Tag Archives: Jesus

Desiring Jesus More Than Sex

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Have you ever tried to fight weeds in your yard?  You go out and spray them or pull them. It’s a constant battle.  But here’s the truth about the process.  The best defense against weeds is more grass.  I can pull weeds every year but if I don’t get grass to grow in those spots, next year (or next week) weeds will grow there.

I share this because I think it is a key principle for dealing with sexual immorality and the desire we have that leads us to it.  As I shared last week, we first have to  have a right view of sex and a right view of desire.  But even then we have to figure out how to grow the right desires.  In other words we have to let our desire for God trump all other desires.  The good news is that we were created for that.  The bad news is, it’s a freaking battle.

We can’t get completely focussed on the sin.  This is especially true with sexual immorality (fulfilling sexual desire outside the context of marriage).  Often we focus on the all of the “don’ts”.  Don’t be naked, don’t look at porn, don’t have lustful thoughts, don’t. . . .  While we do need to fight this stuff we can’t let our focus be here.  Our focus needs to be on Jesus.

I’ve heard it said a lot that, “we as guys will always struggle with lust”.  I think that’s a lie straight from hell.

Now if you want to say that I’m always capable of struggling with it, I wholeheartedly agree. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have victory in this area of my life.  It’s probably going to be a fight and process (as with most of the sanctification process) but to just surrender to it seems like a terrible idea.

Sexual immorality is a strong, strong temptation. God created sex with the power to help bind two people together for life.  God was not playing around here.  It is the only sin that Paul literally says to flee from.  In other words, don’t play around with it or tough it out – just get the heck away from it.  He says all other sin a man commits outside his body, but sexual immorality is against his own body.  Paul is saying it affects us in huge ways.

In my opinion there are two principles we have to keep here in order to let the practical stuff work.

First we need to focus on the Lord and his mission.  To be honest, when I struggle the least in this area is when I’m focussed on God and mission.  When I’m outward focussed, I’m typically not desiring the wrong stuff.  When I’m focussed on me and what I feel that day, that’s when I’m in trouble.  This by the way is part of (emphasis on part of) what Paul is saying about the call to singleness.  It’s not a call to not get married, it’s a call to be so focussed on mission that you are not focussed on sex (which is NOT to say that you won’t ever desire sex).

The second thing we have to do is flee – which means do whatever it takes to not fall into sexual immorality.  I’m going to talk about some things that have helped me later this week.

Here’s another way to look at it.  In the Odyssey, Odysseus is warned about the dangers of the sirens.  These were beautiful creatures (think hot models with wings) that sang incredibly powerful and beautiful songs.  So much so that sailors followed them to their death on the rocks.

Odysseus comes up with a plan.  He gives all his oarsmen wax to put in their ears so that they can’t hear the sirens.  He wants to hear it, so he doesn’t use wax, but he has them tie him to the mast.  When the boat passes the sirens do their thing.  Odysseus goes crazy, demanding that the men cut him free.  Following his original orders they don’t and they pass through unharmed.

Now this is great but contrast that with the story of Orpheus and the Argonauts.  The Argonauts faced the same danger from the sirens.  But Orpheus was a powerful musician who played the most beautiful music possible.  When the Argonauts passed by the sirens Orpheus played his music.  It was so strong and powerful that it drowned out the songs of the sirens.  The Argonauts were able to pass through without the aid of the wax.

Ultimately our desire for God has to trump all other desires.  

It is better to tie ourselves to the mast than die on the rocks, but the goal should be to grow so close to Jesus that we are not swayed by the siren’s music.

Submitting Sexual Desire To The Lord

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Last week I wrote about our view of sex.  The main two points were that sex was created by God and therefore desire for sex isn’t bad in and of itself.  Secondly was that this desire was to be fulfilled so to speak, only in the context of marriage.  In the Bible sex is always talked about either in marriage or in sin.   A pretty fair definition of sexual immorality is the fulfillment of sexual desire outside the context of marriage.

But this leaves singles in a very tough spot.  We have a desire that is good but no “good” way to fulfill it.

