Tag Archives: singleness

Church: Don’t set up your “singles”

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Here’s the problem with teh interwebz. For every great article/blog post/comment you read, there are a million not-great ones that you have to sift through to get there.

Sometimes you don’t even have to go looking for them. More often than not it appears in your Facebook feed. That’s what happened a few days ago. This article was shared by a fb friend, as despite knowing their good intentions in sharing it, this article is so wrong it’s not even funny.

Before I tell you why, let me be up front and say as soon as I saw the title of this article (Church: set up your singles) I knew I was going to hate it for 2 reasons – 1) a ‘single’ is an individually wrapped piece of cheese. I am a person. The whole Christian world should STOP. CALLING. ME. A. SINGLE. 2) The article wasn’t called “Church: encourage all people to follow Jesus, regardless of their marital status”.

There’s too many things wrong with the theology of this article to possibly mention all of them, but let me tell the 3 most discouraging and dangerous errors.

1. Is singleness good?

A friend asked me recently, “If God said it is not good for man to be alone, but all he does is good, is my singleness actually good?” Sometimes the best answer to difficult questions is to just say, “I don’t know but he is good,” and so I did.

If someone asks you if their singleness is good the correct answer is yes! I know this because God has told us it is good.

1 Corinthians 7:7 says

I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.

The 2 gifts Paul is talking about are marriage and singleness. (see the comments on this post for more detail on the Greek of this verse). Singleness is a gift. The Greek word used is charisma (literally ‘grace gift’) and is the same word used in chapter 12 about spiritual gifts. Singleness is a good gift from a good God. Of course, sometimes it feels like the kind of gift you get and give a fake smile in response, while inwardly thinking ‘what do I want this for? Can I exchange it for what she has, please?”

That’s exactly the reason I need to be reminded it’s good. When I’m finding it hard, and sad, and bitter I need my Christian family to remind me that God is good and he wants good things for me, and that even when I hate it, yes, my singleness is good.

(For those who are single, this what I want you to know about your gift.)

2. Is marriage a glimpse of the eternal marriage?

Help your unmarried brothers and sisters taste a glimpse of the eternal marriage by helping them get married.

Yes, it is. But in the same way singleness is itself a glimpse into eternity.

Andrew Cameron says it best

Jesus’ new teaching arises from the new future. It turns out that human marriages are not reinstated in the new future, because they point to the ultimate ‘marriage’ – a final union between Christ and his people (Eph 5:29-32; Rev 19:6-8; 21:2, 9-11; cf 22:17). But we need a little more theological detective work to determine how chaste singleness points to the new future.

…

In the new future, John looks and sees ‘a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, and language, which no one could number, standing before the throne and before the lamb’ (Rev 7:9). The significance of normal social identity markers (nation, tribe, people and language) has melted away. The markers remain visible – but people now gather on a new basis other than ties of culture genes or kinship. These structure social life now, but not then. As theologian Oliver O’Donovan puts it ‘Humanity in the presence of God will know a community in which the fidelity of love which marriage makes possibly will be extended beyond the limits of marriage.’

Single people offer a glimpse of this kind of society. They’re harbingers of an aspect of heavenly community, because they’re not constrained by family boundaries of genetics and kinship. They know how care and intimacy can go beyond family boundaries. They nudge members of families out of the introverted obsession with family life that becomes its dark side. They remind families that God calls everyone into the ‘great multitude’, and they call couples and families to attend to the wider community, and t0 point to heaven. (Joined-up Life, 234-235)

If I was to rewrite this sentence in the article it would say ‘Help your unmarried brothers and sisters taste a glimpse of the eternal marriage by sharing your life with them. Likewise, you too can taste a glimpse of eternal community by sharing in their life.’

3. What’s missing from a single person’s life?

It is not good for a man to be alone and he who finds a wife finds goodness, but it takes the beauty of a family to see the goodness far below the surface and in the crevices of these clay jars. Church, be that family, be the mothers and father, the sisters and brothers. Guide them, protect them, show them what is true and good and honorable in marriage, and then, please, help them get there.

It is true, it’s not good for anyone to be alone but as Christians we must recognise that our loneliness is only fully met in Jesus. Earthly marriage is but a shadow of this, and it’s a shadow that, no matter how good, will never completely satisfy our need. Jesus is the one who does that. The answer to the lonely single person is not simple ‘get married’ (though of course they may) but to enjoy Jesus and his people.

