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

by Marshall Segal

We hurry to date as soon as we hit high school but wait to settle down and marry until after we’ve started our career and enjoyed some freedom.

We bait each other with half - truths about the best parts of ourselves, always selecting exactly what to show and how to show it, only revealing what might entice or intrigue each other.

Many of us think we’re pursuing marriage as we chat and flirt with one another, but we’re really just pursuing ourselves— our own image and self -esteem, our own selfish desires, and our own ego.

We’re always projecting and positioning ourselves to get the attention and affirmation we crave but without ever risking or giving up too much in the process.

While so many recklessly mingle in this me -generation, he sets us free from selfishness, showing us how to put others’ interests, needs, and hearts before our own, and teaching us to refuse to satisfy ourselves at others’ expense.

And when everyone else feels entitled to have everything now, he sets us apart as the strange and strong who are willing and eager to wait.

First, there are lots of Christians who do have a deep and enduring desire for marriage, people whose hearts ache to find a husband or a wife. It’s a calling they believe God has put on their life, yet it remains an unrealized and unconfirmed calling today.

will be a stunning thing for the world to see, someone trading the pleasure of marital love and sexual intimacy for a lifetime of loving God and laying down his or her life to bring others to Christ.

We should, however, prepare ourselves to be ready and faithful if God calls us to love and serve a husband or wife.

One of the most radical and countercultural things we can do today to declare our faith in Jesus is to marry someone and remain faithful to that spouse until we die.

We will all be married, and that marriage should shape every other desire and longing we have in this life.

If we are in Christ, we are never again defined by what we are not.

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sinned against and hurt a number of young women along the way because I was led along and blinded by my own selfishness instead of leading well in relationships like a caring and self - controlled son of God.

Looking back, I’m convinced God did withhold marriage to discipline me— not to punish me but to prepare me and mature me as a man and as a future husband.

but it is about mobilizing you— a growing generation and movement of single men and women— out of shame, selfishness, and self - pity into deeper levels of love for Christ and more consistent and creative ministry to others.

Marriage does not unlock God’s plans and purposes for us.

Not -yet- married Christians are not junior varsity Christians. You’re as Christian as any other Christian—

We want to date in a

way that makes Jesus look real and reliable to others around us.

We’re in the pursuit of joy, not marriage. Before anyone could ever make us happy in marriage, we have to have already given our hearts away. The surest love, the fullest happiness, and the highest purpose are all available to you in Jesus , just as you are. Find them first in him, and you will have a far happier and more meaningful marriage, if God brings you a husband or wife one day. And if, in his wisdom and his unfailing love for you, he ch...

We are all designed for relationship, regardless of whether we’re married.

Discontentment and disappointment rise up in the not-yet-married life when we start pursuing that love, joy, and significance in a person and not in God.

We become miserable not because we’re not married, but because many of us think marriage might finally make us happy.

was recklessly trying to feed my heart’s hunger for God by running after romance and intimacy.

Singleness provoked self-pity, wanting what others already had, and thinking I deserved it more than them.

Relationships towered above all my idols, so singleness became simultaneously my unrelenting judge and unwanted roommate, reminding me at all times of what I didn’t have yet and what I didn’t do right.

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.

takes patience, hard work, and perseverance—day after day, pouring ourselves into God’s Word, sacrificing for the sake of others in his name, and surrendering ourselves to his will.

God has plans for you, good plans better than

anything you could dream or want for yourself.

Your Father loves you, far more than a future spouse ever will or could.

But God made you and me for far more than marriage,

business, or whatever else we each might choose for ourselves.

Why did God make you? 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.

learned that the bigger and more glorious God is in my heart, the bigger and more glorious he will be through my life, and the more I’ll be what he made me to be.

Build your life on his love and make your purpose his glory.

In fact, his glory often shines even more brightly in the small, quiet, unseen things we do for

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. We

But if Jesus Christ died to save you and sent his Spirit to live in you, there’s nothing junior varsity about you at all.

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

But friendships are the front lines of disciple making,

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.

Be willing to say yes and be a blessing to others, even when you don’t always feel like it.

How could you use your gifts to do something radical or time-consuming to tell others about Jesus?

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

We take things God has given us to point us to him, and we try to make them hold the living water only he can carry for us. We turn gifts into gods. And as the world watches our life—how we spend our free time, what we talk about, where we spend our money—they will know where our heart lives (Matt. 6:21). God will too.

We have all the time in the world for the things that will not last and so very little time for the things that last forever.