Now some married friends have wisely pointed out that you can be married and still struggle with sexual immorality.  There is no doubt that this is true. There are all sorts of ways that married people can struggle with this.  Single people need to get a clue that marriage doesn’t instantly solve all of this.  But at the same time, married people need to think about what it would be like to have no fulfillment of that desire . . . ever.

So, what are we as single people supposed to do with this?

Well all of this raises a bunch of questions actually.  What is the point of desires that God gives us?  What are we supposed to do with unfulfilled desires?  What should we do with sexual desire?  When does desire become sin?  What do we do practically to deal with sexual desire in a culture that says, “Just Do It”.  We need more than “Just Say No”.

Let’s tackle a couple of these today and then we’ll tackle some more next week.

At the end of the day I believe the number one thing we desire is to know that we are loved.  Now this desire can get messed up quickly.  It can become the desire for approval from people. It is also one of the main emotional drives for sex.  Sex was created to bond us to the other person so it feels like a lot like love.  But at the truth is our desire to be loved can only be totally fulfilled by God.

What our desires show us is that something is going on in our heart.  They are the voice of our heart.  When I have a strong desire I need to ask what is going on inside.  Where is that coming from?

I don’t believe that desire itself is sin.  Paul is clear that even temptation (which plays on desire) is not sin.  Giving in to it is.  Now we can have desires that come from our sin.  In other words the more I live in (abide in) disobedience, the more I will desire the wrong stuff. This is then compounded when I fulfill that desire in a sinful way.

Psalms 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”  This scripture is misapplied all the time.  Often people assume it means that if I delight or abide in the Lord that I will get what I want, as if to say, first I want something, I go delight in God, and He gives it to me.  That would be wrong.

What it means is that first I delight in the Lord.  When I do that He gives me my core value and love and then my desires (remember they are the voice of my heart) start coming from Him.  He literally gives me my desires – my desires become His desires.  The point is that depending on where my heart is at, my desires will follow.

Just because I have a desire doesn’t mean I should fulfill it. I mean I have good and bad desires all the time.  But I can’t be mastered by my desires.  Instead I need to submit them to the Lord.  I need to let my desires (most of which at some level come back to the desire to be loved) drive me to the Lord.  Sexual desire is no different.

Now all this sounds really nice.  But let’s put it in context.  If I’m going to have any chance of handling my sexual desire as a single (or married for that matter) I’m going to have to be walking closely with the Lord.  This is true of every desire but I do think sexual desire is a little different.  Sex is one of the most powerful forces in our world and we shouldn’t discount that fact.  It was made that way on purpose.

Monday I will dive into what we can do practically to deal with it.  But none of that will matter if I’m not going to allow it to drive me towards Jesus.  Without Him it will be like putting bandaids on gaping wounds.

How Do You View Sex?

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A couple of years ago I was fortunate enough to be in an Old Testament class with a ridiculously brilliant professor.  I mean this guy might be the most knowledgeable guy I’ve ever met.  At one point we were talking about The Law and I decided to ask a fun question, just to stir the pot.

I asked him, “Does the Bible literally say that I can’t have sex outside of marriage?” Without flinching (have you ever noticed professors never flinch) and he said, “No it doesn’t.  But it does say that if you have sex with someone you have to marry them right then.”  We all laughed.

One of the things that is hardest about being single is not having sex.  I love when married people tell me that sexual temptation doesn’t go away when you get married.  I know that’s true but, it’s not the same thing. We have to choose between not satisfying the desire or sin – you have another option.

This is the one thing that the Church is for sure going to tell single people – Don’t have sex. But that is not enough.  And the way we tell people can often set us up to fail.  It’s shouldn’t be about “waiting for marriage“, making the act of sex unholy, twisting bible verses to make them about sex, making the desire for sex bad, or even pretending that somehow I can crush that desire. It’s about understanding what sex is – biblically speaking.

Our culture has separated sex from marriage.  It says the purpose of sex is pleasure and personal enjoyment.  It’s something that we do to make ourselves feel better.  Now there is some truth to this of course, sex does feel good.  God created it to be pleasurable, which is awesome.  But that is not the end result.

This view ultimately makes sex less powerful.  We’ve had it drilled in our heads over and over that it is just a physical act.  And when the Church runs around telling us not to do it, without telling us what TO do, then it just adds to the problem by basically keeping it as a physical act – just one we shouldn’t do.

