Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / Will I Suffer My Singleness Forever?

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Will I Suffer My Singleness Forever? · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Speaker 1: Well, if you've listened to the Aspestor John podcast for
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  Speaker 1: more than a few weeks, you know that we regularly
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  Speaker 1: explore life's deepest sadnesses and most painful losses. This is
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  Speaker 1: a fitting place to hear Pastor John address hard situations,
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  Speaker 1: and those hard situations include couples who are unable to
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  Speaker 1: bear children of their own. On infertility, we have looked
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  Speaker 1: at an amazing Bible text, an amazing promise in Isaiah
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  Speaker 1: fifty six versus four and five, and you can see
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  Speaker 1: how important Isaiah fifty six versus four and five is
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  Speaker 1: pastorally in the Aspester John book. If you have that
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  Speaker 1: handy look at page one ninety three. There you're going
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  Speaker 1: to see that this same incredible promise can be applied
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  Speaker 1: to two different sadnesses, infertility and lifelong singleness, one of
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  Speaker 1: those essential texts you really want in hand when the
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  Speaker 1: time is right in ministering two others Isaiah fifty six,
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  Speaker 1: verses four to five, and so lifelong singleness is again
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  Speaker 1: the topic today. In an email from a woman a
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  Speaker 1: listener who writes in anonymously, Hello, Pastor John, I'm forty
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  Speaker 1: three and a faithful Christian have been all my life
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  Speaker 1: but I have never been married. I've been visiting many
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  Speaker 1: congregations in my community and have yet to find a
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  Speaker 1: suitable mate. I am haunted by the story of Jephtha
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  Speaker 1: and his daughter at the end of Judges eleven, verses
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  Speaker 1: thirty four to forty. I know the point of that
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  Speaker 1: story is to teach us not to make rash vows,
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  Speaker 1: especially to God. But when I see how his daughter
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  Speaker 1: wanted to spend the last two months of her life
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  Speaker 1: mourning that she will never be a wife or mother,
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  Speaker 1: it terrifies me. It shows me that if I don't
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  Speaker 1: get married, I am missing out. The fear is compounded
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  Speaker 1: when I consider Jesus' words from Matthew twenty two thirty.
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  Speaker 1: I know some teachers, including you, who use this verse
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  Speaker 1: to give hope for single people, But I don't see
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  Speaker 1: what is hopeful about it. I resonate with Jephtha's daughter.
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  Speaker 1: If people are neither married nor given a marriage in
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  Speaker 1: the resurrection, that means if one doesn't get married in
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  Speaker 1: this life, they will never know the joys of marriage.
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  Speaker 1: They won't know what it's like to touch or to
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  Speaker 1: be touched by someone of the opposite gender. They won't
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  Speaker 1: know what it's like to hold their own child in
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  Speaker 1: their arms. These blessings that such a single person may
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  Speaker 1: have wished for their entire lives will be unrealized for
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  Speaker 1: all eternity. Even if whatever God has in store for
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  Speaker 1: us is better, won't they still wonder what they missed,
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  Speaker 1: what it seems everyone Christian and non Christian alike seem
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  Speaker 1: to enjoy. My question is, if I die unmarried, yet
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  Speaker 1: remain faithful to Christ and have kept myself pure, will
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  Speaker 1: I have the same grief in my heart that Jephtha's
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  Speaker 1: daughter dealt with in those last two months of her life,
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  Speaker 1: for everything that I will never experience as well.
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  Speaker 2: Before I saw this question yesterday and I had time
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  Speaker 2: to think about it, I was sitting in my chair
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  Speaker 2: over my Bible, wondering how pervasive and inevitable deep disappointments
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  Speaker 2: are that will never be turned around in this life.
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  Speaker 2: I thought of people who are blind, perhaps from birth.
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  Speaker 2: They will never see the sun or moon, or the
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  Speaker 2: beauties of a flower, or the face of a friend.