This paragraph should say “It is not good for anyone to be lonely. Church, to those who are lonely, be their family. Be their mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. Guide them, protect them, show them what is true and good and honourable in following Jesus and run the race beside them.”

(Here’s more stuff I’ve written about singleness)

Really, it’s okay to be single

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It’s also ok to read articles on singleness and disagree with them. Which happens often.

But this week I’ve read 2 excellent articles on singleness.

Sex and the Single Woman. I love everything about this article. This is particularly helpful

There are pieces of my testimony that I hate; that I might wish to rewrite. But even in my failure, God has written my life with his divine grace. Perhaps this struggle more than any other has made me more like Christ by forcing me to bank on his resume instead of my own.

Today, in order to worship God, my body needs to be hungry. Today, he is giving me the blessed pain of hunger, because it’s the only way I’m going to make it home. He has promised to do whatever it takes to get me home to him.

If you are ashamed, if you have failed, rest your heart in the fact that the gospel was made for just such a time. We don’t have a great high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. Praise God that we have Jesus, who has walked in singleness; he was tempted in every way, yet he never succumbed. So draw near to im in repentance and faith, and receive mercy and find grace to help in your time of trouble.

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Really, It’s Okay To Be Single. Usually I wouldn’t read, let alone recommend, an article on singleness written by a married man. But this one is too good not to read. He ends by saying this

And so on the occasion of my 10 year wedding anniversary, I’d like to say this: it’s okay to not be married, really. God is not mad at you because you are single, and you have my permission to scoff at anyone who says otherwise, that marriage is God’s universal will for all people. There are plenty of passages in Scripture that talk about singleness and celibacy with deep honor and respect.

Moreover, marriage is good, even great, but it’s not perfect. There are things that you can do as a single person that I cannot. As Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians, as a married person with kids, my attention and energy is inherently divided among many concerns, but yours need not be. You can live fully for the Kingdom in a way that I simply cannot. Not to mention that you can also stay up late, making a ruckus while drinking beer with your friends, while I tiptoe around my house like a ninja and struggle to stay awake past 9 pm.

But on a more sober note, I know that you worry about being alone. But frankly, so do I, because marriage will not bulletproof your life from pain or loneliness or tragedy. People can be married and still feel desperately alone, or misunderstood, or even hated/hateful, all at the same time. Marriage can be like living with your best friend, but at times, it also can be like living with your worst enemy. In fact, fear, loss, and mourning take on terrifying new dimensions when you are married, because you will be faced with the prospect of losing part of yourself.

No, the antidote to loneliness is not found in marriage, at least not by itself. It is found in our relationship to a God who is always with us, the true Lover of our soul. If is found in friends and family. And it is found in the family of faith, the eternal community of the church.

So tomorrow I’m going to have a wonderful ten year anniversary with my wife, but that doesn’t mean you have to as well. Because REALLY…it’s okay to be single.

Both great articles, worth reading no matter what your marital status.

Traditional Sexuality, Radical Community

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From the Gospel Coalition 

I looked nervously across the table, fidgeting with my coffee cup. Do you realize what you’re asking of me? he questioned. We’d been meeting for more than an hour, talking about his struggle with same-sex attraction and his decision about whether to enter into a more intentional relationship with his boyfriend. He’d been part of our church and community group for a couple of years, always intelligent and effervescent, exhibiting many marks of a mature Christian. Yet my friend’s dark internal struggle had finally reached its culmination, and here we were together in a coffee shop, grappling with the reality of his decision.

Do you realize what you’re asking of me? I did. I was asking him not to act on his same-sex desires, to commit to a celibate lifestyle, and to turn away from an important romantic relationship. Yet as I reflect on that discussion, I now realize I didn’t fully understand what I was asking of him. I was asking him to do something our church community wasn’t prepared to support. I was asking him to make some astonishing and countercultural decisions that would put him out of step with those around him. In many ways, I was asking him to live as a misfit in a community that couldn’t yet provide the social support to make such a decision tenable, much less desirable. No wonder he walked away.

Several years have passed since that conversation, but it’s convinced me of the vital relationship between sexuality and ecclesiology. There are many churches like ours that believe there are two possible paths for followers of Jesus to live obedient sexual lives: heterosexual marriage and sexual abstinence. But among churches that are committed to a biblical sexual ethic, there are few, I’m afraid, that make living out that ethic possible for the average person dealing with same-sex attraction.