The message can end up being that It’s just about pleasure and feeling good in marriage (if I get married I get pleasure) but it still sells sex short and could mess up married sex. Worst of all we sometimes paint sex in such a negative light that when people do get married they struggle to enjoy it.

But the Bible talks about sex as much more than a physical act to do or not do.

From the very beginning, right after He creates Adam and Eve, God says that they will leave father and mother and become one flesh.  Jesus echoes this later of course when he is asked about divorce.  He essentially says, “You don’t get it at all.  Marriage is permanent and sex is part of what makes it that way.”

Sex is not just physical.  It is meant to be a spiritual act.  It bonds two people together in very real, one flesh way.  This is why where ever sex is talked about all through scripture it is always either within the context of marriage or the context of sin. There is no in between.  But we can also know for sure that the desire for sex is from God.  We can’t just throw that out or pretend it away, just because we as singles are not in a position to have the desire met.

We are going to desire sex.  A lot actually. Probably even if I’m called to singleness.  In my opinion trying to kill that desire is crazy.  But here’s the thing, I have all sorts of desires.  I don’t get to do them all, I have to submit them to God.

What I can do is not feed it the wrong way.  Paul (while talking about this subject) uses food as and example.  I can’t just eat what I want all the time.  I want a cookie every day, and if I eat that cookie every day, I’ll want it even more the next day.  We are not to be controlled by our desires.

Also, as I mentioned briefly before, if I separate sex from marriage there is way less reason to get married.  As crazy as it sounds, one of the surest ways to stay single is to have sex outside of marriage.  
Our culture is at set up in opposition to the scripture.  This isn’t new of course, its always been so, but now we are inundated with it.  We have to walk with God and we have to own our view of sex.  What is your real view of sex – the one you practice?

Is There “The One”?

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If you’ve been single long, you’ve had this conversation about why you are single, and someone says these words, “Well I guess you just haven’t met THE ONE yet, but it’ll happen”.  Now if you are younger you might say this yourself, but usually the older you get the less you say it because you realize, 1. it might not happen – after all it hasn’t yet, and 2. there is not just one.

You read that right.  I’m declaring it right now, right here.  There is not THE ONE, at least not in the way we usually talk about.

Now I can hear some married people disagreeing with me (mostly women – no offense just being realistic) but I don’t think there is any biblical, empirical or any other ‘cal evidence that backs this up.

You could maybe, and I mean maybe, make the case before the fall that there was just one.  But even that is shaky.  Marriage is pre-sin, but I think THE ONE is a post sin way of coping.  What about when someone marries someone and then they die, and they remarry – did God have two “the one’s” for them?  This idea that God has chosen just one for us sounds very romantic, or very Oprah, but I don’t think we are promised it any where. Which I think is actually good news and good for us – which might be why God set it up that way.

THE ONE is killing us out there.

For starters, let’s realize what most of us mean when we say this is – the one who is everything I want, the perfect one, (or more religious sounding – the perfect one for me). This is not marriage or realistic.  Getting married is not about finding someone who meets all of my needs or fulfills me. That’s romanticism at it’s best and consumerism at it’s worst.

This stuff can lead us, sometimes for years, to think that if I can just meet THE ONE then everything will be alright.  No it won’t! Because even if you could, THE ONE gets old, or sick, or hurt, or is mean to you, or veers away from God, or breaks your heart, or lets you down.

When it comes to finding fulfillment there is only one THE ONE and that is Jesus.  I know it sounds cheesy but it is essential we keep this in mind.  If we get this wrong everything will be messed up.

If we don’t get ahold of this we will be continuing to make marriage and THE ONE an idol.  

But there are even more side problems, including but not limited to:

  • Getting married, being let down and being able to declare, “Oh I must have gotten this wrong.  There must be a different ONE for me.”
  • Searching for a person that we are 100% attracted to all the time.
  • Thinking I’ve found THE ONE and then messing it all up because of the weight I put on the relationship or living in fear of losing THE ONE – which leads to all sorts of mistakes.
  • Putting huge pressure on every dating relationship because I have to figure out if they are THE ONE. This is a crushing pressure that almost no one can stand under.  And for free – if they can, something is off – everyone messes up – everyone.
  • Waiting for God to bring me THE ONE instead of engaging others and getting to know people.
  • Thinking someone that got away is THE ONE and spending all my time and thoughts figuring out how to make something work that is long over.

