Trust God With Your Singleness

Carolyn McCulley: I am grateful to see you all here. There have been a group of us praying for you all for a number of weeks, specifically for this particular session. It’s always my heart to see the single women ministered to—maybe it’s a little selfishness on my part, but I am always here to champion my single sisters. I am grateful that you would come to a seminar by an author who wrote a book Did I Kiss Marriage Goodbye? It takes a brave woman to read that book.

 

I didn’t think through this when I decided that was a great idea for a book title. The very second it released I was at a Christian retailing conference, and this one person said, “Oh, I would love to give your book to my sister-in-law.” I said, “Great, why don’t you take a copy?” and she said, “Oh, I could never give her a book with that title.” All of a sudden it hit me, “No! Here, I got you a book for Christmas.” “Um, thanks? Why are you giving me that?”

 

Well, the heart of that book is the sub-title “Trusting God with a Hope Deferred,” which is where we get the basis for today’s message, “Trusting God with Your Singleness.” But I will tell you I have collected a number of hilarious stories over the years of people who have admitted to trying to buy that book with a brown paper wrapper. I heard these two girls in this one church bookstore—church bookstore, mind you—they’re like 20, and they’re in the back corner going, “No, you buy the book.” “No, you buy the book.” “No, you buy the book.” I’ve heard stories of women who read it on buses and public transportation like this—just kind of covering the title, putting another book in front of it. It’s pretty funny.

 

Actually, it was my niece who I should have consulted for the book title. One time I came to visit her. As I walked in her little birthday was in progress, and she announced to everyone, “Wait, wait, my famous aunt is here. She’s the one who wrote the book You May Kiss Me Goodnight.” That’s brilliant. I hope I do get to write that book.

 

Over the four years that I have been privilege to give this message, I’ve seen more confusion, not less, about singleness in evangelical circles. I’m here, though, to say from the start that in talking about a God-centered singleness, that is not to the exclusion of a God-centered marriage. I’m here to encourage you that marriage is good. It’s God’s norm for most people. It’s His design, and I believe as we look at this today, we’ll see that living life as a God-centered single is no preventative to getting married. It’s not an alternative life. I believe that we will see that our lives are to be lived in a seamless fashion before the Lord. Then as we cultivate our lives before Him and leave it to Him to order our lives, we will see fruit in every season.

 

I’m not here to hand you a road map for lifelong singleness, in a sense, if that’s what you’re afraid of, like, “No, I don’t want to be single.” It’s good to desire marriage. It is a good thing. God designed it. We should want it, but we should not despise the season He has for us right now either.

 

That’s why, in talking about singleness in a culture that so denigrates marriage, that we have to be careful to say, “God’s plan is best for human relationships in marriage” because our culture is saying, “You don’t need marriage. We can redefine marriage to multiple genders and multiple parties.” There was actually a woman who married the Berlin Wall, I kid you not. She filed for widow’s benefits when the wall fell in 1989. I’m at a lost to explain that one.

 

It matters how we try to define marriage. I think even those of us who aren’t married need to stand up and say, “God’s plan is best, and it will be the norm for most people.” But whether singleness is a season or a lifelong state for us, our objective is the same. Singleness, whether it’s short or long, or whether we’re married for long or not, in all those seasons, the same objective exists, which is to glorify God and His purposes.

 

That’s what I’m here to talk to you about today, and before I get started, I’d actually like to take a survey of you all. How many of you here have never married? Would you raise your hand? Great. How about those of you who are divorced? And how about widowed? Great. I see the majority of us have never been married, and that’s not a surprise in the natural, as we live in a culture that says marriage is unimportant, it’s not necessary. But that doesn’t mean our culture determines our future. It doesn’t mean that our culture sits on the throne of our lives and determines our fates and our futures.

 

We know who is on the throne. We know who is working all things together for the good of us, His people, His daughter, and as well for the glory of His name and the promotion of His Gospel. We’re not here as an afterthought or a byproduct, but we do need to recognize that we live in special times. Because our culture says that marriage is not important, we shouldn’t be surprised to see that there is fallout even in the church in pursuing marriage. I want to affirm marriage, and I want to affirm the fact that we need to be deliberate about pursuing marriage in this day and age.

 

So, I do my bit with my little ministry I call A Foot in the Small of the Back Ministry with my young friends, my young male friends, my brothers in Christ. They call themselves my clients. They come to me, and I help them apply Proverbs 18:22: “He who finds a wife, finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.” I always remind them that find is an active verb. You must go out and do something, and I encourage them.

 

It is a fun little fact I did not anticipate that I would be a 45-year-old woman with brothers in Christ who are in their 20s and that I would have, in some cases, a more genuine fellowship across that age gap because of the fact that I’m this special aunt/sister—if they get into mother or grandmother, I smack them—but I’m that sister to whom they can confide their hopes and fears and dreams in a way that men who are my peers aren’t quite that honest. I have grown in respect and appreciation for these young men who are taking marriage seriously and pursuing it and talking about what they want in a wife and praying for wives. Maybe men my age were doing that, too, and I was unaware of it, but I am so encouraged with what I see going on in the young generation today. If you have the opportunity to encourage young men around you to pursue marriage, to trust God for His goodness and for His Word that it is a good thing to pursue and to obtain, we are all doing our little part in helping our culture to affirm and esteem marriage.

