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3 Hard Truths Every Single Christian Needs To Hear · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  If you or someone you know is single and a Christian, please take a few minutes and listen to this.
• 0:04
  We get calls at family teams all the time from singles who are like, what do I do?
• 0:08
  How do I think about this topic?
• 0:10
  We want to talk to you guys.
• 0:11
  We're also going to give some advice to newly married couples.
• 0:14
  But first, take a listen to how John MacArthur answers this question about singleness.
• 0:20
  I think that his blunt advice is really important to pay attention to.
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  you need to get married.
• 0:27
  So my opening word is, if you're not married, get married.
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  This is the grace of life.
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  This is God's best gift.
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  If you haven't found someone willing to marry you, ramp up the intensity of your effort.
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  Get married.
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  And if you are married, have children.
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  This is God's wonderful gift.
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  Now, there are some people who have a gift for singleness, a unique spiritual capacity to remain single for the purpose of serving the Lord unless you have that gift and it's clearly defined for you by no desire at all for marriage.
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  then you need to be married.
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  I don't need to remind you that in biblical times people were married by the time they were fifteen or sixteen.
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  Some of you are way overdue.
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  Get married.
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  Many of you are focused on pursuing a career.
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  Pursue a spouse for every reason that you can think of.
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  but mostly for the reason that this is the gift of God called the grace of life.
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  I'm not sure why in this particular Christian culture in which we live that we are prone to follow the habits of the world and remain single for long periods of time.
• 2:07
  but that is a worldly kind of life, taking people who should be married and having them try to survive as single people when they are wired, hardwired, and even given the opportunity by God to be married.
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  Stop waiting for the Messiah, ladies.
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  He came and went.
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  Settle for somebody less.
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  and men stop looking for the Proverbs 31 woman.
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  That is an ideal to which women aspire.
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  And the truth of the matter is find another Holy Spirit-led, loving Christian and get married.
• 2:56
  Okay, guys, let's unpack this.
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  I want to give you guys three lies, three truths that really counter those lies, and a practice for each one for singles that most Christian churches and most Christian ministries refuse to talk about this topic.
• 3:08
  I want to also give one bonus for those of you guys who are married, but we've got to talk about this stuff very bluntly.
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  So lie number one that we are telling young people today is take your time away.
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  Don't be in a hurry.
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  That is often not true.
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  The truth is your time is limited, and we need to be absolutely honest with people about this.
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  We were talking to some YWAMers recently.
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  Our kids have gone through YWAM.
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  We love YWAM.
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  It's a really, really great ministry.
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  Certain bases are amazing and have some incredible leaders.
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  But one of the things that we noticed was there were women, some that were in their 30s, and we asked them, what is your long-term plan for your life?
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  What do you think God's called you to?
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  They're like, oh, absolutely.
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  I want to be a wife and a mom.
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  But they were in the process of signing a covenant.
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  Right?
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  a two-year covenant that said that they would not be able to enter into a romantic relationship, and they are in their early 30s.
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  You guys, who is going to bluntly tell these women that this is a bad idea if you believe God has called you to be a wife and mother?
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  Yes, there are people, like MacArthur mentioned, that have the gift of singleness.
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  These are not those people.
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  We know statistically now that around the age of 28, if you are not in a committed relationship that's leading to marriage, you have a greater than 50% chance of being childless for the rest of your life.
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  And we have this epidemic of women getting on TikTok and just crying because they just got back from a fertility doctor.
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  And they discovered that as they are in their mid-30s trying to have children, that they have been told they will never have children.
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  And they're screaming at these cameras saying, why didn't anybody tell me this?
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  Why aren't we being honest about this?
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  It's not that there needs to be a panic, but we have to strategically think about this.
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  One of the things that MacArthur mentions here, let's get into the practice, is if you find yourself in the situation, increase the intensity.
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  And I know this can sound, ooh, like how exactly is that done?
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  How?
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  This is a very delicate and difficult topic, and it's different for men and for women.
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  I have four daughters.
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  I understand how challenging this can be for women.
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  I think for men, there's a pursuit side of this that men feel a lot more wired for.
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  In the Christian world, oftentimes women are like, I don't feel like I really should be doing that.
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  I should be going out there pursuing, asking men out for dates.
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  Okay.
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  So one of the things that I've had a conversation recently with somebody who called me, she was single, she was 30 years old, and she was asking me this very honest question.
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  Like, what do I do?
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  Like, I don't want to be like asking every guy out that I meet.
