Purpose of Singleness
Have you heard people say, “She is so beautiful. How come she is not taken?” or “He is handsome and has got it all together. Why is he still single?”. I'm pretty sure we have all said it or heard other people say it. The statement isn’t wrong, yet it can slowly lead people to conclude that there must be something wrong with staying single. When we keep saying that, we make singleness seem wrong and mislead people to run from the plan God has in the season of their singleness. We make them run to wrong relationships pre-maturely.
Singleness is the most important season of your life. God uses this important time to mold you into the person he created you to be, without as many distractions around. If God keeps you single, he has a plan to work on your heart and has things to speak to you before moving you into the next season.
“Therefore, I will now persuade her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.” (Hosea 2:14)
A spiritual season of wilderness is a time when God often leads his people to focus their full attention on him without interruption. If you are single, God is calling for your attention! He is wanting to have quality time just with you. The most important thing you can do for yourself in this season is to spend as much time as possible in his presence and put your entire focus on him. This is probably the only season you will have the least distractions in your life before marriage and kids.
Focusing on the Lord and spending as much time with him in your singleness will help you:
Heal from a broken heart that previous friendships/relationships caused:
Being heart broken is no fun! We all have dealt with it at some point in our lives. It could be from a family member, friendships or relationships we have been involved in. Even though they were hard to deal with, God can still use them to teach us and mold our characters if we are willing to bring them up to him. God brings something beautiful out of the ashes.
God uses our brokenness to bring us closer to him but the broken part of our heart still has to be restored again before we move into the next season. A broken piece just can’t work properly! We may move on from a hurtful friendship or relationship but if it makes us fearful to approach a relationship again, then we need to go back to the Lord and ask for a complete healing. Otherwise, we will not be able to fully experience and give the love of God to others. Remember there is no fear in love, perfect love casts out fear. Singleness is the perfect time to work on your heart and get a complete healing from the Lord. To learn how to love like Jesus and to share the love of God with others.
2. Learn how to be content.
God intentionally created all of us with emotional needs. Just as much as we need food and water to live, we need emotional nourishments to function properly. Wanting to be loved, accepted and appreciated could be some examples of those needs. God placed these fundamental needs to fulfill them. Jesus tells us in Matthew 6 that God knows about our basic need of food, water and clothing. If God knows about our physical needs, he also knows and understands our emotional needs.
When you experience hunger, all you desire in that moment is food, right? If the feeling of hunger consumes you, you would likely not care about the type of food you want to eat. The feeling of hunger could drive you to excuse eating junk foods you normally don’t eat. Similarly, when emotional needs are not met, they can become so consuming and could drive you to seek the wrong places and pursue the wrong people.
One of the main things that God would want you to learn in the season of your singleness is to find contentment in him alone and to know your new identity in Christ. You are already loved, accepted and validated. When you know your identity in Christ, you stop running to people to get those affirmations. John 4 tells the story of the woman of Samaritan. She had five husbands and still was not content with what she had. Jesus set up a divine appointment with her and told her that he is the only one who could ever satisfy the depth of her soul. Running to people to meet our emotional needs and get the affirmation we desire will eventually leave us empty and disappointed. Singleness can be a place for you to learn and understand that contentment can only come from God.
3. Understand your purpose and calling.
“For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)
One of the most important questions you can ask the Lord in this season is what your purpose is. Purpose is something God created you to accomplish while you are here on Earth. It is the reason why you were created. Yes, it is that big! We are created in Christ Jesus to do good works that God prepared in advance for each of us. Because we are called to be the body of Christ, it is crucial to find which body part we are created to play. The big picture in this life is to know your individual assignment and serve that before you go meet Jesus. I can’t stress this enough because God does everything according to his eternal purpose in our lives.
God gave Adam, the first man, a work before he gave him a wife. His wife was given to him as a “suitable helper” so that he would fulfill the assignment he was given with excellence. God would love to lead your heart towards your purpose before giving you a marriage and moving you into the next season. He then will give you a soulmate who can help and support you to accomplish that assignment.
Marriage in the eyes of the Lord is way more than connecting two physically perfect matches. It is about connecting two eternal purposes that can support each other to fulfill God’s mission here on earth. Once you know your God given purpose, not only will your perspectives and priorities change, you will also know who can align with that purpose when it is the right time for you to say yes to marriage. Knowing and accepting your calling would change your heart in so many ways.
4. Gain the wisdom and clarity you need for the next seasons to come:
“The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord.” (Isaiah 11:2)
Our single or younger years are the ones we make many mistakes in life because we usually don’t have as much experience and maturity. We might get emotional easily, we could fall in love with wrong people, we could choose the wrong career path only to regret it later, we could lose important people and we make many more wrong decisions from lack of wisdom. People may mature through years but wisdom comes only from the Holy Spirit. The word of God tells us about a young man named “Elihu” in the book of Job who was patiently listening to the conversations Job and his friends were having while Job was going through a hard season. He listened to their conversation and started speaking and saying:
“I am young in years, and you are old; that is why I was fearful, not daring to tell you what I know. I thought, Age should speak; advanced years should teach wisdom. But it is the spirit in a person, the breath of the Almighty, that gives them understanding. It is not only the old who are wise, not only the aged who understand what is right.” (Job 32:6-9)
As you focus on the Lord and choose to spend more time with him, you are gaining wisdom to navigate your next seasons. You are investing in your future! You have a close relationship with the Holy Spirit, enough to know the right timing for your life and the right people to accompany it. You know who to pursue and who to say yes to.
He is pouring wisdom in you that will not only benefit you but the people around you and the generation to come! People would gather from all over the world to listen to the wisdom that God poured into king Solomon. You will have things to say and solutions to problems for this dark world. If you are a man, you are gaining wisdom on how to lead your future home and you are equipping yourself to align with the manhood and husband you are called to be. If you are a woman, you are making yourself a woman of a “Noble character”! Who can find a woman like you? You are worth far more than rubies! You are glowing my sister. You are opening your mouth with wisdom and faithful instructions are on your tongue. Your future husband will have full confidence in you and he will lack nothing of value. He will be respected at the city gate, when he sits among the elders just because of you!