 

They call themselves my clients because my job is just to be their cheerleader, to encourage them to step out, to encourage them to pursue, to encourage them to be clear, and to pray for them. And you know what? I am almost out of clients. I am so grateful to see how so many of them are getting married these days, so I’m going younger and younger. I’m now recruiting in Junior High. “Hi. One day you’re going to want to get married. Come talk to me.”

 

Anyway, besides just making cracks and jokes about marriage, what I really wanted to do was to encourage you that I do think that marriage is important, and I do think that we need to do all that we can to encourage those around us in a confused culture to pursue a good thing. Let that be clear from the start. But, as women, we are in the position of waiting on men and waiting on God, and that’s not a bad position to be in either because waiting physically is always an active concept. It’s not a passive concept, and that’s what we’ll look at today.

 

The rest of my focus is going to be on this season of singleness. To some of us it feels more like a sentence—a life sentence—rather than a season. But I can encourage anybody who’s here today that’s in your 20s and thinking, Oh, I hope I’m not like her, you know what? That’s what I thought, too. I didn’t become a Christian until I was 30, and I looked at women my age, and I said, “Oh, dear God, please no.” You know what? It’s not that bad. God is faithful to provide mercies anew every morning, to provide grace for every situation, and the reason why He doesn’t often tell us our futures is because there is no grace for our imaginations. There is no grace for the future that we have not yet arrived at, and there is grace for today. I want to share with you that, though I’m your worst nightmare, it’s not that bad.

 

My three points for this message are:

 

1. It is God who assigns the gifts.
2. Married or not, we are all called to cultivate the same character.
3. In any situation, we can trust God with our hopes.

 

Before I go any further, let me pray for you all today. It is a prayer that Paul prayed for the Philippians. “It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God” (Phil. 1:9–11).

 

Lord, that is my prayer for my sisters assembled here. I pray that You would work through me, Holy Spirit, and that it would be Your words of life that would penetrate the hearts of my sisters here and provide hope and faith for the future—a vision for living this God-centered grand plan that John Piper laid out for us, and that we would walk away today with a higher view of Your goodness to us in this season. I pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.

 

Now, the first point—it is God who assigns the gifts. That automatically leads us to the question of “Why?” When you look at your situation in life, “Why, Lord, am I single? What is going on? What is happening?” If you’re in a church that is actively promoting a high view of marriage and family, you can also be like, “Well, Lord, look at this. Your Word and Your church are pronouncing this. What is going on with me?” I think in some ways that’s because we tend to identify more with an adjective than with a noun. So often in church circles today we see ourselves as single women, whereas I think the Bible says we are women who are single and sometimes married and sometimes widowed. The accent is on the fact that we are women made in the image of God, that there is something important about our femininity before the Lord, and we have different seasons of life. But in our current culture, it’s so easy to identify more with singleness, and especially in churches that do promote this high ideal of family.

 

You have my sympathy. I know what it’s like to go to work during the week and to work with people who are not believers in Christ and to live with that worldview, to live with that perspective of, “It’s all about me and promoting myself and my own agenda,” and then to come into the church on Sunday and look around and try to figure out, “Where do I fit?” This is not my current situation. I work for a ministry, and fortunately, my colleagues are believers. I know it’s hard, but just because it’s hard, it doesn’t mean that God’s not in it. Our very difficult places are sometimes the very places of sweetness where we can meet the Lord.

 

I was really struck by that in watching a video Thursday night on Stacey Smith, the woman who was in prison. She said that prison was her place of freedom, or something to that effect. I don’t remember the exact quote, but I remember thinking, That is not a normal perspective. But it became her place of freedom because it’s where she met the Lord. In the same way our singleness can be a very good thing, because it can be the place where we can meet the Lord, though outwardly it can be tough.

 

One of the things we always want to know is, “How long, oh, Lord? How long am I going to be single? God forbid, oh, Lord, will I be single for the rest of my life?” We always want to know our futures, and you know what? God rarely tells it to us. In fact, even when He does tell us the future, like He did to, say, Abraham, “You will have a son,” He neglected to fill in all the details in between. Twenty-five years later, a couple of mistakes along the way, and there you go. He doesn’t give us all the details because it wouldn’t be a walk by faith if we knew the whole plan ahead of time.

 

So, with our singleness, we devise these little tests. “Do you have this gift? Will you always be called? Do you want to know your future?” “Yes, da-da-da-da-da,” and we try to define who is going to be single for the rest of their lives and who is not going to be single—like we know. I know so many men who made these big proclamations, “I’m going to be a bachelor till the Rapture. I’m going to pursue God in my singleness,” and they’re married like six months later. I tried to proclaim the same thing over myself, but it didn’t work. But I know that we want to define, and we want to know exactly what’s going to happen, and we want to know if this is ever going to change and are we ever going to get what we want, etc., etc. You know what? Even if we get married, that craving for knowledge and control doesn’t disappear.

 

I have very good friends in all seasons of life, and as soon as you get married, you want to know, “Hey, is my husband ever going to be like that guy? Because that guy does his role as a husband so much better. He’s so much more romantic. Hey, is my child ever going to come along? Am I going to be able to carry a child? Am I ever going to bear a child? Hey, is my child ever going to grow up and get healthy? Is my child going to be like that child over there? Da-da-da-da-da.” It just goes on and on and on, because we want to be the omniscient ones rather than trusting the One who is omniscient.

 

I can tell you this: When it comes to defining whether or not you are single, just look around. Are you married? Is there somebody next to you? No? Okay, you’re single, and that is today, because we don’t know tomorrow. All we know is we are single today, and we can trust the Lord for our future.

