God's Perspective for Single Women 1

“Oh, I am 23 years old and don’t even have a boyfriend. Is something wrong with me?”

“My pastor is trying to set me up with an eligible bachelor in my church. I don’t even like the way the guy acts. Should I go out with him, just to be nice?”

“Someday, I would like to have a family and children. There are no prospects in my life right now. Will it ever happen?”

“I am not married, and I don’t feel fully realized as a woman.”

“Is it okay that I have no desire to get married? Or am I weird?”

“My aunt actually expects me to go out and find a boyfriend. Is that the way it should be? Do I have to go hunting?”

“I know that I am in God’s will to be in this ministry (or school, work, whatever) at this time in my life. Does this mean I will never get married?”

I could go on and on.

Christian women all over the world are wondering what God thinks about being single. They’re confused because authority figures in their lives give them conflicting messages. The world has messages too.

Where does the Christian single woman fit in?

Does she fit in?

Always, always, the answers are in the Bible. Thankfully, there are only a few to look at, so the concepts are easy to find and easy to understand. (This will be a series of blog posts, since there is more than enough material to put in only one.)

Let’s look first at 1 Corinthians 7:34.

There is difference also between a wife and a virgin.

The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord,

that she may be holy both in body and in spirit:

but she that is married careth for the things of the world,

how she may please her husband.

Okay, the wife and the unmarried woman both serve.

• The unmarried woman serves whom? The Lord
• The married woman serves whom? Her husband

Both are sacred duties, but they are different duties.

The single woman can use all of her time to serve the Lord. She can be active in her church, ministering to others, teaching and helping. All of her non-working time can be spent serving the Lord. (Her working time, too, for that matter—in being a good testimony where God has put her.) She is responsible to God as her head and to her father as her advisor.

The married woman, in contrast, serves her husband. She yields to his authority. She cannot give all her time to the ministry, as she must serve her husband.

Looking at this biblical concept from 1 Corinthians 7:34, there are some obvious advantages of the single life:

• More time to serve God
• More time to serve others
• More time to be involved in your church
• More flexibility in your schedule. (You can go to bed when you want to and get up when you want to. You can decide what to do with your time.)
• More quiet at home in which to worship God in private devotions and work on projects for others.
• More freedom to minister. By that I mean that you don’t have to be thinking about feeding a whole family, or who needs the car now, or how to coordinate activities. You only need to know if the ministry is something you know God is leading you to do and then do it.

In the next post, we’ll explore another Bible passage specifically for single women.