I’m now convinced any church that holds a traditional view of sexuality must also foster a radical practice of Christian community in which living out a biblical sexual ethic becomes possible and even attractive.

This is a great article on the need for Christian community to a place where living a godly, counter-cultural life plausible, practical and attractive. While it focuses on Christians who have same-sex attraction, there’s lots in here that is true of all single Christians. Though this is an important distinction to remember

Those of us who are heterosexual must realize, however, that even though God is calling us to the same thing (chastity), our LGBTQ friends will experience this calling differently. When heterosexuals commit to chastity, they do so knowing they may meet someone, get married, and be able to have sex. When those tempted by same-sex attraction commit to chastity, though, they’re doing so knowing that unless God changes their sexual desires, they may never know the intimacy of a sexual relationship.

Of course for those of us who are still single in our mid-thirties, the possibility that we may never marry is very real. And, speaking on behalf of women, we live every day with the unforgettable sadness that every day that passes brings us closer to the possibility of never having kids. It does often feel like I have to bear this burden on my own. But Christian community should provide a better way.

Now picture the other scenario. Bob’s been introduced to Jesus by a community group at the invitation of a colleague. The group shares deeply and vulnerably, confessing sin and praying for one another. As Bob struggles with the prospect of chastity, he looks around the group and sees ways others in the group have embraced hard things because of the gospel. At least two other singles in the group are straight and have also embraced chastity. There’s a married couple who are honest about their struggles and failings but committed to not leaving each other despite the immense pain. Another person wasn’t willing to participate in the fraudulent activities of her company, and lost her job because of it.

In this scenario the demands of Jesus don’t lessen for Bob, but he does look around and see he’s not the only one being asked to lose certain things for the gospel. He sees a mixed community of married and single, same-sex attracted and straight, all bearing their crosses together and helping one another bear those heavy burdens. Our gay friends must see a church community in which all of us—not just those who battle same-sex attraction—are facing the demands of the gospel and the struggle against sin.

This is so important. I’m thankful for my married friends who are honest enough to share their struggles with me. Because it reminds me that the grass on their side of the fence has just as many muddy puddles as the grass I’m standing on. When I see the hardships that come with marriage, I’m much more likely to see the goodness of singleness. This is how I persevere.

But here is the most important challenge for churches.  Honour singleness & demystify marriage.

Another way we can create healthy countercultural plausibility structures is by removing marriage from the idolatrous pedestal on which it’s often placed. At times marriage, and the presumed sexual joy therein, is cast as such an objective for Christians that it starts sounding like the supreme goal, surpassing Jesus himself. Talk about “family values” cements this idea, suggesting God’s basic desire for human flourishing is for you to be married and start a family and, if you’re not experiencing that, then hurry up and try.

But the great chapter on love, 1 Corinthians 13, isn’t describing love between husbands and wives or parents and kids but love between Christians in a church community. The Bible sees the church, not the nuclear family, as the primary level of relationships in our new kingdom life.

Further, we must return the New Testament’s high honoring of the single life. Whenever we treat singleness as a “second tier” calling or minor league to marriage we’re communicating to our single brothers and sisters that they’re experiencing less of the full human experience. This is obviously not the case. Jesus was single, and he was the perfect human. Paul advocated for singleness and even dubbed it a “higher calling” than marriage: “He who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better” (1 Cor. 7:38).

Imagine a community in which many celibate singles, both same-sex attracted and straight, are taking full advantage of their singleness as they live the life of the kingdom together. Imagine a community in which sex and marriage are seen as good gifts but not ultimate gifts—indeed, things a follower of Jesus can live without. In such a community, the possibility of a single life of chastity wouldn’t be the fate worse than death it’s sometimes portrayed to be.

In short, we should not call our single friends to sexual abstinence until we create the social environments (plausibility structures) that make such a life meaningful and viable.

Spot on. Read the whole article here.

How the gospel shapes my life as a single woman

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Katie writes …

I don’t know what your circumstance is but I’m almost positive that if you’re single you’ve been on the receiving end of someone who is married taking pity on you in some way (I don’t believe that this is ever intentional). Most people argue that it is the world’s media & culture that has caused us to feel that being single is a type of incompleteness – which is definitely true, but I also think that the church has been involved… controversial I know!

I agree. Read her article here. It’s a good read.

