An Opportunity for Single’s By Pastor Brennan

 As a single Christian, you have a wonderful opportunity.

      “Opportunity? Yeah, it is an opportunity to be lonely, frustrated, and depressed. It is an opportunity to have your hopes dashed, your feelings hurt, and your pride whacked. It is an opportunity to always be on the outside looking in. It is an opportunity to watch your old friends start new lives with their families and leave me behind. It is an opportunity for continual temptation. It is an opportunity for hypocrisy as I try to pretend in public that being single doesn’t bother me. Yeah, that’s a really wonderful opportunity you’re talking about right there, preacher.” Now, throw in some text speak, say, ROFLOL, and an eye rolling emoticon and we start to get the picture of how some single Christians view my opening proposition.

        I understand their pain, I really do. At my college graduation the chancellor had the girls in the crowd sing this encouraging little ditty:

            If you don’t leave with a woman you don’t leave at all

            If you don’t leave with a woman you don’t leave at all

            If you’re so dumb that you can’t find

            A woman in the registering line

            If you don’t leave with a woman you don’t leave at all

I sat there in the crowd, rather numb, being one of the few who hadn’t found anybody. And that wasn’t for lack of looking, either, let me tell you!

         Yet at the same time I was smack dab in the middle of a wonderful

opportunity. Why do I say that? Very simply, my friend, because God said

so. In I Corinthians 7 the Apostle Paul is discussing family, marriage, sex,

and the single life. In it he makes several rather astounding assertions

regarding the single life. One of them is this, “But I would have you without

carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the

Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth for the

things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.”

      In essence, Paul is maintaining that the single Christian has more of an opportunity to serve the Lord than a married Christian does. That is a wonderful aspect about the single life that shouldn’t be overlooked.

      As a single man, I could spent 10 hours of my day off building a bus route. As a single man, I could use my vacation time to serve during our church conferences. As a single man, I could go soul winning at midnight. As a single man, I could give a substantially higher percentage than just the tithe to my church. As a single man, I could mentor teenagers one-on-one by the hour. As a single man, I could pick up and move to follow God’s will relatively easily. As a single man, I could start a church and live in the office. Now, as a married man with three children I no longer have that type of flexibility.

      My dear friend, I repeat, as a single Christian you have a wonderful opportunity. Please don’t view your life status as a burden. Rather, let me kindly encourage you to view it through a Scriptural lens for what it actually is – a wonderful opportunity to care for the things that belong to the Lord.