 

Now there’s an argument going on in different corners of evangelicalism today whether or not singleness is a gift. I think primarily the reason why this argument persists is because of our self-centered way of looking at gifts. It’s why you get a gift card rather than a gift from people, because it’s what you want. “Let me go out and indulge myself. I’d rather not go through the trouble of returning something you might get me that I don’t like. Just give me the gift card, and I’ll go get what I want.” We always look at these transactions of gifts as, “Does this person really care about me? Did they spend a lot? Do they know me well enough to go get something?”

 

And we take this kind of self-centered mentality about gift giving and gift receiving, and we read it into the Scriptures. “Does God know me well enough? Does God really care? Is He going to spend a lot of time and effort on me? Do I like this gift? Do I want to return it?” Okay, be honest, many of us do. But I think it’s because of the limitations of the English language and our culture’s interpretation of gift giving that make it hard for us to understand what the apostle Paul was writing about in 1 Corinthians.

 

Why don’t you go ahead and turn to 1 Corinthians 7:6–9. We’re going to look at what the apostle Paul wrote about singleness. As you turn, I’m going to just add one more thing. I think this whole discussion about determining singleness and being concerned about it for the future or not for the future is kind of a funny situation, because we always want to define who is called to singleness, and we want to define that by certain terms that are actually godly terms. In other words, “Are you content? Oh, you must be called. Are you not struggling with lust? Oh, you must be called.” All these things that should be actually a characteristic of good Christians, and I mean that in the sense of blessed Christians, of Christians in any state of life, whether you’re married or not, whether you’re facing challenges or not. We are called to incline ourselves toward contentment, incline ourselves toward purity and to pursue those things. So, if you’re pursuing those things, great. You should be as a Christian, but it doesn’t define whether or not you’re going to be married.

 

It defines the fact that the Holy Spirit is at work in your life. If you’re struggling in those areas and needing to grow, well, welcome to the huge glut of Christians who are following the Lord Jesus and looking toward God to help them overcome indwelling sin patterns, who are looking to the Holy Spirit with progressive sanctification, to move on from glory to glory, and to be changed into the image and likeness of Christ. It’s not out of our perfection that we’re called into the kingdom.

 

So, I don’t want anybody struggling today by saying, “I’m content right now, and I’m really fearful that if I’m content right now, God won’t change my situation.” It’s really irrespective of the call of God on your life. If you’re content right now, I say, “Hallelujah. Praise the Lord for the evidence of His grace at work in your life.” The apostle Paul wrote that he had learned to be content, and he had to learn. He had to learn how to be content in all circumstances, and so do we. If you’ve gotten to that place in that particular season where you are right now, that’s great. Because contentment has a way of kind of waxing and waning, doesn’t it? If you’re there, praise the Lord. Enjoy the sweetness of that respite with Him.

 

At the same time, let’s also avoid the more worldly perspective that I once read in a book where they were looking at singles ministries. It was meant to be a joke, and there’s some humor in it, but they were saying there are some people who are single for a season and some people who are single for a reason. The protagonist in the book was concerned that she was going to be one of the reasons, and she didn’t want to be one of the reasons. And let’s be honest—in our arrogance, we can look around at times at other people and think, Well, they’re a reason, but I’m a season—until you’ve been in the season for a long time, and then you’re like, Oh, maybe I’m a reason.

 

See, that’s worldly thinking. That’s comparing ourselves among each other, which is what the Bible calls foolishness. We don’t know anything. I think that’s my favorite mantra. I use that term loosely, but it’s a joke. I tell my friends that I march around telling myself time after time, “I don’t know nothing about nothing,” because every time I get involved in speculation about things, I’m wrong. Because you know what? I’m not the omniscient being—God is. So, I don’t know nothing about nothing. My job is to follow Him, and see where He’s taking me and not speculate about things. But it’s so tempting to speculate.

 

So, back to the apostle Paul. What he writes in verses 6–9 is in response to some questions that he’s received. Now we call this 1 Corinthians, but it really is 2 Corinthians in a way, because the letter he first sent out we don’t have any longer. The church sent back some questions about it, he’s responding to those questions, and this is the version that the Holy Spirit preserved for us under divine inspiration. We have to acknowledge the fact that he is answering some questions—we just don’t know what the context is.

 

He begins in verses 1–5 by addressing married people. In fact, he quotes a statement from the Corinthians that he’s going to correct. This statement is: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” This is something they referenced to him. He gets ready to correct it; he corrects it; then he turns to singleness in verse 6. And he says, “Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”

 

Here we have the apostle Paul calling singleness both good and a gift. There are people on two camps who argue over semantics of his sentences. But I look at that and say even though I can’t read the original Greek myself, there are those who can and do affirm that he was referring to each has his own gift from God, and he calls it good.

 

Now the Greek word he uses there for gift is charisma, and it’s one of many Greek words that can be translated into our English word “gift.” English is actually a pretty limited language in a lot of ways. There are other languages that have more nuance verbs and more nuance nouns for particular situations. Take, for instance, the word “love.” Here in English we say, “I love my dog. I love my house. I love my new shoes. I love my husband.” It’s like there’s no differentiation. “I love my goldfish, and I love my God.”

