The Meaning of Marriage Week 7 Singleness

The following post is from a series of small group discussion guides I wrote for my local church to go along with the weekend messages. The message series, entitled "The Meaning of Marriage" heavily referenced the book of the same name by Timothy and Kathy Keller. The book can be found at your local bookstore, and original message series can be found at vineyardchristian.org

The Meaning of Marriage: For singles and marrieds (Week 7)

OPENING PRAYER: God, we thank you for the gifts that you grant us. You know all things that we need and provide for us in all ways. We thank you for this daily. Amen

Imagine, if you will, a father with two sons. One son was into baseball. He lived and breathed it, sleeping with his mitt, talking about favorite players at the dinner table and watching recordings of famous games. The other son deeply loved art, constantly sketching, staying up late painting. He spent hours looking at famous works of art online, studying the brushstrokes of masters. For Christmas one year, the father got the first son trip to a Red’s game, where he got to sit by the dugout, then meet players after the game. He also got to go home with an autographed Joey Votto jersey. For the other son, a trip to the museum to see a new exhibition by a local artist, where he got to attend a dinner with Q&A with the artist, who also gifted the young man with a collection of brushes.

Which son got the greater gift? Which son did the father love more? The answer is neither, both received the gift that was meant for them. If the sons had traded gifts, it’s very likely that neither would have enjoyed it so much as if they had the gift intended for them. It was “cut to their size.” This week, we learn about the gifts that God grants us for “singleness” as well as married life.

Icebreaker: What is your favorite gift you’ve ever received? What made the gift so special? Now, going around the group, imagine you got the favorite gift of the person sitting opposite of you. (may need to retool this question based on how your group is seated) How would you feel about this gift? Would you get as much pleasure from it as the person who received it?

We’re looking this week at another verse written by the same author as our key marriage verse, Paul. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul lays out further guidelines for marriage. 1 Corinthians 7:7-9

“I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that. Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion”

It’s interesting that the word for gift here, “charisma” is the same word that Paul uses throughout his writings to describe the “Gifts of the Spirit.” In this, Paul is comparing singleness and married life to things like healing and prophecy. Each of us having our own roles to play.

Taking this further, when Paul talks about “But each of you has your own gift from God” when referring to singleness, we have to remember too that other gifts from God, such as prophecy or healing, are given, not to just enhance the life of the person moving in that gift, but to help grow and foster the church as a whole!

Discussion: What do you think it means to consider single life or married life as a spiritual gift? How might this affect the way you look at these parts of life in the church?

It’s helpful at this point to look further on in the same letter, when Paul goes on to talk about the gifts of God and how they interact with one another. 1 Corinthians 12:14-16

“Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. Now if the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.

This comes after Paul has listed some of the various gifts of the Spirit and how they are given out to those who receive them. Paul is talking about how we should never view one or more people in the body of Christ as more or less “important” because of their gifts, just like the two sons in our earlier story, neither could say the father loved them more or less because of their very different gifts. To each of us is given what we need for what God is calling us to at that particular time. And just like a person may have a moment in life where they experience the gift prophecy, but then later the gift of tongues, we may have different times in our life when God may have us in a gift of singleness(though we by nature will all have this gift at the start of our adult lives) and then later the gift of married life. Further, just like the person moving in healing cannot say that God loves them more or that the are holier than the person moving in the discerning of spirits, the person who has the gift of singleness cannot say that God loves them more or less, or that they are more or less holy, than the person to whom God is moving in the gift of marriage.

Discussion: In your own life, have you seen some of the gifts of God as better or worse than others? Have you experienced jealousy over the gifts that God may have given to someone else? How do you or did you move through this? How can we learn more about God and his love by looking at these gifts as equal?

This weekend, talked about how important it was to have a proper view of marriage, even if you are single. Barry read a quote from Timothy Keller, author of our companion book, The Meaning of Marriage.  “Singles cannot live their lives well as singles without a balanced, well informed view of marriage. They will either under or over desire marriage, either way of thinking will distort their lives.” This gives us an interesting look at how a balanced approach to marriage can help the life of a single person. Many of us may know a person who has chased after relationships, looking at every member of the opposite sex as a possible partner, dropping the topic of marriage into almost every conversation. In fact, many of us may have BEEN that person at various points in our lives. Similarly speaking, we may all know someone who is constantly living the “single life,” speaking down about the idea of being “tied down” or “giving up on life” when referring to marriage. Constantly moving from one shallow relationship to another. Again, many of us may have been this person. We know that either way can be unhealthy, and both can lead to pain and loneliness.

To help illustrate this, I’d like to share with you a testimony of someone who’s experienced some of these extremes.

I know all too well how it feels to make an idol out of marriage. Several years ago, I found myself in a relationship with a woman who did not share my faith. Slowly, over time, I gave up more and more of the things that mattered to me in my life because I thought they would get in the way of my relationship with her. I believed that this was my one last chance as a happily married family life. To be clear, at no point did she require that I give any of these things up for her, but just the thought in my own head that they would get in the way of the relationship was enough to make me abandon those things. I slowly pulled away from God and my relationship with Him. At the time, I was blessed to be working in ministry, and I stepped away from that calling because I thought doing so would let me pursue the family I wanted. The woman had a daughter who had been born shortly before we’d begun dating, and in the course of the relationship, I was fashioning my heart more and more to fit with them. I was convinced this was my family. I had friends, both Christian and non-Christian, who stepped in to tell me that they were bothered by what they were seeing. I was fully and completely dedicated to the relationship, in many ways forcing things to grow faster than she may have been prepared for. After a few years, we decided to move in together in preparation for marriage. Again, this was something that previously I would have been opposed to, but now I pursued it because I thought it was what she had wanted. After almost a year of living together, she finally told me that she had been pursuing relationships with other men. I still did not easily let go and spent the next few months fighting to make the relationship work. Finally, she moved out, leaving me without the family I had imagined I was pursuing.

This began a period of my life when I pursued the opposite extreme. Out of fear of being hurt again, I resisted opening up emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually to anyone else, but in a desire to not be “alone” still attempted to date. This led to several years of broken and shallow short relationships. I also fed myself to work, an office job I’d picked up in the intervening time. My life was swallowed up with “singleness” but not the gift of God. Finally, through a personal crisis, I came back into my relationship with my Maker, and have begun to find the place where I belong. This does not mean I now exist in some blessed monk like existence of perfect happiness, in fact, most days I keep slipping into either one of the extremes, either desiring relationship enough to lose myself, or fearing marriage so much to cut off those around me. But every day, I pray and pursue God to find the place that he has for me.

Discussion: Looking at this testimony, where do we see the unhealthy view of marriage taking it’s toll? Have we had those experiences in our own lives? What do we pursue to find our proper place away from these extremes?

Again, we return to the idea of marriage or singleness as a gift from God, given for a specific time and place. It may be that some people are called to singleness for their whole lives, while others may be called to it for a season. If each of these are a gift from God, we are able to see that pursuing God in our lives helps us come closer to the gift, while pursuing someone else may only bring us closer to that person for a little while.

In a classic illustration used by many Christians, we can imagine a pyramid with God at the top, and a man and woman at opposite sides. If they move to get closer, the pyramid may be in the way, but if they climb the pyramid in an effort to get closer to God, they’re also drawn naturally closer to each other.

Discussion: How can or should this change our view of dating?

Take a moment and pray with each other individually or as a group. 

Closing Prayer: “Father, we thank you for the gifts that you provide in our lives. We seek your blessing as we honor the places that you have set for each of us, with no more honor for any one person, but all honor for you. In your name we pray, Amen.