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PROGRAM D-8067
Whether you’re single or married, I hope you will take to heart my suggestions of things you should never say to a single Christian. In my book, Common Mistakes Singles Make, I devote the last chapter to mistakes married people make in communicating with singles. In addition, Susan Maycinik had some great thoughts on this in an article in “Today’s Christian Woman” magazine. I thank her for permission to use some of her ideas.
I first pointed out that you should never say to a single, “God will send someone to you in his time if you’ll learn to be content.” Here’s another no-no: “Before you find someone wonderful, you’ve got to be someone wonderful!”
Often messages to singles center around this theme: When you’re everything God wants you to be, when you are attractive enough and spiritual enough, then you’ll be worthy of a man or woman, and the right person will come along.
God doesn’t reward us with a mate for our spiritual maturity! Furthermore, our motivation to be a godly woman or man should never be to get anything back from God, including a mate. Some very godly women and men never marry—I could name many that I know—while many who are a long way from spiritual maturity find what often looks like a wonderful partner at an early age.
I was single for over forty years before I married a couple of years ago and, I must confess I went through the stage of looking around at the husbands of other women thinking, “What has she got that I don’t have? How did she get him?” There’s that idea that the great mates go to the great people and, if we don’t have a mate, somehow it’s our fault.
Women are often focused on how they look: If they were just thinner or prettier they would find a husband. Men seem to focus more on accomplishment and status: If they had a great job, lots of money, or some special talent, they’d find the right woman.
Please, be careful never to give that message to any single person you know. It reinforces this insidious notion that marriage is first-class living and singleness is second-class. Nothing in scripture validates that message. Marriage is certainly of God and should be honored, but think of the people in scripture used mightily by God who were single—beginning with Jesus, and including Lydia, Mary Magdalene, the Apostle Paul, Dorcas, and many others.