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  And I said, tell me what sort of your normal situation, work, school, church.
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  So she described those situations.
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  I said, okay, of the guys that you're meeting.
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  do you think any of them are a potential possibility as a future husband?
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  She said, no, I'm convinced none of them are.
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  Then I immediately said, you have to leave all of those things and get yourself into a pool of eligible men.
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  Like if you are in a pool, a stagnant pool of uneligible men waiting for somebody to ask you out, the only thing oftentimes women can really do to increase their likelihood of finding a mate is to go to places that are filled with eligible men.
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  Now, I talked about...
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  YWAM, and our kids went to YWAM, and I think that they have just a typical modern Christian way of talking about these topics, and I think they're giving in to a lot of these lies in many cases.
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  I'm sure there are people that are confronting them, and so this is not a YWAM problem.
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  This is not an issue with any particular ministry.
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  I see this absolutely everywhere.
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  I look in the Christian world.
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  We are following the exact same ideals as the culture, but it is important that
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  that particularly for young men and women, but particularly for young women, is that you have to, the increasing your intensity of really trying to find a spouse is you got to go to the church, go to the Bible study, go to the ministry, go to the immersive event that allows you to meet lots of young single guys your age who are potential mates.
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  You need to move yourself.
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  You're like, well,
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  Why would I do that?
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  Why would I go through that level of effort?
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  Again, this is a calling.
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  If your calling is to be a wife and a mother, would you not go to college if your calling was to be a doctor?
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  Or if you're a guy, if your calling is to be a future pastor?
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  We don't have any problem with people moving to places.
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  that are aligned with what their calling is.
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  And one of the realities is that this is the greatest calling.
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  This is the most normal calling for most women is to become a mother and a wife.
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  If you're in a pool where nobody in your pool is eligible, then either your standards are way too high or you need to move into other pools.
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  And I don't like whatever that requires is likely worth it.
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  Like major disruption.
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  could easily be the right answer.
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  So that's one of the lies, and the practice is you've got to move into those eligible pools.
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  Lie number two is later marriage is normal.
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  The truth, you guys, is that it's common.
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  It is not normal.
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  One of the things that MacArthur said in this clip is he said, I don't understand why Christians are delaying marriage.
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  Why is it that the average date of Christians getting married is getting older and older and older, along with the culture?
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  There is no good reason for that at all.
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  We know exactly why the culture has gotten later and later and later.
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  It starts with the decision to say premarital sex is fine.
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  We've got a pornographied culture.
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  The fact is, you guys, if we could somehow have zero porn and zero premarital sex, the age at which people would marry and the frequency would change dramatically.
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  The age would plummet.
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  So basically, we are following a porn-saturated and promiscuous culture into a trend that's based on things that are essentially ungodly.
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  And we should have a radical difference in this area from our contemporaries in the secular culture.
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  We completely understand that.
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  They're not following Jesus, and they're just using their sexuality in all kinds of ways that are not biblical, that they would, through that, decide to delay marriage.
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  We get that.
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  But Paul says very explicitly in 1 Corinthians 7, look, if you're burning with lust, then get married.
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  And so we know that's an appropriate response to that drive.
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  It's important that we emphasize that this is something that we want to be doing.
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  So in other words, we've got to move faster.
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  We've got to decide in every relationship, either this is somebody that we are marrying, or we're going to break up with them.
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  Like the day you decide that your boyfriend or girlfriend or the person you're hanging out with or whatever, somebody you're romantically interested in, the day you've made the decision, I would never marry this person, that is the day you break up, period.
• 9:32
  If you decide to continue to indulge in that relationship, maybe because you're afraid of being lonely or whatever.
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  I just think that is exceptionally selfish.
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  And I think that what happens in that situation is you are stealing from that person's future spouse and you're stealing from your future spouse because you know that what you're indulging in now has nothing to do with marriage.
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  You're indulging in sort of a fake...
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  simulation of marriage.
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  And this is also reducing the likelihood or your ability to go out and move on and have a clean break and say, look, dating exists in the Christian world.
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  Do find a spouse.
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  Do not use it for other purposes.
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  If you do, you are likely going to be delaying marriage in a way that is not going to actually bode well for you in the future.
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  It's not helping you in your future.
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  Okay, lie number three, and he really nails this, is this lie that we tell people is never settle.
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  Okay?
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  That is such a disastrous thing to say to single people.
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  The only reason you would ever say that is if you're trying somehow to cause people to never get married.
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  Because everyone settles.
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  If you ever get married, somebody is settling for you.