 

But languages that have more of a vocabulary, such as Greek, have specific words that can communicate the nuance of a romantic love, a sacrificial love, a brotherly love, which would be in Greek eros, agapé, phileo. We just have love, and we just have gift. In Greek there are actually numbers of words that mean gift, and they’re used in different connotations. In this connotation, it is really more the word that emphasizes the gracious endowment of somebody giving you a gift. The emphasis is not on the object; the emphasis is on the giver.

 

As we look at charisma, what we’re looking at is the person of the Holy Spirit endowing us with a gracious gift in order to be able to accomplish the purposes of God in our life. In fact, theologian Gordon Fee says a better translation for this word in the English is “gracious endowment” rather than “gift.”

 

Married or single, what the apostle Paul is telling us is that we are graced to be fruitful for God’s glory. It’s not the kind of gift that we think about either culturally or in the limitations of our English language, which is all about something that you receive, you put it in your hands, and you say, “Do I like this or do I not like this? Do I want to keep it or do I want to return it?” It’s more like having a very famous and powerful person show up, part the crowds, and say, “You, I’m giving you something.” You don’t even need to know what it is. You have been noticed by the big and famous person. That’s the kind of emphasis in the Greek.

 

We have been noticed by the King of the Universe. He has saved us. He has put His divine favor upon us. He has chosen to give us the gift of repentance, to regenerate our hearts and spirits so that we will love what He loves, so that we can repent of our sins, so that we can participate in His kingdom-building activities, and so that He can call us into good work that He has prepared in advance for us to do, and that He can reward us for them. It’s amazing. All of that is wrapped up in the fact that we are so graciously endowed in this season right now.

 

What purpose would God give this gracious endowment of being single? I think the apostle Paul answers that, too. Turn a few more chapters ahead to chapter 12 and look at verses 4–11. It reads, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by the one and same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.”

 

Here is that answer. Why am I single? It has been apportioned to me individually as God wills. Is that a lesser thing? No, not at all. God is the one who apportions the gifts, and He gives it for a reason. “The manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.” So, the next time somebody asks you that obnoxious question about, “Why are you still single?” you can look at them and say, “It’s for your good.” They’ll look at you and be tongue-tied and have no further questions for you, because they won’t understand at all why you said that.

 

All of us are given things not so that we can walk away with them for our own benefit, but so that we can turn around and sew them back into the Church and the Body of Christ. Singleness is one of those gifts we tend to turn around and look at it as, “Well, it’s all about me.” Do we do that with, say, the gift of mercy? “Mercy for me, me, me.” No, the gift of mercy compels you to serve other people. Do we look at that with the gift of giving? “I’m giving to me, to me, to me, to me.” No, it’s giving to other people. And even marriage is easier to see why I’m to give myself 100 percent to my spouse; they are to give themselves to me 100 percent, and in this energy we are marrying the mystery of Christ and His Church. Then we look at singleness, and we’re like, “Okay, that’s not as easy to figure out.”

 

It’s not if we allow worldliness to creep into our thinking, but if we think about the benefit of the Church, if we expend ourselves on those who are poor or needy or orphaned children and widows, the lonely, the happy, the people who need encouragement, the people who need to be rejoiced with, the people who need to hear the good news of the Gospel, and those who need to be discipled inside of our churches. We have a lot of freedom as single women to really make huge investments in what God loves in His Church, but if you don’t have the sights of God’s chosen people in front of you, if you don’t think about the Bride of Christ, you will be aimless. You will be disappointed. You will wonder how to fill your hours. But if you think about singleness in terms of, “I have been called to a group of people,” and if you’re not a part of the local church, if you’re not serving in a local church, you are in a place of isolation and loneliness, and if it feels like you’re isolated and lonely, that’s why.

 

Remember, we have an enemy, a spiritual enemy who’s constantly trying to pull us out of the sheepfold, out away from the pen of the Good Shepherd and isolate us and pull us away all by ourselves so he can whisper lies to us and say, “You know, God’s not good. You know, your pastor’s a jerk.” All these little lies that tempt our natural bent toward sinful judgment as women. When we are not in fellowship with other people, oh, our ears twitch very easily toward these lies. Because when we’re not in fellowship with other people, we’re not there on a day-by-day basis for people to help us and pick us up and keep pointing toward the goodness of God, to pray for us.

 

I know that these are lofty ideals, and a lot of times your experience in the local church doesn’t at all sound that good, and that it can be lonely. But the great surprise that I have found is that everybody feels lonely in the church. Everybody feels like they’re the only one who doesn’t fit in, and it amazes me because I thought it was just single people. Then I meet my married friends who are newly married, and they don’t really have any friends of their own, and their single friends are off doing other things, and they haven’t really met new friends as a married person, or they had to switch ministries or small groups or Sunday school classes, and now they don’t have friends. Or the new mom who doesn’t get any sleep and doesn’t get a shower, and forgets that it’s only been a few months. She thinks like, Oh boy, this is going to be it forever. I’m lonely. Nobody cares for me. Nobody remembers me. Nobody’s bringing me a meal. Or the woman who has grown children in a church with lots of small children. I don’t fit in. I’m not in this season. Or the widower in a church with young people and growing families, thinking, It’s done for me. There isn’t anything more for me to do. Or the person who’s from another race, another language, another ethnic background, and there aren’t too many other people like them in their church.

 

Everybody feels like an outsider. Break that barrier. Don’t let your singleness keep you from the precious fellowship in the church. You be the one to be the agent of change. Reach out to other people. Reach out to married couples. Reach out to teenagers. Reach out to older people. Get to know a broad diversity of people in your church, and watch how God works through that.

