The Goodness of God in Our Singleness

Most of the single women I have known over the years have desired to be married. They have prayed long and hard for God's provision of a mate, and I've seen many of those prayers answered with godly marriages. Others have received a different sort of answer--grace to remain single with contentment and calls to amazing ministry opportunities.

Still others seem not to have received any answer at all to their prayers for marriage. As the years go on, their discontentment lingers and their anxiety increases. Oh, they recognize God's blessings in their lives—great jobs, lots of friends, and good churches—but they just can't get past the fear that their chances for having a family of their own are growing dimmer by the year. As a result, they do not enjoy their single years, nor are they able to serve God with joy in day-to-day things.

But the reality of such fears is that they aren't caused by remaining unmarried. The reason we remain anxious and unhappy is that we aren't trusting God in this area of our lives. And the reason we aren't trusting him, although we may not recognize it, is because deep down in our hearts, we doesn't really believe God is being good to us in allowing us to remain single. When struggles to trust God arise it is always because, at some level, we don't really believe he is good.

God often acts contrary to how we think a good God should act. The answer we think we need seems so logical and clear to our way of thinking, yet God does not provide it. This is where faith comes in. Real faith isn’t believing that God will do a particular thing; real faith is believing that God is good, no matter what he does, and however he chooses to answer our prayers.

God always has our best in mind, and he works to bring it about, no matter how it may look initially to our way of thinking. We can trust him. We can trust that the reason we are single today is because God is being good to us today.