I want to be clear that I’m not saying that we should just go marry whoever.  Not at all.  I’m also not saying that God doesn’t bring you someone.  He brings people into our lives all the time (and not just romantically). We need to choose wisely and with the Spirit because even though there is not THE ONE we will hopefully only do this one time.

So here are some practical helps.  Maybe start by fighting the idol of THE ONE.  Jesus is the only person who can fulfill us.  Next, when dating people maybe instead of asking God if this is THE ONE ask questions like, “Do you want me to marry THIS person?”  If I’m not dating, maybe ask God, “send me someone You’d like me to marry” instead of, “Send me THE ONE.”

Finally, don’t ask, “Is this person THE ONE for me?” but instead ask these big questions:

1. Am I good for this person?  Are they good for me?  Are we good together? and if yes, 2. Do I want to covenant to love and care for this person the rest of my life, no matter what?

Once you answer yes to those – you will have THE ONE.

Why Do You Want A Spouse

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One of the simplest stories in the Bible happens in Mark 10.  Jesus is leaving Jericho and there is a large crowd with Him.  I’m sure it was a crazy scene, with people all around wanting his attention.  But from the street, Bartimaeus the blind man cries out to Jesus.  At first the crowd dismisses him but he cries out all the louder.  Jesus stops and says bring him here.  Then He asks him the big question, “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus says, “Lord I want to see.”  Jesus heals him, everyone celebrates and Bartimaeus follows Him down the road.

I love this story for a lot of reasons but I think the main reason is Jesus’ question.  I think about how at different times I’ve cried out to Jesus and I wonder what it would be like if He stood in front of me and said, “What do you want me to do for you?”

I’ve thought about this question and I’ve asked a whole lot of other people to think about it. What would my answer be?  Would I take the easy route, and toss out world peace or something like that for the answer – I mean I could say that but I wouldn’t mean it and Jesus would know.

What’s interesting is while we all know this story, if you go back a couple of paragraphs, Jesus asks the same question to James and John – yeah I’d never noticed it either.  Their answer is way more honest than mine would probably be.

What do you want?  It’s such a huge question.  For a long time (like 15 years long time) I think I would have answered, “Jesus I want a wife”.  But I would have been wrong.  I mean I did (and do) want a wife, but that isn’t what I was really seeking.  You see whatever your answer is to that question, you have to ask one more – why do you want that?

In other words “Why do you want a spouse?” That’s a question worth asking.

What we want, really I think, is the answer to our core question which is, “Am I loved?” This is asked all sorts of different ways.  Am I valuable? Am I good enough? Do I matter? Do I have what it takes? Am I beautiful? Do your eyes light up when I come in the room? Am I accepted?

We want to know that we are loved – not just know it in our head, but in our heart.

The first place we get that question answered in our lives is our parents.  But somewhere along the line, we start to seek the answer from the opposite sex, and while this is a bad idea if you are married, it can kill you as a single person, because the answer is always no. Do I have what it takes? Apparently not.  No one’s eyes light up for me.  Am I good enough (insert pretty enough, successful enough, thin enough, any other enough).  I guess not because I’m still here by myself.

Or maybe worse, I can be single and keep needing this question answered again and again by yet another new person.  One person seems to answer it but then it runs dry.  I break up and someone else seems to answer it for a while and then I repeat the cycle.

One of the traps of singleness is the thought that if I finally get the right person (who of course will be perfect and perfectly answer this question – no pressure though), then I will know I’m loved.  This can happen whether I never have a date or I’m constantly dating.

But here’s the good and bad news – Marriage doesn’t answer that question.  

Marriage does answer two big questions -“Will I get married?” and “Who will I spend the rest of my life with?” But it does not answer “Am I loved”, not at the core. Only Jesus can answer it and we have to take the question to Him not a spouse, or anyone else. Married people know this (at least hopefully) but if we can get this as a single person we have a huge leg up.