 

As we look at this perspective, and we see that God orders our lives, He orders the gifts that He gives us, and He orders the timing of our lives, then we can rule out worldly ways of thinking about why we’re single. It’s not because we’re too old or too young, too fat, or too skinny, too tall or too short, too quiet, too loud, too much of one background and there’s nobody else around us like that, anything at all, not educated, over-educated. Any time that we look at that and say, “God only rewards people who are not like me,” just snap out of it, slap yourself. Open up the newspaper, look at the marriage announcements, and look at the marriages of the people around you. There’s somebody from every one of those categories who’s gotten married.

 

God loves to confound our foolish judgment, and I love it. I rejoice when I look around and see how God has blessed different couples and how He has brought people together. I could be up here for hours telling you stories of people who’ve gotten married who fit in all these categories, and whatever other categories they had in their minds, thinking, I’ll never get married because of …, and then God one day brings them a spouse. I’m saying this of both men and women.

 

God loves to glorify Himself, to provide for His people, to confound our own wisdom, to have us laugh and delight at His goodness. So, let’s not think of worldly categories because it just limits us. It’s self-defeating. What can you do to change something like being tall or short? You can’t. What can you do about changing something like your personality? It’s very hard work—work on the sin, work on being sanctified—but your natural personality is how God created you, the heritage, the race, the ethnicity that you have, these things are gifts from God, and He can work through them.

 

There are moments where people that we love and who love us will sometimes give us counsel, and they will say something to the effect of, “You know, you’ll get married when you just get content with your singleness.” Then they cite somebody who finally gave up on wanting to be married and suddenly—poof—God brought them a spouse. How many people here have heard some variation of that story? Oh yes, the hands are going up. What I want to humbly submit here is that people give us this feedback because they’re well-meaning, and they want to care for us, but there’s an error in that thinking. The error is the fact that we have to work ourselves into some sort of state in order to receive a gift, and nowhere in Scripture do we see that works-based efforts ever merited us anything from the Lord.

 

But what I do want to say to those of us who are single is if the people who love and care for you have brought you an observation about your contentedness, or lack thereof, hear that because that doesn’t glorify the Lord to be permanently discontented, to be bitter, to be full of self-pity, to be angry. These things do not convey the wonders and the riches of the Gospel and all that we have inherited from the Lord.

 

So, hear that observation, pray to God to be changed, but don’t attach to it the expectation of a blessing for any efforts that you make. That just leads us into a works-based mentality from which there is no rescue. It just opens the door into condemnation. Know that people mean well when they say that, and they are caring for you so that you don’t need to snap back at them and go, “That’s all wrong.” Hear them out. Ask questions, be humble, ask for examples of why they’re bringing this into your life, and then just give it up to God and say, “Lord, just help me to grow in Christ’s likeness, and help me to trust You for my future. Thank You that I have friends and family members and church members who love me enough to want to show me when there’s some aspect in my life that doesn’t bring glory to You.”

 

We have this gracious endowment, it’s for God’s purposes, and it’s by His will for the common good. The common good is our church, so how do we utilize it? These are all grand theories. You might be sitting there thinking, Well, Carolyn, thank you for painting this in broad strokes. I have no idea how to apply this.

 

I’m going to take us to a portion of Scripture we probably skip over a great deal as single women, and that is Proverbs 31. Can you open up your Bibles to that passage? We’re going to look at that today because this is a culmination of a book of wisdom. Isn’t it funny that God’s little book of pithy wisdom ends with a portrait of a woman? Once again, we are the final product of God’s work. God created Adam and said, “Hey, new and improved model—Eve.” Okay, bad joke, but thanks for chuckling along with me, but here we have the same thing. No, actually what we have is a list of virtues that characterize a godly woman in any season of her life. As a single woman, I often would glance over these things because it was about, “Who makes an excellent wife?” Well, I’m not a wife, so—next—move on.

 

But it wasn’t until one day I began to study this passage that I realized this was written by a man who learned these virtues at the knees of his mother. It was a 22-verse Hebrew acrostic, meaning, kind of like the way we would do it in English—A is for apple, B is for boy, that kind of thing—where she is teaching him both the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and giving him a road map for the virtues of a woman who would make an excellent wife, because he was a little boy, and he wasn’t married yet.

 

Here we have in the flowering culmination of wisdom in a woman’s life described as the excellent wife. We have a road map for our singleness right now. We are to be identifiable as women who would make excellent wives. That doesn’t matter whether or not we ever get married, because the Hebrew word that is used there for wife is isha. That word means “woman” literally, but it gets interpreted in its context as wife or however it would be relevant to that particular meaning. Other translations will call it a woman of noble character, a virtuous woman, an excellent wife—these kinds of things—all trying to get to the emphasis of this female with these godly virtues that are priceless before the Lord.

 

When I first saw that, I thought, Wow, this passage that I’ve been skipping over all these years because I’m single is actually going to help me figure out what to do with my singleness. What I love about this is that this woman is some kind of woman. She is an excellent wife, and the heart of her husband trusts in her, and she does have children who rise up and call her blessed. Then the rest of the verses are all things that I can apply to my life.

