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August 11, 2021 2:00 am
Is it okay to be single? Is Christ truly enough? Sam Allberry affirms that our relationship with God does not depend upon our marital status.
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You know I think our listeners might be surprised to know that there's quite a few singles to listen to family life today.
Marriage and family radio podcast which is really exciting is an Academy we get letters, emails that say that this program can help them get a vision for marriage and what family and marriage can look like. Not only that, relationships to because a lot of what we talk about applies to any kind of relationship that therein welcome to family life today where we want to help you pursue the relationship that matter most and will send Dave Wilson and you can find us@familylifetoday.com for on our family life. This is family life today. Today we talk about singleness and clear up misconceptions and we have Sam Albury with us who's written about this, but the Sam welcome to family life to thank you for having me good to be with you yeah and you know it right away there's some listeners gone. He has an accent words that come from well I like something I don't have an exit from the UK so that the Queen's English was something that is what I'm trying to speak what I preach. Every once a while. I'll try to do an accent of my sons told me dad just never knew it right here to bear his years Israel and you read a book called the seven myths about singleness. Many of our listeners know you but you've been a pastor, a regular conference speaker global speaker you wrote book called is God anti-gay and why bother with the church. But this one is all about singleness in the seven myths so I don't know if will get through all of all the missed today but talk about this why a book on singleness also reasons ready on.
One is not that I am singles is an issue of how to think through a lot myself to think through how was this an experience of God's goodness in my life because I often write a book is going to guy was doing a little teaching on human sexuality and particular on the issue of same-sex attraction, which is also been part of my story and so one of the pieces of feedback on most frequently received was audit Russell to same-sex attraction, but you have really help me think about singleness in a new way. That's also like it is overseas stuff here that people don't used to hearing that has traction there seems to be helping people on so I bustled to dig into that a little more in the top rushing the book on the back of that. Let me ask you this is so many when you talk about singleness go right here, especially in the church singles don't want to be single they really want to be married is just a waiting room until they can finally find their fulfillment in a spouse, and in marriage. Is that true is that a myth is that common when it would which are perspective, they may be how some people think it it can be sometimes the impression given in churches that the singles group is the group that you spot to graduate household auditing marriage yeah.that's a sunny, very different way of thinking about it than we see in the Scriptures and the reason article, the books of the myths about singleness is because the more I look to the Bible says about singleness, the more I realized we have so many misconceptions and in the church today about how we think about singleness that need to be cleaned up. The Bible speaks of singleness unambiguously is being a good thing. So whether we all single by choice will by circumstance will buy some of the reason were not getting all second-best pulses investment in seven that marriage is a gift, and he says that singleness is a gift that both gifts of both good things. I think one of the things that that often happens is both marriage and singleness have their own ups and downs and it's very easy for us to compare the ops of marriage is a downs of singleness and not realize first is that there are downs of marriage and their ops of singleness and bypasses office printing seven. Nothing helps us with with both of those things pulses at one point, you know what Christians are free to marry that the in the Roman world was but a radical fool that she women could have agency of whether or not they married proposes those who marry, have worldly troubles and I would spell you these and if that was old pull of a set about marriage. We might think he was a little bit for children jaded about the whole thing but we know pulses.
Some of the most dutiful and exalted things about marriage that anyone is ever said, but at the same time. He knows that it's too soon is getting together and they're going to be some challenges that however good the marriage may be, say report is realistic on that night. They were talking about this because I think in the church. There are misconceptions because I've talked to so many singles there saying at we just want to be a part of the family you now our brothers and sisters in Christ that were altogether that were all fellow shipping together while spending time together but some of them have said to me, but it feels like every time I'm with the married couples. All they're doing is trying to set me up with someone to get married, and there are some singles that that's okay. But there are other singles that are like I'm content right now insight. I like that were talking about some of these misconceptions to but would you agree with that. In the church. It seems to be divided at times between the singles and the narrates and he seemed him that I think I have, yes, it's very easy for churches to think well I mean every we will tend to do this week.
We tend to think I need to be around people who are in the same situation that I'm in so young marriage of the previous church. I was up a lot of young families that it was very easy for people to think well. When you parents we want to be around other new parents with single and we want to be around other singles that the faxes gold is designed to church to be a blended family where we will need each other and across generations across marital status, we will have something to offer one another and if any of you hang around the same type of people would was simply going to magnify the same blind spots and miss some amazing things that God has for us to to learn by by being around people of different ages and stages of life to us well as easy as as a married couple and I think in the church.
