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

by Marshall Segal

Marriage is very good. Singleness may be even better. Are your views of Jesus, heaven, and hell big enough to believe that?

We should be passionate, persistent, and anxious for them to see that he’s better than anything this world offers and that living for anything else only leads to awful, conscious, never-ending pain and punishment.

He warned us that some will hear the Word and like what they hear, “but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful”

7). The world is filled with thorns trying to cover up, crowd out, and choke God’s Word from your heart. Do you feel that throughout your week? Do you feel the constant battle for your attention and affection?

Lie 1: The world needs me.

Our smartphones make us feel needed, and they give us control, or at least the illusion of control.

As believers in Jesus and the gospel, our identity is never in how much we’re needed in this life, or in what we control, or in how much we know. Our life is measured by the life that was given for us, by the price that was paid to secure and satisfy us forever

More people probably want to be married because of loneliness than because of sex and children combined.

us. 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.

Your present suffering will only be for a little while (1 Pet. 1:6), even if it’s for the rest of your earthly life.

We are at war, but we are not alone—even while we are not yet married. God is with us, and he cares for

Our Savior experienced the darkest, most intense pain and loneliness. Why? “He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed”

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.

Ultimately, we will all be single forever, and it will be gloriously good. Marriage truly is a small and short thing compared...

The greater reality is that if you love and follow Jesus, God always writes a better story for you than you would write for yourself.

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.

No one was made to be truly single—to live for God’s glory solo.

Proverbs warns us, “Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment” (Prov. 18:1). No one was made to go it alone.

Isolated Christians are dead Christians before long. Because of how sin attacks us—living inside of us, lying to our hearts, convincing us that what’s false is true—we need others to regularly (“every day”) remind us what’s true and to warn us not to play with sin or indulge in

Pain becomes proud because it believes no one else understands. No one feels what I feel. And so pain distances itself from anyone who might try to speak into its suffering.

One test to determine whether our pain is producing pride is to

ask how we respond to encouragement from others, maybe especially from other believers who don’t understand our sadness, loneliness, disappointment, or whatever else we are feeling.

but we should never assume God’s blessing without confirmation from other believers.

Our hearts are too prone to wander, and we’re too prone to justify what we want.

If we are in Christ, there’s ultimately nothing single about us. We all know there are intimacies that are—and should be—unique to marriage, but those that matter most really can be experienced in the bride of Christ, his church.

Our worship and happiness must be anchored and rooted first and only in God.

To be clear, success is not a curse. It becomes a curse when it quietly becomes our savior.

Someone who eats like this—who feeds himself on all that God is for him forever—will not squander his or her life striving for nicer things or higher steps on the corporate ladder.

Practices like planning, budgeting, and saving are not faithless acts. In fact, that kind of stewardship will glorify God greatly when they’re done in love for him and for our (future) families.

We’re so focused on finding love that we get distracted from killing sin.

But we are always being either conformed to the world around us or transformed into something entirely new and different

Perhaps the greatest loss in the not-yet-married life is growth in godliness, because so many of us procrastinate in pursuing it, waiting until we get married to get more serious.

Rather than unlocking the fruit of the Spirit, it will more often (graciously) uncover flaws.

Whether you meet your future spouse this afternoon or live alone the rest of your life, God really can give you peace-filled rest and perspective at every point along the way, if you’ll ask him for it.

With God’s power at work in you, supplement your faith and singleness with goodness

Our anxiety tells God we’re not happily content to have him and his fatherly plan (and timing) for our lives.

Impatience says the Jesus we already have is not enough for us.

Refuse to procrastinate in killing your sin, and run after the one who wants to make you new.

I learned that God does not guarantee any human experience for his children—

not physical health, not marriage, not success at work, not children.

And that’s because he is utterly, relentlessly committed to giving his precious sons and daughters what’s best for them, when it’s best fo...

Never otherwise (Rom. 8:28). No matter how good the gift seems to be, or how much we want it, or how long we have waited, God will not abandon the greate...

Make me a healthier, more effective member of the local church. Give me a deep, abiding, and growing desire to serve her in whatever

If you would have me marry, Father, prepare me to love a husband or wife with the love and grace you have shown me through Jesus and his cross. Give me clarity in dating, and guard me from all impurity. Let patience, selflessness, and humility mark every relationship—every date, every conversation, every step forward or backward. In every step of my pursuit of marriage, make it clear that you are God and I am yours.

What makes marriage worth having is that you, your spouse, and those around you see more of God and his love in Jesus. If you’re not experiencing that with your boyfriend, break up with him.

Therefore, the search for a spouse isn’t a pursuit of perfection but a mutually flawed pursuit of Jesus.

In our pursuit of clarity, we will undoubtedly develop intimacy, but we ought not do so too quickly or naïvely.

Has his or her faith in Jesus been tested enough by trials to be confident it’s real?

Satan wants to subtly help us build marriage and family idols that are too fragile for our not-yet-married relationships.