, preserved, and prospered the world without me for most of history—thousands and thousands of years.

Like everyone else, every not-yet-married person will experience pain, but pain will be magnified in some ways by singleness.

Naïve and immature, I had fallen more in love with getting married than I had ever actually loved her.

And because he’s clever, he spends a lot of his time among the disappointed and afflicted. He lies in wait with lies, wanting to consume the fragile, the vulnerable, and the lonely. Singleness may have felt like that to you at times.

When we are disappointed or afflicted, God is calling us to war. He is lovingly and violently shaking us out of our complacency and entitlement to awaken us to the realities of life deeper and more important than our circumstances.

We need to ask if we have made marriage a qualification for a happy and meaningful life. Am I undone and miserable by the prospect of never being married? Do I think of myself as incomplete or insignificant as an unmarried believer? These questions might reveal red flags that warn us marriage has become an idol.

Marriage truly is a small and short thing compared with all we have in Christ forever.

The “better” is based on this: God himself is the best, most satisfying thing you could ever have or experience, and, therefore, fullness of life is ultimately found not in any earthly success, relationship, or accomplishment but in your proximity to God through faith.

Make him your greatest treasure and ambition and see everything else that happens to you in the light of that infinite pleasure and security. Learn to love the life you have with God, even if it is the life you never wanted.

The longer we’re not yet married, the more easily and aggressively we can move into isolation.

Form the habit now able we are young to go out and serve and be socially active