First, it means I can be a complete person in Christ as a single person – I don’t HAVE to get married.  Second, If we know this truth, we are automatically more attractive.  A loved person is hot!  Seriously!  Finally, if we do indeed get married, we will be able to love the other person way better.  Really, you can only love another person if you first know you are loved.  And if we get married that’s the whole point.

So, it’s you and Jesus in the road.  What do you want?  Why do you want it?

Quit Being Nice

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When I was a younger single guy, one of the things I just could not understand was why women always chose against the nice guy.  I after all was a nice guy.  But no matter what women said about what they wanted, they always chose guys who didn’t fit that category. I’ve touched on this in a couple of places, but today I want to address the nice guy and why it doesn’t work.

First, the premise is wrong.  What we are really assuming (we being the nice guy) is that we are better (somehow less sinful) than someone else.  This throws us into allegiance with the oldest son in the story from Luke 15.  That is not the company we want to be in.

But even if we don’t judge the non-nice guys we are still fooling ourselves.  

The truth is that being nice is just as much an angle as any other approach.  What it comes down to is no one is actually that nice.  In other words if I’m being nice to a woman because I want her to like me, well how is that any different than any other manipulative move?

Let’s take the giving flowers thing for example.  I started a new policy on flowers a few years ago.  I don’t give flowers to someone to get them to like me.  Never.  I don’t do it because we got in a fight, and I want the woman to like me again (classic nice guy move).  I only give flowers to care about the woman, without any other motive.  Do you see what I’m saying?  If I’m being “nice” to seek the woman’s approval, I’m screwed.  Either she will think I’m a wuss and bail, or maybe worse, she will dominate me.

In other words if I’m being nice to get the girl to like me, that’s not all that nice.

To make matters worse, women are typically not attracted to the nice guy.  The reason is because women don’t want a guy who follows them around.  They want someone who can be a man and lead.  They may not even consciously know this, but instinctively they know it.  Get this line right here – “If you can’t stand up to her, you will not be able to stand up for her”.  Seriously think about it.  Women are subconsciously testing this out all the time.  And to top it off, nice guys are boring because they always want to do what the woman wants.  Women don’t want to be bored – they want adventure.  They want a guy who is strong and not afraid of them.  Again if you are afraid of them, you can’t protect them and that is not attractive.

Now that’s not to say women don’t want a “good” guy.  There’s a difference.  It’s critical actually.  Think about Jesus.  No one, and I mean no one who met Jesus thought, “hey Jesus, he’s a pretty nice guy.”  No!  People thought Jesus was a good guy but anyone who hung around Him knew He was not a wuss, and not “nice”.  They’d seen His power, daring, leadership, and adventure.  Like the famous line in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia when the kids ask if the lion Aslan is safe and the beaver replies, “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” Jesus was good and He was loved and hated.  He stood up for the right stuff.  He knew who He was.

Here’s the difference when it comes to dating.  Nice guys are worried about what the woman thinks.  Will she like me?  Will she be mad at me?  The good guy worries about what is right – and tries to do it, regardless of the what the woman wants.

Adam was nice in the garden – he should have been good.  He should have stood up to Eve. 

Women instinctively know the difference.

How do you know if you are a nice guy?  Here are some clues.  You are afraid of what women think of you.  You can’t approach a woman you want to talk to.  You are always in the “friend zone”.  You are told by women you want to date, “You’re a great guy but. . . ” You buy gifts for women that you are not in a relationship with.  You don’t understand what makes women attracted to a “bad” guy.

I’ll be writing more about how to kill the nice guy later – it can be done, I’ve done it, twice actually (he came back to life – pesky son of a gun), but the first step is recognizing it. By the way, this is important even if you are called to singleness or for that matter if you are already married.

So fellas, are you a “nice guy”? Ladies, am I wrong here?

Loving Your Married Friends Well

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So I’m 39 and single.  I’ve been very blessed in my life to have several very strong mentors including one who has walked with me for over twenty years and another for over fifteen.  Others who have had huge impact in my life along the way.  One of the things they have all had in common (other than the whole Jesus thing obviously) is that they have all been married.