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  Speaker 2: All will be dark until death. That will be their
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  Speaker 2: life on earth. I thought of people who are deaf
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  Speaker 2: and live in total silence all their life, no music,
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  Speaker 2: no voices from a family or friend, No sweet Robin song,
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  Speaker 2: no blasting thunder. I thought of people who are paralyzed
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  Speaker 2: because they're born that way or had an accident and
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  Speaker 2: perhaps can't feel anything below their neck. Paraplegics, maybe who
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  Speaker 2: can't run or walk or like pickleball. All the way
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  Speaker 2: to the end of their life, it never changes, all
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  Speaker 2: of life paralyzed, that was what they were dealt. I
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  Speaker 2: thought of people who grow up in very poor, desperate
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  Speaker 2: conditions where they never learned to read. No Shakespeare, no Milton,
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  Speaker 2: no Herbert, no novels, no poem, and not even a
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  Speaker 2: note or a letter from a friend, confined to a
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  Speaker 2: small world of limited experience, no reading. I thought of
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  Speaker 2: people who are miserable in marriages. All their hopes for
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  Speaker 2: what marriage was supposed to be have crashed. The romance
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  Speaker 2: has gone, there's no mutual affection shown anymore. Both partners
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  Speaker 2: live in frustration and disappointment that the other doesn't meet
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  Speaker 2: their emotional needs. The children are broken, All the dreams
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  Speaker 2: seem dashed, all the way to the end, for better
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  Speaker 2: for worse, and it turned out to be worse. I
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  Speaker 2: thought of refugees and people who's in our lives are
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  Speaker 2: decimated by war. Let's see the pictures today people who
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  Speaker 2: as a class are hated, driven from one place to
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  Speaker 2: the next, scarcely any piece, any security, any comforts at all.
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  Speaker 2: And then there are the countless diseases, sicknesses, disabilities that
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  Speaker 2: people live with and die with and never experience healing
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  Speaker 2: or freedom from debilitating suffering. Now I mentioned these realities
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  Speaker 2: in this world not to minimize this woman's sorrows at
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  Speaker 2: not being married or having children. Her longings are good
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  Speaker 2: and right. Human beings were designed by God to be married,
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  Speaker 2: to be hugged in a one flesh union, to have
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  Speaker 2: sexual relations that bring forth exquisite pleasures and the cutest
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  Speaker 2: little persons. We were made to be cherished and respected
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  Speaker 2: in a life long union of man and woman, in
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  Speaker 2: marriage that is deeply right, deeply human, deeply good, deeply
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  Speaker 2: gracious of God. And not to have it can be
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  Speaker 2: profoundly disappointing and painful. And I feel no need to
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  Speaker 2: minimize that I mention these things because we really do
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  Speaker 2: need to have a biblical, realistic assessment of the possibilities
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  Speaker 2: of this fallen age, which is ruined by sin, and
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  Speaker 2: by ruined I mean virtually everything that was designed by God,
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  Speaker 2: for human pleasure is corrupted and in greater or lesser ways, wrecked.
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  Speaker 2: Here's Paul's most penetrating description of our world. He said,
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  Speaker 2: the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because
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  Speaker 2: of Him who subjected it in hope that the creation
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  Speaker 2: itself would be set free from its bondage to corruption
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  Speaker 2: and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children
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  Speaker 2: of God. For we know that the whole creation has
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  Speaker 2: been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now,
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  Speaker 2: and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have
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  Speaker 2: the first ruts of the spirit grown inwardly, as we
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  Speaker 2: wait eagerly for adoptionist sons, the redemption of our bodies
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  Speaker 2: as Romans eight eighteen to twenty three, subjected to futility,
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  Speaker 2: bondage to corruption, groaning as spirit filled Christians, waiting for
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  Speaker 2: our bodies to be redeemed from their present wasting away
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  Speaker 2: and dying condition. What an amazing, painful, realistic, worldly, hope
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  Speaker 2: dashing assessment of the world. History is a conveyor belt
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  Speaker 2: of diseased, broken, frustrated, disappointed, dying, gloriously human persons and bodies.
