He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord,
how he may please the Lord.
1 Corinthians 7:32
It has become commonplace in this day and time that we live
in to think that, if someone is single, there must be something wrong with
them. For some reason we have gotten the idea that, for someone to live a life
of singleness as an unmarried person, that person must be unhappy and feel
desperately lonely. Therefore we have grown accustomed to giving ourselves away
in meaningless, superficial, and short-lived relationships that often end very
tragically simply for the sake of not being “alone.” That is the only purpose
that I can see behind the boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, and it is not at
all biblical. The Bible, on the other hand, teaches us that marriage is a
sacred union ordained by God. Marriage is so much more than a cure for
loneliness and depression; it is a calling by God for a man and a woman to come
together as a team to serve Him in a way that they never could apart from one
another.
Genesis 2:8 says, “And the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will
make him a helper comparable to him.’” Notice here that God made one specific
woman for Adam—He didn’t just make a whole bunch of women and say, “Go pick.” No.
God knew exactly what Adam needed, so He made him Eve. This tells me that
marriage is a calling. Billy Graham once said of his wife, “Ruth was my life
partner, and we were called by God as a team.”
People often wonder why it is that I don’t
date. Well, I’ll tell you why. When I get married, I don’t want to marry
someone who’s been passed around from man to man like a Gatorade bottle in
football huddle, and I don’t want my future wife to be married to a used
husband. There are certain things, certain words, and certain places that I
choose to reserve only for the one that I will someday marry, if marriage is
indeed in God’s plan for me. I don’t give just any woman jewelry. I don’t buy
just any woman flowers. I don’t call just any woman “honey” or “dear.” I don’t
treat just any woman to romantic candlelight dinners. No. Those are all things
that I plan only to do with my wife.
On my wedding day, I want to be able to
kiss my bride and have her know that her lips are the only lips that my lips
have ever touched. I want to be able to walk hand-in-hand with my wife in the
moonlight and have her know that her hand is the only hand that my hand has
ever held. I want to be able to tell my wife that I love her and have her know
that I really mean it because I haven’t said it to a half dozen others before
her. I want my wife to have the assurance that I will always be there because I
haven’t had a dozen other relationships that I left because they stopped being
convenient for me. In short, I want my wife to know without a doubt that she
has always and will always be the only one for me.
Marriage is no joke, folks. Marriage is not
a game. It’s not something that we play until it stops being fun and then quit.
No. Marriage is serious business. Ephesians 5:25 says, “Husbands, love your
wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.” Marriage
was created by God to be an ever-present picture of His endless, boundless,
unconditional, sacrificial love for us. Therefore I choose not to play the
field but to wait instead for the one God has for me. If a wife is indeed in
God’s plan for my life, He will cause our paths to cross, we will get to know
each other in a nonromantic way, and then, in God’s time, we will come together
in marriage.
I have come to believe that dating toys
with people’s emotions, rendering them incapable of making intelligent
decisions. Therefore I choose not to date, for dating is superficial. Girlfriends
come and go, but a wife stays for a lifetime. So the next time someone asks you
if I have a girlfriend, you can tell them that I don’t want one because I’m
waiting for the real deal.