I think this is a really good thing.  For one, I’ve gotten to see their marriages.  I’ve gotten to see the things that they’ve done well and things they’ve screwed up.  They’ve demystified things about marriage and parenting that otherwise I would have not known.  I’ve seen their families do things differently than mine.  Sometimes better and sometimes worse. They’ve walked with me through all sorts of things, including my singleness and all the cycles that go with it.

I bring this up because I think in our Christian culture we get stuck in this idea that only people just like me can understand.  And while there is some truth to that, mostly it’s a load of crap.

As I wrote about earlier this can happen in the Church from a leadership perspective.  But it also happens because often times we singles view ourselves as less able to minister to our friends and others who are married than we actually are.

What’s interesting is for me it’s been the other way around.

When I started out everyone who was pouring into me was married, but everyone my age was single.  Then when I got into my late 20s and early 30s there was a shift.  Now almost all of my peers were married, but the people I was pouring into were single.  But now at 39 there’s been a new shift.  Now at least half of the people I’m pouring into and discipling are married.  It’s kind of crazy.

You know what, they are still my people.  

I think that we as single people have a unique opportunity to love our married friends well. We can offer some things that sometimes others can’t.  As I’ve mentioned before, we can fight for their marriage.  We can be a great outside voice that asks questions.  Also, just because we aren’t married doesn’t mean we can’t see what is going on and call stuff out. We still know relationship problems when we see them.

We also typically have more flexibility.  And we should use that to serve them.  Now before you freak out, I don’t mean babysitting and I don’t mean that we aren’t busy or that our time is less valuable. But like to admit it or not, there is a difference between the single lifestyle and the married one.

For example one of my best friends is married with three kids.  About once a month, we grab a cigar late at night – after the kids are down.  I just shoot him a text and say, “Cigar – late?” And I get a text back that says essentially, “Um Yes Please!”  Stuff that I get to do all the time (go to a ball game, meet up for a drink, take a late night phone call) can be a treat for someone with young kids.  So why not use it with one of them.

Here’s what I’m getting at, we need to serve our married friends and we need to keep pursuing them.  We need to use our flexibility to our advantage.  If it’s easier to go to their house for dinner we should do it.  On the other hand when is the last time you made dinner for a couple – why is it always the married people who cook the meal?  Know what I’m saying?  If we want to be treated as equal adults, let’s be that.

I know this is not a super deep post but the point is we have a lot to offer married people and we need to offer it.  A lot of times single people feel left out or not part of the “in group” at church etc.  I have definitely felt that at times and sometimes there is truth in it.  I have and will continue to call that out.  But other times it has more to do with us than them and we just need to get over it.  We need to go with the attitude of what we can offer them.

There will always be some married people who write us off.  But we will definitely be written off if we don’t offer.

If you’re single, how have you felt like you could love your married friends well?  How confident are you that you can minister to married people? If you are married, how have single friends been a blessing to you?

Do You Want To Get Married? Really?!

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One of my favorite scriptures is the story in John 5 of the man at the pool.  So here’s the story in a nutshell.  There was a pool near the sheep gate in Jerusalem where many disabled people went.  They were there because they believed that when the water was stirred, that the first person in would be healed.  Now there was a man (an invalid) who had been there 38 years.  Then Jesus shows up and learned his story.  Jesus then asks the man, “Do you want to get well?”

Now this seems like a very odd question.  I mean here is a guy who has been sitting by this pool (where people come hoping to get well) for 38 years.  I mean obviously he wants to get well right?  But maybe Jesus is on to something here.  Jesus realizes that maybe this guy has become comfortable. Maybe, even though originally he wanted to walk, now he had lived this particular way for a long, long time.  Walking would change everything in this man’s life.  Everything.  Jesus wants to make sure, “Do you still want that?”

The man’s response is classic.  Here is Jesus with all the ability to help him and he says essentially, “Hey yeah – I need to get into the water – could you help me do that?”  In other words, “Hey Jesus, help me heal my way”  He had become focussed on getting in the water, even to the point of missing out on being healed.  The means had become the end.

This has so many implications there’s not possibly room here to discuss them all.  

We are all wounded and we are all seeking to get well.  Most of all we all have things that we think will heal us, and often we end up asking for those instead of healing in any form Jesus wants.