Grow Up and Get Married

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An excellent post from the Village Church on what’s wrong with preachers telling ‘singles’ to grow up and get married.

But singleness is not synonymous with immaturity, and singleness is not inherently problematic. While many singles are immature, the correlation is not direct. Many married men and women are just as immature. By and large I agree with the pastors attempting to engage the culture of “extended adolescence.” I simply disagree with their choice of language. “Grow up and get married” is too simplistic and dangerous.

First off, it sounds too easy. Anyone who wants to be married can simply do so at will?

Isn’t a spouse a gift from the Lord?

Isn’t God sovereign in the distribution of His gifts?

As a 32-year-old single male shepherding in the midst of a large church filled with singles, I know firsthand the sting of such half-truths. Some people are single because they are lazy, fearful, lustful or proud. But some singles are simply single because God, in His infinite wisdom, sovereignty and grace has not granted them a spouse. Singleness is not a curse. If singleness were the universal consequence for our sins, marriage rates would plummet to zero. Marriage is a gift, and all of God’s gifts are graciously undeserved. There are many married men and women mired in sin, and there are many singles pursuing deep holiness.

There is no direct correlation between sin and singleness.

Read the whole post here.

Counting down…

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There’s a few things I’m counting down till at the moment.

25 days – till BON JOVI!!! can’t wait! Last time I saw them I was 15. This time it’s a 30th birthday present from my sisters. Me, 2 of my sisters, their husbands, my oldest nephew (he’s 12 – gonna LOVE it!), Jon, Richie, David and my favourite drummer in the world – Tico. There may be some other people there. For the next 25 days I’m dedicating all of my facebook status updates to lyrics from my fav Bon Jovi songs. Here’s some classic Bon Jovi for you to enjoy! (I wouldn’t mind if he sang this at the concert but I’m glad that those pants won’t be making an appearance)

35 days – till I hit 30. I’m counting this down by planning a party and trying hard to NOT freak out about being 30 and single.

1 year (ish) – till I finish college for good. Much excitement. Very much looking forward to 4th year. And even more looking forward to what comes after that. Of course I wish I knew what that was ;-)

These are exciting things to be counting down till. Knowing that they are coming affects things I do now – I’m getting ready and preparing for exciting days.

I was reminded last night of something much bigger and more exciting that I should be counting down till.

This will take place at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels …  (2 Thessalonians 1:7)

It will be exciting but there is a harsh truth that comes with it

… taking vengeance with flaming fire on those who don’t know God and on those who don’t obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will pay the penalty of everlasting destruction, away from the Lord’s presence and from his glorious strength, in that day when he comes to be glorified by his saints and to be admired by those who have believed. (2 Thessalonians 1:9-10)

We don’t know when the day we are counting down to will happen. But we know it will. So I pray that while we wait we will be getting ready for it and counting down by telling as many people as we can.

Want to know how to be on the good side? Find out here.

Making Singleness Better

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Yesterday one of our lectures at College directed us to this article from The Briefing.

The author, Tim Adeney, is thinking about singleness and the church, focusing on 1 Corinthians 7. In his introduction he notes that the response of many married people to single Christian – “Singleness is better, so get on with your life and deal with it”* – is inadequate because

it locates struggles with singleness solely with the single person, not within the entire Christian community; its consideration of the depth and causes of those struggles is cursory; and it does not reflect adequately on either 1 Corinthians 7 or the wider biblical witness.

I think his observation that this struggle is within the Christian community is a helpful one. For the single person there is an element of personal struggle but there is a bigger issue that needs to be addressed, which is a lack of biblical understanding of singleness in the Christian community. This lack of understand manifests in a failure to adequately love the single people within the community.

Adeney recognises the eschatological reality that singleness reflects and then adds

However, we must not run ahead and get ourselves tangled in an over-realized eschatological stupor. While Jesus has indeed ushered in a new world order, he has not yet ushered in a new creation. We live in a new age and an old creation, and this old creation was made for marriage (cf. Gen 2:18-25). If our destiny is singleness, our created design is marriage. This does not detract from the status of being single; rather, it is a comment on its experience. In this creation, the ordinary pattern for humanity is marriage and family life, and while there is no suggestion in the Old Testament that being single is a sin, neither is there any suggestion that you would choose it. Perhaps we could go so far as to say that, from the point of view of our creaturely design, singleness isn’t better, and so we should expect any long-term singleness to be accompanied by grief and temptation to a greater or lesser extent.

