2. Where We’ve Been So Far…
- Mutual SATISFACTION by mutual SUBMISSION
- Need to be repeatedly filled with the HOLY SPIRIT
- Must have a mutual COMMITMENT to a PROMISE
- Purpose is to help one another become more like
JESUS & to become a family on MISSION together
- Challenge is learning how to LOVE one another

3. Ways of “Explaining”
Singleness For Others…
- “As soon as you’re satisfied in God alone,
He’ll bring someone special into your life…”
- “You’re just being too picky…”
- “Before you marry someone wonderful,
the Lord must make you someone
wonderful…”

4. 1 Corinthians 7:27-28
Are you unmarried? Do not look for a wife.
But if you do marry, you have not sinned,
& if a virgin marries, she has not sinned.
But those who marry will face many
troubles in this life & I want to spare you this.
What I mean is, the time is short…

5. Tim Keller
We should be neither
overly elated by getting married,
nor overly disappointed
by not being so…

6. Tim Keller
Many singles are looking (striving) for a
highly compatible, brilliant & beautiful
partner. For others, singleness has become
at best a kind of purgatory, where you live waiting
for your real life to begin, or at worse a misery.

7. The Goodness of Singleness
- Christianity was the FIRST religion to hold up
single adulthood as a VIABLE way of life

8. The Goodness of Singleness
- Christianity was the FIRST religion to hold up
single adulthood as a VIABLE way of life
- The Christian gospel & hope of the future
Kingdom DE-IDOLIZES marriage

9. The Goodness of Singleness
- Christianity was the FIRST religion to hold up
single adulthood as a VIABLE way of life
- The Christian gospel & hope of the future
Kingdom DE-IDOLIZES marriage
- The extended FAMILY of Christian community
can be the context for learning from
one another as men & women

10. Paige Benton Brown
I am not single because I am too
spiritually UNSTABLE to possibly deserve
a husband, nor because I am too
spiritually MATURE to possibly need one.
I am single because God is so abundantly
good to me, because this is His BEST for me.

11. The Goodness of Marriage
- A healthy view of marriage can reveal the
IDOL many have made of INDEPENDENCE

12. The Goodness of Marriage
- A healthy view of marriage can reveal the
IDOL many have made of INDEPENDENCE
- A Christian marriage has the POWER to help
us grow towards our future-selves
through SACRIFICIAL love &
SPIRITUAL friendship

13. Practical Counsel For Those
Seeking Marriage
- Recognize the SEASONS for seeking marriage

14. Practical Counsel For Those
Seeking Marriage
- Recognize the SEASONS for seeking marriage
- Understand the GIFT of singleness

15. Practical Counsel For Those
Seeking Marriage
- Recognize the SEASONS for seeking marriage
- Understand the GIFT of singleness
The profound call to embrace your current
relationship status as God's best for you sometimes
sounds like too pat of an answer to accept.
However, this deep truth is an irreplaceable daily
vitamin (often a horse pill, that can be difficult to
swallow!)

16. Practical Counsel For Those
Seeking Marriage
- Recognize the SEASONS for seeking marriage
- Understand the GIFT of singleness
- Get more SERIOUS about it as you get older

17. Practical Counsel For Those
Seeking Marriage
- Recognize the SEASONS for seeking marriage
- Understand the GIFT of singleness
- Get more SERIOUS about it as you get older
- Don’t allow DEEP emotional involvement
with someone who doesn’t follow JESUS

18. Practical Counsel For Those
Seeking Marriage
- Consider attraction COMPREHENSIVELY
* Are you attracted to their CHARACTER?
* Are you attracted to their MISSION?
* Are you attracted by how they LIVE?
* Can you anticipate & are you excited by
their FUTURE SELF?

19. Practical Counsel For Those
Seeking Marriage
- Consider attraction COMPREHENSIVELY
- Don’t let things get PASSIONATE too quickly
Do not arouse or awaken love
until it so desires…Catch for us the foxes,
the little foxes that ruin the vineyards,
our vineyards that are in bloom.
Song of Solomon 2:7, 15

20. Practical Counsel For Those
Seeking Marriage
- Consider attraction COMPREHENSIVELY
- Don’t let things get PASSIONATE too quickly
- Don’t become a FAUX spouse for someone
who won’t commit to you

21. Practical Counsel For Those
Seeking Marriage
- Consider attraction COMPREHENSIVELY
- Don’t let things get PASSIONATE too quickly
- Don’t become a FAUX spouse for someone
who won’t commit to you
- Get & submit to GODLY counsel

22. Tim Keller
Without a deeply fulfilling love relationship
with Christ now, & hope in a perfect love
relationship with Him in the future, married
Christians will put too much pressure on their
marriage to fulfill them…If single Christians don’t
develop a deeply fulfilling love relationship with
Jesus, they will put too much pressure
on their dream of marriage…