One of the big traps we as singles can fall into is the idea that if I get married it will heal me (make life ok, fix my sexual problems, solve my loneliness, bring me happiness, fill my heart, etc).  I know for me there have been plenty of times where I feel like if Jesus would have asked me, “Do you want to get well?” I might as well have answered, “Yes, I want to get married.”  But marriage is not the answer to any of those type of questions. The questions that marriage answers are “Who will I marry?” or “Will I get married?” It doesn’t answer the big questions.  Only God can really do that.  And if I’m looking for marriage to do that I will screw up my search for someone to marry and/or I will have a really hard marriage.

However, as you stay single longer, there is another very real question here.  “Do you want to get married?”  You might say, “Jesus, seriously, I’ve been trying to do that for 20 years.  I mean I’ve been on good dates, bad dates, blind dates.  I’ve been on every dating site and been set up by everyone in my life.”  To which I think Jesus would still be smart to ask, “Yeah but do you want to get married?”

It’s a fair question.  After all if you are in your 30s or older, you’ve lived a certain way a long time, and marriage, changes everything.  The question is “Do you still want that?”  or maybe a better way of asking it, “Do you want that change now?”

I think it is extremely important that we ask this question because the answer changes things.

If your answer is no, you need to ask why.  There are some bad reasons.  For example, are you just being selfish or are you just really scared that after living a certain way that you won’t be able to do it.  It is legitimately scary, but that’s not a reason to say no.  But if the answer is no and you feel like Jesus agrees with that answer (it might be good to ask Jesus, “Do you want me to get married?”) then you’re going to need a new approach.  For one, quit dating.

But if the answer is yes, then you might need to change your approach as well.  You are going to need to be prepared for the fact that Jesus might actually give you what you want, in a way that you didn’t think of.  You need to be able to say, “Jesus I do and I will do it however, and with whoever you want me too.”

So, first, do you want to get well?  What is the “pool” you are counting on?  Is it marriage? Second question, “Do you want to get married?” And are you willing to do that any way Jesus wants?

Mourn The Losses Of Singleness

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So when I was single in my early 20s I just figured that I would meet someone in the next couple of years.  Then as I moved to my later 20s I still kind of thought, “Hey this will happen soon enough.”  When I was in my early 30s, it was time to hurry this thing up a little. HAHA.  But in my late 30s several interesting things have happened.  First, I realized for the first time, “This thing might not happen at all.”  That was fun.  During this same time (about age 35 or so) God really walked me through some hard stuff and at the end, I’ve ended up being a lot more comfortable with who I am and being single which has been great.

One of the other things I’ve realized is that no matter what happens there is some stuff that won’t happen.

If I get married, my wife and I will not get to start out life together.  Yes I know we will start a new life together, sort of – but thats not the same thing.  I will not enjoy the wife of my youth – because I won’t be in my youth.  I won’t get to share any of the moments of victory or defeat that I’ve had over the last 20 years of ministry.

I probably won’t have kids and if I do it will be different.  I was joking with a friend on the golf course today who asked if I still wanted kids.  I said, “Maybe, but I’m 40 this fall and let’s say I get married in the next year and had a kid within a year.  I’m 42 and changing diapers.  Then I’m 50 or so when they are really ready to play catch.  When they are a teenager I’m in my late 50s.”  I still remember the first time, the summer before my sophomore year, that I beat my dad one on one in hoops.  My kid might beat me at 12.

About a year ago, I started thinking about this stuff.  And you know what it kind of hurts. Now it’s all redeemable.  In fact God has redeemed so much of my story already.  For example after working with teenagers for a long time, I’m a father figure to a pretty large amount of people.  That’s awesome and means the world to me. I love those guys. But it’s not the same thing.

We all (single, married or other wise) face loss.

We need to mourn those losses appropriately.  It’s part of being emotionally healthy.  If we deny the losses then we aren’t living in reality, we are staying in the pretend.  That is not where we want to be.

This might be obvious when we have a big physical loss, like a death of a friend or family member.  But is the less obvious stuff that creeps up on us.  Loss can come from sin (like the loss of our virginity), it can come from wounds from our childhood, or from friends. Even just the common stuff in life, things like the loss of our dreams, our youth, a business loss.