This is often promoted that married couples thanks singles are always laying around thinking about how I get married I just can't wait to get married.
It's my goal in life year single. Is that true is that something you spend a lot of time thinking.
I long to be married or is there a balancer that is about onset uncertainty in the early time the use of my Christian life I spent a lot of time, longing to be marriage, one of the things that's happened that I didn't really notice it.
It was so gradual and sensitive unconscious is as time went on, I just found myself thinking about it less and praying about it less because I was always becoming more content in my singleness will able to to maximize the opportunities of my singleness go to the poet positive hadn't really noticed that I wasn't thinking about marriage and hankering often in the way that I had been.
I think it's a healthier perspective. You know, if both marriage and singleness a good thing to do.
So I marriage is to desire a good thing but is not an ultimate thing and therefore it might be a good thing to desire, but is not a healthy thing to fixates on and to obsess over and sometimes the reverse is true on ISA people in challenging marriages where it's very easy for them to think the grass is greener on the other side that if I was single I wouldn't have any problems in my life say can cut both ways but we always tend to think the cross is greener and unknown has that realistic view. One of the things is help me. By the way is families and marriages of cults in a very well with the people being honest about both the positives on the on the challenges and it helps me as a single to have a realistic idea. Ruth both the blessings and joys of marriage on the one hand, but also some of the pains and some of the trials of it as well. So true. Yet he feel like it in the church you know married families, married couple should be reaching out to singles what what would the relationship look like to singles want that they feel pandered to. If that happens, I mean how can there be a good relation between the nearly married couples in the families and insurers in the singles. I think it needs to happen. Everyone is slightly different, of course, but I think single people.
I want to feel like anyone's projects.
So if it's you know that the family is is using that unit reaching out to them initiative is an act of charity. I could see that feeling a little condescending and patronizing, but the fact is it in God's economy. It blesses singles and it blesses married people for that to be healthy friendship and interaction between the two men were talking to a couple and I will who knew his parents are not talking about runs visit them on evening and they said we we spent so much time with other parents.
It's really nice to have a conversation with someone about other things in life other than just you know what Mrs. we've had to wipe up today and unite all those kinds of things, not really. You know they were saying that there's a whole world out there that I just I get to hear about will think about anymore is that life is is is kind of tunnel vision into sleepless nights and changing diapers and what is leaking out of where and shouldn't be in that child. So you know that it's a two-way thing so we will need to to approach it with that mentality that there's something for married people to receive from the single friends and the something for for single people to receive from the married friends. I like that you also talk about money or miss that singleness is too hard.
That's a myth that you talk about in the book talk about that a little bit because you need it mentioned your same-sex attracted are you thinking that you probably will never get married.
What are your options there. You now is is that too hard if there are people saying oh yeah that's too hard yeah I'm on I don't rule out getting married because God is sovereign foster surprises sometimes are not expecting to get married in Vermont mid 40s now very very late 30s is on so I'm not really expecting to be married now and I'm happy are the whites of� The kind of thing where I buy want to be openhanded before the Lord and say to him while I palms is expecting to be single but if if marriage is something you have for me than I will receive that with with gladness and as well as ways whenever I pray for guidance.
I pray for cults will be subtle because on prayer. You know, certain points in my life.
It's it if you'd said to me you can be single for the next 50 years might've been despairing of that I think of understood things about singleness now that I hadn't understood then not of learned how to I hope Betsy use my singleness now, and in my said I hadn't then such that actually if I'm single for the rest of my life.
That's quite an exciting prospect.
Again, this is where it's good to come back to pull saying interesting things on the seven that both marriage and singleness against visit means whatever happens we get to experience the goodness of God.
And so that that takes a lot of pressure off my entire sensitive happiness and worth in fulfillment isn't hanging in the balance on whether my marital status is single, married either of those options is a way for go to to mediate.
To me his goodness and his kindness. Both of those things are gifts and good gifts." Reasons. The kind of weird's distant uncle. He doesn't know you very well and get you wildly inappropriate gifts at Christmas time because he doesn't know you. Good night is better than we know ourselves and so we we can receive and trust what he gives us. I love that because it's a picture of year basically laying down your life before God.
Who knows you who loves you. Who knows who wants the best for you and your saying that I am content.
I have you and content. If you bring me a wife.
I'm content and I'm can I trust you as a good father and that's that's a pretty big deal for us to lay our lives before God and trust him with what we have right now and what he has for our future. That's not always an easy place to get to reasons and I I'm not consistence and it's it's an ongoing discipline is in it, but I think one of the things I realized a few years ago I was I was trying to be content in my singleness, I realized that she not need to be consenting Christ as a single person on these two things are not quite the same thing consenting Christ doesn't mean everything about being single has to be wonderful, and good old time.
