About two years ago, I read "Passion and Purity" by Elisabeth Elliot. Elliot talks about the difficulty of waiting for God’s answer in her singleness. It’s even more difficult when she meets the man she loves, and he tells her that his obedience to God may dictate that the two of them will not be together. I don’t hear stories of this kind very often, the ones where people are open to singleness for the long haul. Instead it seems like we as Christians have this mindset where our singleness is just the waiting stage before we meet the right one. With this mindset, we may begin to lose the joy in our singleness. In fact, we can lose more than that. We lose the challenge of being open to a life of singleness.
That’s right, a life of singleness. This sentence might sound scary. In fact, when I really begin to think about not having a partner for life, I feel a sense of loneliness. If you are totally fine with singleness for life, then maybe this article isn’t for you. But if you have even the slightest fear at the idea of never getting married, keep reading.
In the end, our ability to conquer fear really boils down to faith. We read in Christian biographies and the Bible about believers with super faith. We can think about the names of people who were tortured and killed for their beliefs, and we cringe at the thought of their suffering. Yet how often do we hear about the emotional hardships we may have to face in our faith? While the opportunity for physical suffering may not be terribly common in our culture, I definitely think we can choose to sacrifice more of ourselves or less of ourselves to God on a personal level. Although God has the ultimate say in our lives, we can still honor him by ultimately deciding in our hearts that we are content with whatever life God wants us to live.
If we are not willing to take on singleness, then we are holding ourselves back from lives of super faith. To back this claim up, let’s look at Abraham. God tells him to kill Isaac. Now he could have easily killed his son and glorified God in it. Yet God allowed Abraham to have his son after Abraham laid his desires on the table in all faith. What if we confronted marriage this way, leaving it all on the table before God and deciding in our hearts that any way is good as long as it’s God’s way? With this train of thought, I ultimately think it makes sense to not only pray for our future spouses but to also ask God for the ability to submit to a life of singleness.
In the Bible, it’s clear that God gives people a way out when they cannot handle a tough task. Moses couldn’t speak in public, so God chose Aaron. Saul’s men didn’t want to fight Goliath, so God used David to do it. Yet we see the stories where Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego decided that they could burn in a furnace so that God would be glorified. Daniel decided that his actions could allow him to end up dying. God could have easily let these people die under trial, but He granted them grace. The real faith was that they were willing to do it, no matter the consequences. I think we need to adopt this mindset as young believers, that we can handle marriage or singleness because we love God enough.
It isn’t just something we can believe over night. It takes prayer and constant submission in our hearts and minds. I wonder how good God could prove himself to be if we opened ourselves to do anything He wanted in our lives, whether that leads to marriage or singleness. Perhaps the marriage would be even sweeter if no expectations existed from the get-go, but only a steadfast faith in God’s superb timing of everything. Perhaps we would ultimately enjoy singleness and how it frees us up to do amazing things on a whim for God’s glory.
Of course, my words are not the be-all, end-all. These thoughts are from my heart and are not bound to specific Scripture verses on marriage and singleness. Still, I believe that if we choose to embrace these sorts of ideas and lay our expectations before God, it can do nothing but add to our walk of faith. My challenge for us as Christians is to ultimately push ourselves to intentionally trust God.