 

She is a savvy businesswoman. She saves rather than spends all her money. She knows how to invest in businesses. She knows how to take a long-term view and buy a vineyard. You know, vineyards back then are the same as today—they don’t bear any kind of fruit you can use for about four or five years. If you buy a plot of vines today or a vineyard, you can’t make any kind of a profit off of it for a number of years. You have to have a long-term vision. She had a long-term vision; she didn’t live for today. She had strong arms. She was a charming hostess. She was a savvy businesswoman. All these things can be applied to us now. She spoke with kindness and wisdom—applicable for every season.

 

But there is one virtue that I want to look at this afternoon, and that is the fact that she is a woman of noble character, because that really is the thing that we want others to see in our lives. We want them to see us first as women of noble character and then, maybe, as women who happen to be single. We want our characters not to commend ourselves, but to commend the Lord.

 

How do you do that? Well, in part, that’s what John Piper was exhorting us on Thursday. When we consider how to have a noble character, we have to consider the things that can trip us up in these areas such as bitterness, disappointment, discouragement, complaining, sinful judgment, anger, fear, anxiety. All these things speak of a heart that ultimately doesn’t trust the Lord, that wants what it wants when it wants it, and it better be on time. But a woman of noble character, her virtue is so priceless that—this word that they translate sometimes as a ruby or a pearl, there’s really no clear understanding what this means—it’s just priceless. The challenge with living with a hope deferred, such as wanting to get married and not being married, is the fact that we can live in all these negative virtues rather than in the qualities that glorify God.

 

I once read that the opposite of fear is not courage but love. You would think that actually courage would be the antidote toward fear. “Just buck up. Move on. Believe in yourself. Let’s go.” But the opposite of fear is love, because you expend yourself in blessing other people. You push past your fears to meet their needs, to push past your fear of protecting your reputation, or the fear of giving lavishly because you might not have enough left for yourself.

 

This is what we see in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. You don’t have to turn there; I’ll just summarize it for you. In this parable, Jesus is talking about three servants, and they each received a vast amount of money from their master. One received five talents; one received two talents; and one received one talent. Now the Bible notes that the master gave to each according to his ability. But the master still was being very, very generous, because a talent then was worth about 20 years’ worth of wages. I would definitely take a talent today. I would be like, “Woo-hoo—retirement, home-free, here I come.” It would be great.

 

So, even if the one who had been given just one talent hadn’t been busy comparing himself to the others and comparing the master to his expectations, he would have stopped and said to himself, You know what? This is really generous. I now have enough money that I don’t have to work for 20 years. But when the master gave these talents, he expected them to turn around and do something with them, not just to hoard them.

 

The third servant, the one who received just the one talent, viewed his master as a harsh taskmaster. He took his talent and instead of doing anything with it, he buried it in the ground, so that one day when his master returned, he could say, “Here is your talent, thanks for the very little.”

 

Often we can view our singleness in that way, I think. Here we’ve been given something that’s actually very generous, but we view it as, Pffft, that’s not very good. I’m just going to bide my time and sit on my talent of singleness until something better comes along. But the Lord wants us to do something with what He gave us. He doesn’t want us just sitting on it waiting for something better. And by sitting on it, we say something about our view of God—we say He’s not very generous, that He’s a harsh taskmaster. But when we invest it in what the Lord loves—His Church, His people, His purposes, His plans, His Gospel—we will be able to joyfully meet Him one day and say, “Lord, look at what I did with what You gave me.”

 

Sometimes in my fantasies I picture that moment when I’ll be able to send out that wedding invitation, and all my friends are like, “Wow! She finally flopped over the finish line of marriage. I can’t believe it.” Or rather, in my advanced age, “She’s going to be able to take her walker across.” But that is such a short vision of what the Lord will do. He may or may not bless me with marriage. I don’t know. But if I think that’s the actual return on what He gave me, I’m thinking too small. I should be thinking about the day when I look at the Lord face-to-face, and I say to Him, “Look, here’s what You gave me, and this is how I invested it. Here are the people I loved. Here are the ministries I invested in. Here are the charities that I gave money to. Here are the people I prayed for. Here are the ones I shared the Gospel with. Here are the orphans that I reached out to. Here are the people that I discipled. Here are the unbelievers that I talked to.”

 

We won’t think that what we received is too small at that time. We are going to be so overwhelmed with the goodness of God. We will see so clearly from what we have been rescued and what we have been given that we will do nothing except fall down in adoration before Him. We will never say to Him, “Lord, why did You do this?” because we’re going to have the eyes to see as He sees, and we’re going to see His wisdom from that side of heaven that we cannot see right now. We’re going to say, “Lord, You did right. You were very, very generous to me. You were very good. Thank You for including me in Your family. Thank You for saving and rescuing me.” That’s what’s going to be on our hearts.

 

Marriage is a temporary gift—and it is a good one—but it will end in this lifetime, and that’s why we need to look at eternity. Because if we don’t have Gospel-centered eyes that look into the future at what God is planning to do in the new heaven and the new earth, we will always be discontented here because it’s hard to be single. I am not standing up here giving you some rah-rah cheerleading lesson like, “It’s a real breeze. It’s no problem. Just read your Proverbs 31 and be that happy camper woman, and there you go.” No. There are days when you have to preach the Gospel to yourself and say, “Lord, You have given me something that’s priceless, and I will pick myself up and go. I will rejoice with those who rejoice. I will go to yet another wedding, another baby shower, another bridal shower, and I will rejoice in the fact that you have blessed other people. In this culture where it is so hard to get married, I will rejoice that You have provided for others, and I will not think of being slighted.”

