Encouragement for Single Adults
For a time in our ministry, Tammy and I had the privilege of working in the single adult department of our church. We had watched many of these young adults come through our youth ministry, and it was a joy to see them continuing to grow in Christ. One Sunday, a fine young lady was giving a very personal testimony of the Lord’s work in her life. As she spoke, I saw more clearly than ever that all of the counsel we have given to single adults comes down to one thing.
Life is not about marrying the right person, admission into a certain college, or choosing a career path. No, thank God, it is much simpler than that! Yes, those decisions must be made. But they are all to be made the same way – by faith.
Faith is not just for old people, sick people, and lost people. It is for all people. Especially young adults. The earlier in life we learn to live by faith, the more fully we can please God and enjoy all that He has planned for us. The faith life is the greatest life of all.
How do we live by faith?
- Wait on the Lord. Trust Him to bring all of His will to pass in your life, in His time.
- Rest in His Word. Take the very promises of Scripture as your own. Meditate on the faithfulness of God.
- Enjoy fellowship with Christ. No mate, degree, or job can bring contentment. Find your joy in Jesus.
- Let God be thorough with you in the season you are in. Learn. Grow. Prepare. The prime of life is the present!
Recently, a young man I have great respect for testified to me how God was using this time in his life to teach him lessons he knew he needed for his future and for a family. It takes great maturity (and patience) to believe that God is preparing you. “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).
God is not finished with you. Keep moving forward with the Lord, and you will find every good thing He has prepared for you.
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“Trust Him to bring all of His will to pass in your life, in His time.” How applicable is this to finding a mate, though? God doesn’t promise any of us marriage. How can we trust God to fulfill a promise that He never made to us?
In Matthew 19, Jesus talks about people who don’t marry, and he mentions a few different types. People who CHOOSE to live that way, people who are made that way by God, and people who are made that way “by other men.” So some people stay single, and it’s not because THEY chose it OR because God chose it. It’s just how life turned out. Just because something’s happening in your life doesn’t mean it’s God’s plan. What if you’re currently homeless, or unemployed, or being abused? Are those things “God’s plan,” just because they’re currently happening?
“Enjoy fellowship with Christ. No mate, degree, or job can bring contentment. Find your joy in Jesus.” Eh, I don’t know about that. I mean, yes, Jesus loves us…but it’s not THAT kind of love. I’ve always liked how, in the Bible, there’s so many different Hebrew and Greek words for the different kinds of love. In English, of course, we, confusingly, can only over-use one, haha. I know Jesus loves me. But remembering that, or focusing on that, doesn’t do anything to quench the desire for romantic love. Romantic love is the most intimate way that another human will choose you and love you. And sex is the most intimate way that anyone will ever physically love you. Can Jesus provide those things to us? No. If He could, well, why would any Christian ever bother getting married. Every pastor I’ve ever met has been married. What, was Jesus not “enough” for them? Did they make a mistake?
“Recently, a young man I have great respect for testified to me how God was using this time in his life to teach him lessons he knew he needed for his future and for a family.” Look, that might be true. But often, we’re single, we can often just automatically assume that this is what God MUST be doing, and that there’s no other explanation.
The Bible doesn’t teach us anything about soulmates. That idea comes from Greek philosophy and mythology. From reading 1 Corinthians 7, it seems like we have the freedom to choose either marriage or singleness (see verse 39). But, of course, we have to bring God into it.
Apparently, for the first few thousand years of human history, it was “God’s plan” for young people to be joined in arranged marriages in their late teens. Then God changed his mind to around 18 or so, with close involvement and vetting from each other’s parents. Then He changed it to be more inclusive of other races and social classes. Then, in the modern age, God decided to change it for many people to the late twenties and early thirties, with little involvement from parents, at least initially. What is going on?
Another strange point about the belief that God ordains people to be single or married: According to many Christians God will introduce you to “The One” at “the right time.” To make things even more confusing, we send a mixed message of how if you do everything right (like don’t have sex) as a single, God will reward you with a happy marriage with the “soulmate” He prepared just for you. So you don’t “earn” it, but you do “earn” it, but it’s all in His timing….or something.
And then we wonder why so many Christian singles are confused, hurt, bitter, unmarried, or struggle with marriage. The Bible doesn’t teach us anything about “soulmates” or “The One.” It’s not even hinted at.
The Bible doesn’t teach us anything about “soulmates. In 1 Corinthians 7, it sounds like God gives us the freedom to choose to marry, and to choose a spouse.