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  We live in a world of broken, sinful people.
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  We're not going to marry the Messiah.
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  If you want to, ladies, marry the Messiah, you can do that through renouncing marriage like he's described in Matthew 19.
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  If you have that gift of singleness, like Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 7, you want to give yourself wholeheartedly to the Lord, you can take a vow of celibacy as a man or a woman and become united with Christ in that way, and then you can be legitimately said to have never settled.
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  I think that's a completely appropriate thing to do.
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  Do that in community.
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  Do that with your Christian community.
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  But that is exceptionally rare.
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  And everyone else who knows their call to be married, they settle.
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  And so what we need to be in the practice we have to embrace is to marry the person that has the highest character and the best potential possible.
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  That is what we all should be seeking for.
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  And when we make that decision, we're all taking a risk, you guys.
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  There is no risk-free way to think about this topic.
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  So it's really important that you not let that level idealism destroy marriage.
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  This is, I think, one of the most powerful lessons of a movie like Snow White or a fairy tale.
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  Basically, you have this woman who is constantly concerned about Snow White meeting Prince Charming.
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  And what is happening is the messages, the poison apple, the things that she's doing—
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  to destroy Snow White exists because she herself is, she's really hates Snow White.
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  She wants to be the fairest.
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  And so I think that there is these subtle messages that have gotten into, particularly into spaces within feminism, within women that have caused them to like, wow, this sounds really empowering.
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  Like get a career, just continue a school, you know, get your PhD, go into enormous amounts of debt.
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  You know, be on birth control as a single person for a long time.
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  And that changes your hormones, all kinds of things that, you know, there are appropriate ways or reasons to do all of those things.
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  But man, the level at which these things are being advocated for women, I think are coming from older women who are either consciously or subconsciously trying to destroy your ability to find a mate.
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  And I think that we need to really push back on this.
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  Now, the bonus lie I want to describe for those of you guys who are married, the lie is use birth control for years after marriage and just enjoy your life first.
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  Don't destroy your life with this horrible thing that could possibly happen to you called children.
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  And you guys understand this.
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  I hope you understand this.
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  That the truth is, you guys, kids are a blessing.
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  And the truth is we need to have kids as soon as possible.
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  They're an incredible blessing.
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  Psalm 127 says explicitly that kids are a blessing, but this didn't come from the mind of that psalmist alone.
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  Like, he was getting it from Genesis 1.
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  Genesis 1, the very first thing we're told when humanity is created and given the image of God is to be fruitful.
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  God blessed them, it says, and God blessed them by saying, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, rule.
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  And we talk a lot about this.
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  Children are not a lifestyle choice.
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  They are a blessing, period.
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  They are the fruit of marriage.
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  They're the reason we get married.
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  They're a huge reason why God's designed us.
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  We have these parts, these proclivities, these desires, and we say this is God-designed, and we love this.
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  And because the culture, of course, is obsessed with self and wants to somehow say, let's go on a honeymoon period that goes for years and years and years,
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  and try to reduce the amount of children, the productivity of our marriage, the whole purpose of why God designed this.
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  We know this because it says that directly in Malachi 2.
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  Why did God bless this union?
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  Because he wants you to have godly offspring.
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  We know this is the reason for marriage.
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  This has been so deeply distorted, and Christians are so afraid to talk about this because we worship the same idol of self that the culture is obsessed with.
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  Now, we shouldn't be.
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  Guys, we know that God is good, and He's designed marriage and children and family as beautiful gifts.
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  And so we want to immediately engage in having kids early and often and say they are a blessing, and we're not going to give in to these sort of cultural lies.
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  So I just want to be extraordinarily blunt on these things.
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  Let me know what your thoughts are in the comments.
• 14:31
  Feel free to push back if you think there's something I'm missing.
• 14:34
  If you guys are like, wow, we really want to understand God's.
• 14:37
  What is a biblical way to understand family?
• 14:40
  Please go to familyteams.com slash transform.
• 14:42
  We'll have a little mini course, and we'll walk you guys through a biblical blueprint for how to think about family and some of the resources that we have.
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  But we want to encourage you guys.
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  We really want to be renewed in our mind.
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  Do not become conformed, as Paul says in Romans 12, to the pattern of this world.
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  Also, you can check out our series on what is family team.
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  So you can look at episode one if you guys want to go back to kind of looking at the foundational ways that we think and understand how the biblical family was designed.
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  So I really want to encourage you guys like get married, have kids.
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  Family is awesome.