It just means that sheep.
Jesus is enough. But this singleness is is easy at top .0 difficult to that point she Jesus is the constant here. If he's the source of my contentment financially.
I can park and ride out the storm so to come my way.
Which is exactly true for marriage as well yeah I was here to say it's very similar but you know, as you say singleness is too hard is a myth. Do you hear a lot of single saying that it's hard to be single because you know is a married man.
For now over 40 years. You know I look at and you quoted in the in the book. First Corinthians 732 Paul writes in I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man the single man is anxious about the things of the Lord how to please the Lord, but the married man is anxious about the worldly things how to please his wife and his interest are divided.
I read that in here that is a married man. I'm like yeah that's that's my life. I can't be single-minded on the things that you know the Lord wants me to like a single guy because I have to take care my wife and my kids and I have all these things out here is a married guy think of my life's hard. I don't think of single guys think of his life's hard but you're saying no singles feel like their life is hard, even though there is this undivided focus, you know that that Paul talks about the time but that what why do single think their lives hard because I don't think it's that hard to vary the very thing that means we can be undivided no devotion to the Lord is also the very thing that can make singleness most painful what makes you being pulled in so many directions. As a husband and father, is the fact that you have a wife and kids life has come complexity now. So for the single person there might be a kind of operational simplicities-you know me getting ready to leave for the day takes a matter of minutes compared to the example marked my brother with his wife and kids for them as a family to get ready to leave the house for the for the day takes most of the day so this does account of an operational ease that comes with being single but at the same time, you know that the danger of singleness and this is where one of us needs to kind of be more careful is the dangers it can easily become isolating on Monday because you're not as interwoven and in the lives of other people as you would be if you're a parent and a spouse shouldn't mean that single people, all completely relationally isolated, that that's not meant to be the case but it's gonna take the whole church, making sure that's not the case so that can be one of the hard things about singleness is is that absence of those built-in other people to rule was going to be there in your life or least he would. I would always be that, but again one of the things in this. This is been up a benefit to me of being a pastor and sing a lot of lives up close is you realize the very things that I might feel nervous about with long-term singleness apply just as well to marriage a menu on what you think you will whose conflict often when a mold being American has no guarantee, you know can have that if you want to write so is notice if all the securities on the marriage side of the ledger here on this just fundamental insecurity built into into this world.
Anyway, one of the things I often say to married people is that it's it's a uncomfortable thing to say. In some respects but over half of you to be single again couples thing only.the same time. Saturday marriages end in divorce. So singleness is not an irrelevance for you if you married because half of you can to be single again one day and best time to think through what the Bible says about singleness is before you find yourself plunged back into it in some kind of painful traumatic context so let's assail a lot of the things we might find hard about singleness, we don't always realize it also true of people who married now. I didn't think actually I've I've seen. I've seen people before the lovely in their marriages and I would rather be lonely as a single person than live in a isomeric person that seems to me a very challenging situation to be in. I think that that's true and I talked to many women when we've experienced hard times in our marriage.
I can remember in the middle of the night laying beside day thinking I have never felt lonelier in my life because there's an expectation that that person should fulfill the needs that I have my loneliness needs can they don't and so then there's a form of rejection with that as well or are wondering if there something wrong with me so you're right have tucked in many, many married people that have an extreme sense of loneliness and it's it's complicated on either side. I have a question. What are the things that married people say to singles the no-bid manual near the going in the other direction as well.
I think it can be things like you still single or shorter you're looking for someone right now will join us to find someone for you.
Oh, I think it may be different for you if you're single guys' are single girl missing. If you're single girl paper and more of a rush to set you up if you're single guy. People tend to achieve the probably incapable of looking off to yourself oh so the number of times I've had people run from meal and as soon as I put the food down the front of the never going to subjects, one ice, which tells me that on the way that they were basically having like I whatever comes out of the can that he opens and he puts in front of us. We just can have to wait. Okay because as a basis of cultural expectation.
If you're a single man. You're probably living like a 16-year-old, so this does lots of things I remember one friend of mine saying months.
He said he was church weddings. The old ladies at church would come up to him and say what could be you next time and he said anyway he could stop them, saying that to them is by saying it to them at church, funerals give you Eric's eruption. The body well there is a slight. I did get my revenge on some of my married friends and if they just had a child different than mine.