Our created design was for marriage and the mandate to the first married couple was to fill the earth, but something substantial has changed since then. Jesus has come, and ascended and we await his return. A return that brings judgment upon those who do not follow him. We are living in the last days – surely this is the present crisis (vs 26), this is why the time is short (vs 29). Surely then the mandate changes from filling the earth to converting it (Matt 28:19ff).

Throughout the chapter, he provides us with a worked example of how to think eschatologically. “[T]he appointed time has grown very short” (v. 29), and all of us are called to live in light of that reality. Even married people must live as though they are not. How this eschatological reality affects decisions about singleness or marriage depends on what else needs to be considered along with the return of Christ. That is, Paul holds up a number of realities like lenses, and looks through them. In particular, he holds up the shortness of time and places it next to an appraisal of the practical realities of marriage as opposed to singleness. Thus he notes that marriage is complicated, involving “worldly troubles” (v. 28), whereas singleness leaves one “free from anxieties” (v. 32). He concludes that the opportunity to be single-mindedly devoted to “the things of the Lord” (v. 32) renders singleness a better option. But it is only better when certain realities or ‘lenses’ (i.e. the shortness of time and the practicalities of marriage) are considered; as he looks through both lenses together, his overall recommendation changes, which is why the person who is already married should stay married and the person who yearns for love should get married.

The problem with this is that the person who ‘yearns for love’ cannot simple decide to get married. Because, as you may have noticed, a marriage requires 2 people. So here we have (I suspect) the biggest group of single people in our churches – those who do yearn for love, but there’s nothing they can do about it. So how do we love them well? The section of his article titled The Church and Singles is, I think, very helpful (ignoring the fact that he constantly refers to single people as ‘singles’ which I hate).

THE CHURCH AND SINGLES

1. THE HABITS OF FAMILIES

The purpose of family is not only to be a blessing to its members, but also to be a blessing beyond itself. One of the major ways a family can bless beyond itself is by treating those who are outside as though they were inside. This, more likely than not, will require initiative (i.e. it won’t happen accidentally), and that initiative needs to come from the families, not the singles. Families in our culture generally don’t feel strong, but socially we are in a position where we can invite others. Our invitations need to be extensive and habitual. For example,

  • We could invite people into our homes—not just occasionally, but regularly. I’m sure there are many who would love to share a weekly meal with a family.
  • We could invite others to come on holidays with us.
  • Perhaps we could consider whether we could have others live with us. If we can’t do that where we live now, perhaps we could consider moving somewhere else where we could.

In addition, couples need to give each other space to build quality relationships with single people. At this point, it is worth taking a small detour to talk about how to relate to single people of the opposite gender. Paul counsels Timothy to treat “younger women as sisters, in all purity” (1 Tim 5:2). Most Christian men have a predisposition to read just half this verse—that is, as either “treat younger women as sisters” or “treat younger women in all purity”. Men who do the former imagine that the distinctions of gender are no longer significant, and so relate to women as though they aren’t married, or as though the women are actually their biological sisters. Men who do the latter (which is more common in Christian culture) imagine that they can completely ignore women in the name of purity.

But both are wrong. Paul deftly avoids allowing me to deceive myself into thinking that there is no difference between my sisters in Christ and my biological sisters. But at the same time, he tells me where to get my cue for how to relate to my sisters in Christ. So I would not, in the ordinary course of events, hang out with my sisters in Christ without either my wife or their husbands, even though I would happily do this with my biological sisters. But I will offer lifts, I will have conversations, I will exchange the (occasional) email or text, I will give the (also occasional) hug, I won’t leave the house immediately if I come home and find that my wife has ducked out to the shops while a female friend minds my children, and if I could fix cars, I’d happily go over to a single friend’s place to spend an hour or two having a go. I think I can do these things without running the risk of unfaithfulness and creating a ‘hint’ of sexual immorality (Eph 5:3 NIV).

There’s 2 things I want to say from this. First: To my married friends – it is easier than you think to be a ‘blessing beyond [your]self’. Your house doesn’t need to be tidy, your cooking doesn’t need to restaurant quality, and your kids don’t need to be perfectly behaved. Being surrounded by the chaos of family life is something I love.