 

And how do you do that? You do that by looking at the way that others have worshiped the Lord in difficulty right here in Scripture. I don’t recommend it as a practice to paraphrase Scripture and to read yourself into it, but sometimes I do think of what the prophet Habakkuk said in chapter 3, verses 17–18. I paraphrase it this way: “Though this friendship does not blossom nor love be in his heart, though he chooses to pursue someone else and my prayers seem to go unanswered, though others walk down the wedding aisle and I remain behind, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, and I will take joy in the God of my salvation.”

 

Those who preceded us, whose lives are memorialized in Scripture, weren’t superheroes. They were people just like us. In fact, I cannot wait to meet Peter, because Peter is my homeboy. I am going to see that man and say, “Your sin pattern so encouraged me. I did the same things.” Do you know how many times Peter was the first one to pipe up with “good ideas” to the Lord, and He would say, “Um, no. You missed the mark.” I never get in trouble for the things I don’t say; it’s always for the things that I do say. That’s why I look at Peter, and I say, “Yes!”

 

One day, when I was confronted with my own sin and foolishness, I indulged in a bit of self-pity and fear of man, because I was craving other people’s approval. I wanted them to think highly of me, and my sin had been exposed. Newsflash—I’m a sinner. Newsflash—so are you. Here I am thinking, Oh, my gosh. Somebody saw my sin. And you know what else? Other people can usually see our sin before we do. We have a tendency to be blind to it.

 

I was in the bathroom boo-hooing my little eyes out before the Lord, like, “I can’t believe that they saw it and confronted me.” Then I just felt like the Holy Spirit interrupted me and said, “Well, at least you’re not like Peter with all of it memorialized in Scripture for everybody to read for all of time.” I was like, “Yeah, You’re right. Just about six people saw that. That’s pretty good. Yes, thank You.”

 

I love the fact that Peter wrote so much about humility toward the end of his life. He had really learned the power of something that’s so precious in the Christian life.

 

As we look into Scripture, there are actually two accounts of three single women that I want to focus on as we wrap up this message. I can develop this in several directions to have women who have noble character, because there are many, many attributes to being noble. But I would say the primary one is trusting the Lord. So, in these accounts, we will see how real women work this out and how real women came to trust the Lord and grew in their character and knowledge of God.

 

The first one is in the book of Ruth. Many of you all are probably expecting me to talk about Ruth because Ruth is a matchmaking book. “Yes, where’s Boaz? Bring him on. Let’s go.” I’m not here to talk about Ruth. I’m here to talk about somebody who more often is like us—Naomi. Naomi, who is also single. Naomi, who had once been married and had two sons and found herself widowed and without any male support—which is a very serious situation at that time. It wasn’t like she had Social Security or the Salvation Army just down the street. If you didn’t have male support, you were in serious need, and the surrounding cultures to the Israelites weren’t known for their charity. The Scriptures tell the Israelites very clearly about how to be generous to the poor and to the widows—not to glean to the very edges of your field, but to leave something for the widows and the poor to glean, but it was a hard scrabble life.

 

Here’s Naomi who’s considering like, Wow, I once had it all, and now I don’t. She’s in a land where she has no support. Her husband took her from Israel during a famine and brought her to Moab, and she hears one day that the Lord has provided for Israel again. So, she decides to gamble and go back. She has these two young women, her daughters-in-law, that she has to feed, too. It’s not just herself that she feels this responsibility for. As they take off, she says, “Go back. Go back to your families; go back to your god. Somehow or another you will be provided for, but don’t look to me.” That’s what she was saying. But Ruth her daughter-in-law clung to her, and off they went.

 

They went into Israel. They went back to Bethlehem, which ironically means the house of bread. Once again, the Lord had provided for them. As she arrives and she comes into town, her friends meet her. It says in Ruth 1:19–21, “the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. And when they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. And the women said, ‘Is this Naomi?’ She said to them, ‘Do not call me Naomi;’ (which meant pleasant) ‘call me Marah’ (which means bitter), ‘for the Lord Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty and has brought calamity upon me?”

 

Consider this if we were to make a film of this. Here’s Naomi arriving in town. Ruth is standing next to her. All these women come rushing up, and she basically says, “Hi, Call me Bitter. Don’t call me Pleasant anymore. The name’s Bitter.” “How you doing, Bitter?” “Bitter.” “Good to see you again, Bitter. Been a long time.” She’s busy talking about all her circumstances and how God has gone out against her. Wa-wa-wa-wa—it almost sounds like a Snoopy adult-track, you know, on the Peanuts commercials and cartoons where the adults always sound like, “Wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa.”

 

There she is complaining. If we could see this through the film, we would stand back and there would be a wide shot. As she complains, the camera would move from her face. Standing right next to her is her daughter-in-law Ruth who would be used by God to not only provide for her physically by gleaning in the fields, but, oh by the way, right behind Ruth, the barley harvest. It’s ready to be harvested, which means the seeds for this harvest were planted months ago while Naomi was still in Moab, and it is ready to feed her when she shows up in Bethlehem. But she sees none of this.

 

She has surveyed her circumstances and concluded that God is not for her, that God is not blessing her, because through the limitations of her own eyes, she sees lack. She does not see the woman standing beside her who not only will provide for her physically in the food she needs, but who will also put aside her own preferences for perhaps marrying a younger man. A woman who goes on to marry an older man who is a kinsman redeemer, and does this, not for her own benefit solely, because we tend to read it that way, but for Naomi’s benefit because her first child would be known in Naomi’s line because she married a kinsman redeemer. Ruth was very selfless. Not only would they be provided for—for food—it’s such a small thing for God; for relationships—it’s such a small thing for God. But they were going to be part of this amazing plan of redemption that they would be listed in the genealogy of their Savior one day. Do you think that crossed any of their minds? No.