Besides, dating is a fairly recent phenomenon. People didn’t “date” in biblical times. Marriages were arranged by families in some way or other for a very long time in human history. I doubt people fretted as much about “soulmates” and “The One” and “trusting in God” and waiting on “God’s timing” back then. These days, in the modern dating world, we do. But are those biblical ideas?
The Bible doesn’t have all that much to say about marriage. The standard passage is 1 Corinthians 7.This passage doesn’t say that God will bring you a specific spouse. It does lay out some principles for us. The passage also says that God gives us the freedom to choose to marry, and thus gives us some principles over how to decide. Think about it this way: if God divinely ordained me to marry one specific person, can it really be my own conscious choice to love them despite all the difficulties?
In Matthew, Jesus also clearly states that some people won’t get married (19:10-12) The Bible has good things to say about both marriage and singleness. When Paul talks about this (1 Corinthians 7), he writes that, if you’re single and struggle to control sexual desires, you should try to get married. In this case, the Bible encourages marriage. It does not, however, promise that it’ll work out for you if you do decide to pursue it. Paul does say that not everyone has the gift of singleness. But I’m sure that there’s many who lack this gift who, despite everything, still don’t find mates. There’s also married Christians who suddenly find themselves single due to freak accidents and unspeakable tragedies. This all sounds cruel and messed up, but we live in a cruel and messed-up world. It’s not necessarily God’s “plan” or God’s “fault.” It’s just a harsh world we live in.
According to some Christians, if you’re single and never marry in your lifetime, it’s because of God’s will and calling (they often say this in an attempt to make you feel better). I don’t know about that. How are we supposed to know that for sure, exactly? Sometimes people will say this will only be revealed to you through long sessions of “prayer/meditation/contemplation,” or something like that. I’ve prayed over this for years, I still desire a relationship leading to marriage, and I still haven’t experienced success in this area of life, and I still haven’t “heard from God” on which path He supposedly wants for me. Maybe we just over-spiritualize the whole thing. And maybe God isn’t all that concerned with it. Maybe He just leaves the choice up to us, chance, and worldly circumstances.
I’ve also read that there’s generally more Christian women in the world than there are men. If that’s broadly true, it means not every Christian woman will find someone to marry. Is that part of “God’s plan” as well?
Say you’re a Christian convert in a country where there’s not many Christians around, or any easy or safe way to find fellow Christians (Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc., or maybe the Scandinavian countries) This may mean that there are no eligible marriage candidates for you. Is this because God wanted to bless you with the “gift of singleness?” Or is this you being “made a eunuch by other men,” a consequence of living in a fallen world?
Another interesting point has to do with the classic “free will vs. God’s sovereignty” problem. A lot of Christians assume that they’re married (or single) because God wants it that way, which, depending on what they want, can make them wither very happy and grateful, or very upset, angry, and confused.
However, as humans, we aren’t puppets. We can make decisions, and we live in bad, sinful world that affects our lives and sometimes limits our choices. Many Christians assume that, if they marry, it happened because it was “God’s will” and because God wanted to bless them. That answer is easy. If you want to marry and end up not marrying, obviously you’ll struggle with more, and harder, questions. But, apparently, you remain unmarried because God didn’t want you to marry. But that leaves out all sorts of factors.
It also absolves us of responsibility. People are single for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes it’s just bad luck. Sometimes it’s for bad reasons, like lack of maturity, poor financial stewardship, things like that, bad social skills, inability to deal with the opposite sex, etc. Sometimes we just don’t have any candidates around us whoa re marriage material, even if they’re Christians.
These days, lots of people wait longer to get married. Is that a plan that God devised? God “used to” do that when you were 16-22 years old, but now He, in His infinite wisdom, has decided to test us further by letting us all wait an extra ten years or so. Right.
As Christians we often have the shaky idea that anything and everything happening in our lives is God’s will. Sure. What if I’m currently homeless, or unemployed, or being abused? Are those things happening because God wants these things for my life? I get that we to honor God’s sovereignty and all that. It seems like the proper, “spiritual” thing to do. But we can’t understand this, at the end of the day. Unless good things happen, of course, like marrying on our timeline. Those things are obviously God’s will, right? Sure. It’s certainly easier to “thank God” for them.
Maybe God does bring partners into our lives. I don’t really know. But this idea that He delivers the perfect soulmate at exactly the right time seems counterproductive sometimes, as well as shaky. It sounds great, and it’s comforting, but that’s about all it does.
Yes, God is good. But we live in a fallen world that is NOT good. And you might not be single because God wants it that way. It could just be bad luck.