Peter Scazzero points out that typically we insulate ourselves from the hurt through things like denial (It doesn’t bother me I’m not married yet), minimizing (It’s no big deal if I don’t get to be a mom), along with rationalizing, blaming, intellectualizing, and distracting (make a joke, change the subject).

But God invites us to more.  

He invites us to enter into loss with HIm. This doesn’t mean dwell on it.  This doesn’t mean make it bigger than it is.  My cat dying and a friend dying should elicit a different amount of mourning.  By the way over reaction to a minor loss is usually a sign that there is a bigger loss that hasn’t been grieved.

God isn’t asking us to deal with it so that we can stay there, but rather so that we can move through to freedom.  There’s not space in a blog post to go into all of the process of this but here are two key things.  First we have to take it to God.  We need to take our hurt and loss to the feet of Jesus and ask Him to heal us.  Jesus is fully capable of healing any loss – He came to heal the brokenhearted and put things right.  Secondly, it will go a lot better if you have other people you can trust in the mix.  We need people who walk with us in community.

Whatever we do we need to face our losses and honestly admit it hurts.  It’s hard but freedom is worth it – whether we stay single or get married, it will help us grow.

What losses have you grieved?  What losses are you avoiding dealing with?

Are You Single, Married, Or A Follower Of Jesus

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I moved to St. Louis just over eight years ago.  It’s a great city and I have grown to love it. Just like any other city it has it’s own culture.  I’ve learned there are a few really important things in St. Louis.  The Cardinals, Budweiser, Ted Drewes, and where you went to high school.  No lie this is one of the first things people ask a new person they’ve just met, “Where did you go to high school?” People identify certain areas of town and certain schools with particular stereotypes.

This search for identity is a constant in our culture.  Where do you work?  What church do you go to? Where do you live? And of course, are you married or single?

It is so easy to fall into this trap.  We often identify ourselves as married or single first.  Now to some degree this makes sense.  The truth is that married people do deal with different things than single people. But it becomes a problem when it becomes our core identity. When our core identity is in anything other than Jesus we are heading towards trouble.

This is harmful for both marrieds and singles and it can be even worse for those who are parents.  We become wrapped up in our context instead of our savior. We start hanging out with only the people who are in our same context. We start seeing our relationship with Jesus through the lens of our situation instead of the other way around.

I’ve seen this shine through in my prayer life. For a long time the number one thing I prayed about was my singleness.  So much so that I struggled to pray without mentioning it. Whether it was asking God to bring me someone (or a particular someone), being mad at God for what was going on in that area of my life, or just generally complaining about it – a huge majority of my prayer life has centered on it.  This doesn’t even get into my thought life and all that goes with that.

I would go so far as to say this even happens with the word Christian.  We end up saying we want a “Christian marriage” or a we need to date in a “Christian” way.  What does that even mean?  The word Christian is one of the most confusing words in the world.  It means so many different things to so many different people.

What we need to be is Christ centered.  We need Jesus to be in the center of our marriages, singleness and yes if we are so blessed, even in our parenting.  I see a lot of people raising “Christian” kids, but very few raising their kids to be Jesus followers.

You might say, “Well Justin that is all semantics,” but I’d submit that semantics matter, a lot actually.  We need to stop trying to be Christian and start trying to walk with Jesus.  I can do a lot of right Christian things without even involving Jesus.

If Jesus is our identity all of a sudden there is a whole lot less to be divided about.  All of a sudden we can be in community with all sorts of different people, married, single and otherwise because now our common bond isn’t our situation but instead is Jesus.  It means that we can learn from each other in the context of Him instead of our particular context.

Jesus wants to be in the middle of it with us.  He wants to guide us in our own unique setting and He wants us to walk with all sorts of people regardless of theirs.

So let me ask you, how do you identify yourself?  Do you have a Christian marriage or a marriage that Jesus is leading?  Are you looking or a Christian relationship or a Christ centered one?  If we are marrieds or singles we are always going to be divided.  If on the other hand we are Jesus followers who happen to be married or single, then we’ve got a whole new ball game.