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  Speaker 2: We in the West have so many suffering ameliorating amenities
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  Speaker 2: that we can scarcely begin to imagine how hopeless this
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  Speaker 2: life feels to billions of people who don't have a
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  Speaker 2: fraction of our comforts. This is why the New Testament,
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  Speaker 2: unlike the Old Testament, including the experience of Jephthah's daughter,
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  Speaker 2: is so relentlessly focused on the hope of eternal life,
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  Speaker 2: spectacular hope, incredible inheritance, lavish happiness being swallowed up by
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  Speaker 2: life at the resurrection, where the Lamb will bring us
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  Speaker 2: to springs of living water, and God will wipe away
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  Speaker 2: every tear from our eyes, and deaths shall be no more.
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  Speaker 2: Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore,
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  Speaker 2: for the former things have passed away over and over again.
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  Speaker 2: The New Testament presents the Christian life as shot through
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  Speaker 2: with sorrow and pain and disappointment and affliction and rejection
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  Speaker 2: and persecution, all of it sustained with gladness by rejoicing
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  Speaker 2: in the hope of the glory of God Romans five
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  Speaker 2: to one. Apart from Jesus, nobody in the New Testament
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  Speaker 2: suffered nearly as much as Paul did, and yet he
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  Speaker 2: embraced it, even his singleness as part of his calling,
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  Speaker 2: even though he had a right to have more pleasures
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  Speaker 2: than he got. Listen to what he says. This is
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  Speaker 2: verse Crinthians nine. Do we not have a right to
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  Speaker 2: eat and drink? Do we not have a right to
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  Speaker 2: take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles
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  Speaker 2: and the brothers of the Lord Incephus? Or is it
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  Speaker 2: only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain
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  Speaker 2: from working for a living? But I have made no
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  Speaker 2: use of any of these rights? The flag flying over
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  Speaker 2: Paul's life of self denial and sorrow or Sewod Corinthian sixteen.
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  Speaker 2: Sorrowful yet always rejoicing. I'm not asking our forty three
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  Speaker 2: year old single friend not to be sorrowful. I'm not
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  Speaker 2: if our arm.
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  Speaker 3: Is cut off, we are sorrowful if we are not
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  Speaker 3: granted a legitimate life, long desired to be one flesh
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  Speaker 3: with a person of the opposite sex. We are sorrowful.
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  Speaker 3: But we do not feel singled out. We do not
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  Speaker 3: feel picked on, We do not feel mistreated by God,
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  Speaker 3: and we do not feel hopeless. As if in the
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  Speaker 3: resurrection we will walk the barren hills with Jephthah's daughter
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  Speaker 3: and bewail our virginity. No, we will not bewail. We
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  Speaker 3: will not wail on any hill in the age to come.
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  Speaker 3: These are hand clapping, dancing hills and will satisfy our
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  Speaker 3: deepest lungs. Whatever we have sacrificed in this world is
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  Speaker 3: working for us and eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,
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  Speaker 3: because we look not to the things that are seen,
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  Speaker 3: but to the things that are unseen. Or the things
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  Speaker 3: that are seeing are transient, and the things that are
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  Speaker 3: unseen are eternal. And in the meantime, as we go
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  Speaker 3: deeper and deeper with God, finding our richest contentment in Him,
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  Speaker 3: this life of singleness or marriage need not be wasted
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  Speaker 3: or meaningless, but full of meaningful, fruitfulness and joy as
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  Speaker 3: we pour ourselves out for the present and eternal good
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  Speaker 3: of others.
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  Speaker 1: Moving. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for joining
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  Speaker 1: us today. If you are going through a dark season
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  Speaker 1: and you need perspective, email us. Find a link to
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  Speaker 1: do so at askpastor John dot com. Also worth looking
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  Speaker 1: at Isaiah fifty six, verses four and five, and you
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  Speaker 1: can see how and why that fits in here in
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  Speaker 1: the Ask Pastor John book. If you have that on
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  Speaker 1: page one ninety three. Well, Christmas is coming quickly. We
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  Speaker 1: need to look at gifts and how they all should
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  Speaker 1: point us to Christ. Every gift pointing us to Christ.
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  Speaker 1: I'm Tony Rague. We'll see you next time on Thursday.
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  Speaker 1: For that, Thanks for listening.