 

What we can see of our circumstances is not all that’s there. What we can see of God’s activity in our lives is not all that’s there. Trust God, because there are seeds being planted in your life right now that will come to fruition that will be a harvest down the line. There are people who are standing next to you now who will be used by God to bless you, but you can’t see it until God brings it to pass. In the meantime, don’t go around introducing yourselves as bitter. Be pleasant. Choose pleasant, and choose to trust God.

 

Our second illustration is in John 11. John 11 is about Mary and Martha. I love the fact that we have in Scripture two women whose husbands are not mentioned, presumably single, who provided hospitality for our Lord and His disciples. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine Jesus showing up at your house, and you have the incredible privilege to be a place of respite and refuge for Him? He went to Mary and Martha’s house often to be with His disciples, to teach, to rest, to be fed. Amazing, amazing privilege, and we have the same privilege today. The Lord can come and minister in our homes, even though we are single women. He can bring us other people to be ministered to, and we can minister to the Lord through the people that He brings in, who carry Him in their hearts, who carry His Spirit. We have that same privilege. Don’t lose a love for the home just because you’re not there very often. Don’t forget a home is a mission field, not a place to be decorated.

 

We have in John 11 these two women who have ministered to the Lord. They have seen Him do wondrous things. They have seen Him bless other people, and their beloved brother grows ill. So, they send word to the Lord with every expectation that He’s going to come running so that He can heal Lazarus just like He has healed so many others. They sent Him word saying, “‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ But when Jesus heard it he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’” The Word incarnate in flesh spoke words of His plan, but they didn’t know it. God had announced His intentions and was going to fulfill His intentions, but all they knew was that they had sent word to the Lord, and this is what happened.

 

Verses 5–6 say, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.” Does that make any sense? Not to our natural minds. We’re like, “Lord, I have a need, get to it. I’m praying, come on.” The Lord has spoken His plan, but we do not know of it yet. All we know is our expectations and our time line, but God has spoken, and He has said what His purposes are.

 

When Jesus finally came, Lazarus is dead, and he was in the tomb for four days already. When the sisters heard that Jesus was coming, they went out to meet Him. This is what I love, because the other person I want to meet when I get to heaven is Martha, because I’m so much like her. Martha is so practical. Here’s Jesus showing up. He explains to her this most amazing thing. She was among the first to hear this amazing truth in verse 25: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” And she said, “Yes, Lord.”

 

And then what happens? They get to the tomb, and she says, “By the way, there’s going to be a stench—he’s been dead for four days. It’s going to be pretty offensive.” I mean, that’s the way I would think, these silly little details—“Um, God, phew. Don’t take that stone.” And He’s like, “Don’t worry about it because the stench proves that I am the Lord of the Resurrection.” So, Jesus prays, Lazarus comes to life, he walks out of that tomb, and you know what happens? Many of the Jews who had been with Martha and Mary consoling them came with them. They saw what happened, and they believed.

 

God’s silences are not His rejections. When you have a need and you pray, the Lord hears, and He announces His plan, but you may not know of it. Your role is to trust Him and wait to see how He will fulfill it, but you are not to assign Him rejection, because the Lord has chased after you. He has rescued you, redeemed you, and proven His love. His silences are not evidences of His rejection. Trust God, because when He moves, the people around you who have been watching you and observing you will see the power of God moving, and you will be used by God to reach many people in your life. There are many unbelievers watching you. Glorify God in your singleness. Give Him praise and honor. You can be honest about how difficult it is, but don’t camp out there. Go immediately, train yourself to think immediately, There are things going on right now that I don’t know. God will bless me in so many ways more than I could ever imagine because I am too small-minded to say, “Hey, Lord, would You show me that You’re the Resurrection and the Life?” No. I just want my brother back. I just want some food in my belly. That’s how we think, but our God thinks so much bigger than we do.

 

Let us take encouragement from these single sisters in Scripture, and let me close with a quote from Charles Spurgeon, for his words echo across the centuries to our ears today, and they remind us to not grow weary in trusting God in our singleness.

 

“God has not promised to rescue us according to our time schedule. If it appears that your prayers are unanswered, do not dishonor the Lord with unbelief. Waiting in faith is a high form of worship. In some respects it excels the adoration of the shining ones above. God delivers His servants in ways that exercise their faith. He would not have them lacking in faith, for faith is the wealth of heavenly life. He desires that the trial of faith continues until faith grows strong and comes to full assurance. The sycamore fig never ripens into sweetness unless it is bruised. The same is true of faith. Tested believer, God will bring you through, but do not expect Him to bring you through in the way that human reason suggests, for that would not develop your faith. Obey Him, and that will be in far more accord with your position as a finite creature than the vain attempt to map out a course for your Creator.”

 

Woman: This message was presented at True Woman ’08 in Chicago. Check out all of the messages delivered there and more by visiting www.TrueWoman.com. There you’ll find even more ways to connect from books and resources you can order for yourself, your friends, or your life group to on-demand multi-media to ongoing conversations you can be a part of, and we’re updating it all the time.

 

True Woman ’08 is a ministry of Revive Our Hearts, helping you become God’s true woman.