Transcript
I think that we have made a tragic error in the church in the way that we’ve talked about marriage and causing single people to feel like they’re relegated to Plan B. The marriage is God’s Plan A and anybody that’s not married will never be on the A Team. You’re always going to be on the B Team.
And I think that we have carried marriage as an identity at a level that’s unbiblical. My primary identity should not be that I’m married. My primary identity ought to be in Christ: child of God who’s married. Just like your primary way of thinking about yourself should not be that “I’m single”, but that you’re a child of God with all the gifts and graces, presence and promises that are meant to fulfil the longing of your heart.
I don’t get my identity from Luella and she better not get her identity from me. We will fail with that. We don’t get our deepest inner security from our marriage. We don’t get our hope from one another. I love Luella, but she’s not what gets me up in the morning and she cannot satisfy the deepest longings of my heart. Marriage never does that. There is a Messiah. It just doesn’t happen to be my wife.
And so, you should never ever think that the deepest riches that are available to a person are unavailable to you because you’re not married, because those riches are not the product of marriage. Those riches are the product of redeeming grace. Now, I don’t think that we’ve unpacked that well for single people and I think that we could do better. I wish I had a list of resources to recommend to you. What I would recommend is don’t fall into thinking that marriage will provide inner spiritual satisfaction in a way it was never intended to do. That only comes vertically. It never comes horizontally.
And there are people in marriage, everyone in marriage at some point realizes, “This marriage is not my savior.” All of God’s good gifts are available to all of us, regardless of whether we’re single or married, young or old, weak or strong. The playing field is leveled. We only find what will fill that void in our hearts in our Savior.