The second thing is that even though it sounds quite ridiculous that men would ignore women in the name of purity, it’s something I’ve been on the receiving end of. The comment from a married man that ‘I don’t know how to relate to single women’ was one of the most hurtful things I’ve ever heard. So I hope that men would make every effort to treat women as sisters and in all purity.

Adeney ends his article with a good aim for all our churches.

The Christian community needs to be one where the separate callings of marriage and singleness are both welcomed and honoured. Paul had a positive view of singleness, yet he also had harsh words for those who would “forbid marriage” (1 Tim 4:3). While we haven’t ‘forbidden’ singleness, Christians have allowed a culture to grow where it is ‘forbidding’. My hope is that, as a community, we can change to better look after those who are struggling with unwelcome circumstances, and that, once more, we will welcome the possibility of voluntary singleness for the sake of “the things of the Lord” as indeed “better” (1 Cor 7:32, 38).

If you are someone who struggles with singleness you can read more from me on the subject here including some links to helpful books and sermons.

I’d love to hear your thought on Adeney’s article too.

*No-one has ever said anything this harsh to me, but I get the point he is trying to make

On being childless

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At the moment I’m quite enjoying being single. That’s not to say I find it easy but I really do like the freedom it gives to do pretty much whatever I want whenever I want. I like that I can drop everything and go if I need to. I like making decisions on the spot without the ‘let me just talk to *insert spouse’s name here*’ thing. It gets lonely at times and there are disadvantages (see last night’s rant) but on the whole being single does have perks.

For me right now the hardest thing is not the fact that I don’t have a husband but the fact that I don’t have children. I know that being married doesn’t necessarily mean I’d have children but there’d certainly be a much higher chance!

My nephew asked me a few days ago if an aunty is a kind of parent. I love that I’m close to my nephews. I love that I have a role in teaching them, disciplining them and teaching them about Jesus. I love conversations with my nephew about how God makes paper or how God is much more powerful even than Optimus Prime (amazing huh ;-) ).

I also love being involved in the lives of other kids and families. Unfortunately as a single person that’s not something you get the chance to do very often. At least I don’t. But when I do it’s really nice to know that even though you don’t have your own family you can still be a part of someone else’s.

How can I long to be married without obsessing about it?

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From Ask Pastor John on desiringgod.org

How can I long to be married without obsessing about it?

I suppose the dynamics of that question and its answer relate not just to marriage, but to almost any strong desire that you have, especially a desire relating to people.

So my mind broadens out from the marriage issue to ask, “Why do we obsess about anything? Why do we have overweening preoccupations with anything?”

The reason is because God and his Son don’t have the place in our hearts that they should have. The human heart is a God-shaped vacuum—Pascal said that—and it’s designed for God to fill. And if we have small views of God, and inadequate perceptions of his greatness and his glory and his love for us and his sufficiency for us, then there will be big cavernous places in our souls. And they will be churning out these desires that are just huge and controlling, whether it’s a spouse or sexual things or money or praise of man or revenge.

A lot of people are just consumed. They can’t seem to shake it. And I think the answer there is not so much, “Fight, fight, fight! Stop doing that! Stop doing that!” but rather, “Devote yourself to knowing and loving God. Immerse yourself in the Word.”

So when it comes to desiring a spouse you admit, “Of course, I’d like to be married. And Lord, would you work that? Would you do that?” And then you rest in him. Delight yourself in the Lord. Get all of your desires focused on him, and then those desires will be managed in such a way that in due season God will satisfy them. That’s what we’re doing for our Fighter Verse this week. “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4).

We were talking about that verse at our staff meeting the other day, in relation to marriage. And I forget who said it, but someone said that the problem is that we treat “Delight yourself in the Lord” like a tool. Like, “OK, I’ve done that. Why am I not married yet?” As though “Delight yourself in the Lord” is a quick little turn of the key, and you get what you want.

It isn’t like that. Delighting yourself in the Lord is an all-consuming, day-by-day quest to bring all of our desires into that one great desire, so that he does satisfy.

So you walk into a group of people, and your mindset should be, “Lord, I’m just going to be there for others, like you’ve been there for me. I’m not going to look at every person as a candidate for doing for me what my cavernous needs require right now. You’ve met those needs. I’m going to be there for others. And you do what you want. I’ll trust you.”

So the answer is to get our orientation off of our needs and onto the needs of others, and that’s only possible if God fills up that vacuum. Which means we should really devote ourselves to knowing him and being content in him.

Audio & video here.