The church as she recently had a child and I know he's getting you commissions that the nightly sleep. He gets in minutes and as I was talking to me other than us, and I'm sorry from taught article if it had the energy to hit me. I think you would've done so worn out I knew I was safe yet. I do think you know there's a perspective as married couples that singles aren't fulfilled, they don't cook well they don't live well there just managing that they're nowhere near living the life that were 11 and this is often thought by married couples who are happy in their marriage. And yet there like you know this single guy or single girl can't be fulfilled in their life. Talk about that. How does a single truly find fulfillment is.
Is it is it fulfilling life.
But then Nora's marriage yeah does there's a serious point behind that which is Christ is fulfilling so he he says that on 635.
This is such a precious first amazes on the road of life of the comes to me will not hunger whoever believes in me will never thirst and say he saying that he is the only one that will ultimately satisfy us today.
There is a hunger and thirst in our souls that the best even the best of human relationships will not be able to satisfy a dear friend of mine in his early 70s with a very very happy in a very healthy marriage that both Comerica bath and bison were in their early 20s and legal merits have been a very long and very happy marriage and he said to me once he said my marriage is much better than I thought it would be a much better than I deserve it to be but is not enough. I saw this does Christian wisdom in that statement and I think you were saying earlier that week. We have this expectation that the human partner is meant to fulfill every need and therefore Phyllis can feel a sense of disappointment or even resentment when that is the case, and that's that's because with putting an expectation on marriage, which it's not designed to fulfill if Jesus is the bread of life. It means a husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend are not going to be able to be there for us and if were thinking. Marriage is going to meet with my relational needs. One of my emotional needs of my psychological needs where she can be very difficult to be married. Satan because we will either wear routes unsuspecting spouse will they will end up crushing us. That's exactly what I did do I think in our first years of marriage, I think I started out with my eyes and my heart for Jesus, knowing that he would be the fulfiller of my soul. But somewhere along the line I felt like Dave wasn't meeting the expectations that I had and I think this is true whether you're single or married, when you take your eyes off of Christ, who is the lover of our souls. The person that gives us life and we put him on any thing else. The other thing becomes an idol and I'll never forget the day and I was so distraught in our marriage so broken.
I just felt so abandoned by Dave. I felt like I didn't really have much love left for him and I remember being on my knees and telling catlike like I thought I thought my marriage would look like this and I thought Dave would be doing these things for me and I heard it so clearly in my mind that thought of and Wilson. I never created Dave to meet all of your needs.
He's not equipped to do that. I never had an intention that he would do that I am the one who will meet your needs. I am the giver of life, not your husband, and I think whether were single or married. We all have to come to that point F he is the giver of life. He is the purpose that's why he died to have that relationship with me that if the bridegroom and the bride coming together and that is he is the person that gives satisfaction more than any other thing or person can give. And I think that's it obviously true for a single person or married in either state. We look somewhere else. Single thinking is marriage married people they get it single and we miss going vertical when you go vertical you find life whether whether you're single or married, and if you miss that. It doesn't matter if you're married or not married. If you miss that you miss licensor is a good reminder to. That's the truth of the gospel and that's where life is found in Christ. Thanks Sam several complex having me. I imagine that most of your listing today are like your not single you're married. And yet you know singles people at church people in your neighborhood door in your workplace.
So we talk to us burst. I think it's important for us to think rightly about singleness in God's design for this. This is where Sam's book can be helpful for us and I think we need to be inviting singles. We know into the larger community of faith into our homes and in the be a part of our extended family and then let me talk to those of you who are listing who are single. I hope this conversation between Dave MAM and Sam Albury has been helpful for you and I hope you'll get copies of Sam's book which is titled seven myths about singleness with the book we got in our family like today resource Center. I think it will help you think rightly about where you are in life right now and how you can maximize your singleness for God's glory. You can find out about Sam's book. When you go to our website which is family life to a.com. Again, the title of the book is seven myths about singleness by Sam Albury ordered from us online@familylifetothe.com or call to order at one 800 FL today, 1-800-358-6329 that's one 800 F as in family L as in life, and then the word today not let me take just a minute and say thank you to those of you who have helped make today's program possible conversations like the one we listen to today are not possible without listers like you who step forward and help fund the production and syndication of this daily radio program this podcast.
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As a result of tragic events.
Jonathan Pitts lost his wife Winter a number of years ago and he joins us to talk about living through what he calls his winter season.
I hope you can tune in for that tomorrow on behalf of our hosts David and Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine will see you back tomorrow for another edition of family life, family life, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most