"Single, Satisfied, and Sent: Mission for the Not Yet Married"

In keeping with the theme of singleness (which I have preached on the past two Sundays- you can find them here and here), I wanted to refer you to a helpful article at Desiring God by Marshall Segal entitled "Single, Satisfied, and Sent: Mission for the Not Yet Married." He helpfully observes,

A season of singleness is not merely 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 (Ephesians 1:3), with literally everywhere to go. 

With God’s help and leading, you have the freedom to invest yourself, your time, your resources, your youth, and your flexibility in relationships, ministries, and causes that can bear unbelievable fruit.

He then goes on to give eight suggestions for making the most of your singleness. The first one is so helpful and is about not trading marital distraction for other distractions. 

Paul may have been right about our freedom from spousal concerns, but in an iPhone, iPad, iPod, whatever iWant world, single people never have trouble finding their share of diversions. In fact, if you’re like me, you crave diversion and tend to default there, whether it’s SportsCenter, Downton Abbey, working out, fancy eating, endless blogging and blog-reading, surveying social media, or conquering the latest game. We might call it resting, but too often it looks, smells, and sounds a lot like we’re wasting our singleness.

That is a timely exhortation. Don't waste the main purpose of your unmarried status. Segal goes on to list 7 other suggestions that I'd encourage you to read.

Marriage Is Not the Source of Ultimate Delight

In preparing to preach on singleness, I came across a letter from a 18th century pastor, Henry Venn, to his wife, Eling Venn. I had intended to close the sermon with this but ran out of time, so I'll post it here. The excerpt is a helpful reminder that marriage, while good, is not where we ought to look for ultimate delight.

“You will believe me, when I assure you, it gives me great pleasure to find you love me so tenderly. But you have need to beware lest I should stand in God’s place; for your expressions, ‘that you know not how to be from me an hour without feeling the loss etc.’ seem to imply something of this kind. My dearest E., we must ever remember that word which God hath spoken from heaven, ‘the time is short: let those who have wives be as if they had none; and those who rejoice, as if they rejoice not.’ Both for myself and you, I would always pray that God may be so much dearer to us than we are to each other that our souls in his love ‘delight themselves in fatness,’ and feel he is an all-sufficient God.”

Quoted from Michael Haykin's book The Christian Lover: The Sweetness of Love and Marriage in the Letters of Believers

How Single Men and Women Testify to the Redemptive Work and Value of Christ

Here are the concluding points applying what I preached on Sunday (The Biblical Storyline and Singleness: How Singleness is Redeemed)

                                                              i.      For those who remain single by choice,

1.      When you choose to live in a way that

a.      shows having spiritual offspring and contentment in Christ is all you need,

b.      When you live pure and holy in a pleasure seeking world,

c.       then you stand as a beacon of light for eternal realities.

d.      Like a light house shining

2.      Our world’s motto is, “You only live once.”

a.      And that perspective has been pervasive throughout the history of fallen mankind.

3.      But you show the emptiness of that philosophy and the fullness of knowing Christ.  

a.      You show the afterlife is not life that comes after all the real living is done…

b.      Rather it is where the real living happens

4.      You testify that the Kingdom of God has broken into the present age empowering you to live for Christ now, even as you wait for the return of your beloved

                                                            ii.      For those who are single by trial and yet demonstrate contentment in the Lord, you too testify to the sufficiency and value of Christ.

1.      When you remain content in Christ, rather than desperate,

a.      you prove that your own desires do not rule you but Christ does.

2.      When trust God’s goodness even as he withholds marriage,

a.      You bear witness that God has proven his love for you unambiguously and clearly at the Cross of Christ

b.      You demonstrate faith in God to a world which believes in only what it sees.

3.      When you seek to have spiritual offspring, even while your desire for physical offspring is unmet,

a.      you show that the family of God is eternal and more important

4.      When you walk humbly with your Savior, even when you do not have an earthly spouse,

a.      you show that Jesus is your supremely valuable treasure

                                                          iii.      Married and single brothers and sisters…

1.      He who finds a wife finds a good thing.

2.   But let us not forget, the one who is seated at the marriage supper of the Lamb lacks no good thing.

Promises for Students Facing Ridicule for the Sake of Christ

Tolerance is the buzz word of the day. The problem is that our world has redefined it to cloak intolerance. Tolerance used to mean being able to disagree (even seriously) with someone else and still love them. The very word "tolerance" carries the idea of not liking something. For example, I tolerate eating cabbage and not ice cream. Why, because I don't like cabbage, but I love ice cream. The world however says that tolerance means agreeing with everybody (at least on issues of morality and the way to God). Anyone who is not tolerant in this new way is subject to intense animosity (and intolerance ironically).

We shouldn't bemoan the fact that the world is intolerant towards us for not affirming their views on sexuality, the plurality of ways to God, etc. Jesus said that to follow him meant facing the hostility of the world. In this fallen world, there are things we must resist and speak against, lest we be found unfaithful to our Lord (Kevin DeYoung has a good article on this called "The Tolerance Jesus Will Not Tolerate"). We must not capitulate on issues of sexual ethics or the exclusivity of Jesus as the way of salvation. So, in the world we will have trouble.

The good news is that Jesus not only tells us that we will have trouble; he also gives us hope. The Bible gives us some promises to cling to as we becoming increasingly strange to the world around us. John Piper lists 8 of them here in a podcast episode called "8 promises to students facing ridicule at school." I encourage you to listen to the short podcast or read the transcript.

"Human Dignity According to the Gospel"

This is a great article by Russell Moore on the grounded for our Christian perspectives on human dignity.

Here is one quote

This gospel, then, grounds human dignity since in it Christ Jesus offers himself not to spirits or angels but to the sons and daughters of Adam. We have to be reminded of that or else we will always be pulled back to seeing ourselves in terms of “the flesh”—who we think we are apart from our union by the Spirit to Christ. We start then to divide ourselves against one another as Jew and Gentile, black and white, rich and poor, First World and Third World, healthy and disabled, young or elderly, documented or undocumented, born or unborn. But the gospel cuts across the boundaries, and indeed crucifies them all. If we come to God, it will be through one Jewish mediator-king, or it will not be at all. Our call to remember human dignity is, before anything else, a call to remember who we are.

"Practical Advice for College Students: Three Things You Should Do"

Here is another short, helpful video produced by desiring God. He offers some good reminders.

Where Should Someone Who is New to The Bible Start?

Below is a helpful video (~2 minutes) from Desiring God by Ben Stuart that addresses this question, and it fits nicely with what we talked about regarding one to one Bible reading and what we are talking about in Biblical Theology on Thursday nights.



I hope you have had a chance to read the book you received on the beach retreat: One to One Bible Reading by David Helm. I also hope that you are praying for and pursuing an opportunity to read the Bible one on one with a fellow Christian and/or with an unbelieving friend. The end of the book has a suggested way to work through portions of Mark's Gospel in 6 meetings. I know he says to point people to John's Gospel (and that is fine too). May God use us to encourage one another and to share the good news with our friends.