Singleness III

Contentment -

This post really could apply to all areas of life, but I think it is a major part of being single! It is so hard to always be content. We strive every day to be joyful in our circumstances, and not pout, whine, or hold a pity party for ourselves. Let’s look at what the Bible has to say about being content.

Philippians 4:11-13 says, “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.”

So, what is the secret that Paul has found? I believe the answer lies in the passage above.

Philippians 4:4-7 says, “Rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Consider also the last sentence of the previous verse I quoted: I can do everything through Him who gives me strength. What’s the secret? Remembering that the Lord is near, He is our sympathetic high priest, and we can rely on Him to give us strength through every circumstance. So why be discontent? Have you not been given everything through Christ? Discontentment is a very serious issue, and one of the biggest things I struggle with. Discontentment is really saying this to God:

My plans are better then Yours.
I want to do things my way.
I’m sick of waiting for the plans You have for my life, I want them now.
I do not trust that You have a better plan for me then I could ever come up with.
I am forgetting that RIGHT NOW is part of Your plan for me.
I want to hurry up, skip this season and get on with life. God, speed up. I want You to do things in MY time, not Yours.
I’m forgetting to look at how I can grow NOW, bless others NOW, mature NOW, be close to You NOW, but I want something else.

In this case, something else is a husband. A boyfriend. A companion. Those who are discontent in this area are looking RIGHT PAST our Savior, the Lover of our Soul, the Treasure of the universe, and saying He is not enough. He isn’t enough to satisfy our souls. He isn’t enough to fill us with contentment and joy.

Let me balance this out a little so you do not think I am against marriage or anything! Marriage is God’s beautiful design. Don’t get me wrong. I want to be married someday. I want to have a husband and a wheelbarrow full of kids. But, I am way too young. I’m not even out of highschool, let alone mature enough to make a wise choice about marriage or be ready to have a family. It is good to have goals in life, to have dreams, and aspirations. But I caution you, do not be too focused on tomorrow that you lose sight of today. TODAY is the day God has given you. You may not get tomorrow. You may die before you even finish reading this post. Morbid, but true. You are never guaranteed another breath. Imagine you die, go to heaven, and God says, “What did you do for Me on earth?” What will be your response? Will you only be able to say, “I dreamed about all the plans You may have for me, Lord.” Will you say, “God, I saw why you had me where You had me, the timing was Yours, and I used it to glorify You. I didn’t worry about the future, but I remembered that You still sit on the throne and that whatever I go through, I can do all things through You, who strengthens me.” Now, you may not know why God has you where you are right now, but you don’t need to know all His plans to give Him the glory, or to make the best use of your time.

So, I urge you, dear sisters in Christ, stop worrying. Stop being discontent. Praise God in your circumstances. Remember that CONTENTMENT IS THE ESSENCE OF SPIRITUAL BEAUTY!!! There is nothing more beautiful or more glorifying to our Lord and Savior, then a heart that is complete in Him. A soul that alone desires Jesus as our heavenly Treasure. Don’t forget your Treasure! Don’t scorn it and say it isn’t enough.

Blessings,
~Gretchen~

Singleness II

The Curse of Singleness Part II

While you might have laughed at the absurdity of the title, there are many Christian girls who do view singleness as a curse. Unfortunately, most of us single gals fall into this class. Admit it…how many of you girls have ever thought that you would just love to get this part of your life over, get married, have kids and live happily ever after. Yup. I thought so. Most of you have wished that. If you haven’t already…you will.
Thankfully, God did not stick the singleness season into your life for no reason. As with all things, God has the perfect plan. These years of our lives are THE MOST important. Why? Because they shape us into the women that we will be for the REST of our lives. We have these years to be taught and trained and whipped into the women that will make godly wives and mothers in the later years. How many of you have been somewhere in public and seen a young couple or family and thought that you would want to be just like that 10+ years down the road. We all have dreams or desires for the future and singleness is our training ground to work towards those dreams.
There are several key areas that we need to focus on as godly ladies so we can be women that honor God in the future.
1) Realize that God has a plan for you. Your times are in HIS hands. Every minute of your life has been planned down to the slightest detail. Please don’t waste your life wondering when Prince Charming will show. If he does come, he will come in God’s timing…..not yours.

2) Make God your center. God is training your for His work….Strive to become the woman that He desires you to be. Do you have a picture of the wife/mother you want to be? Take steps to become that….You don’t suddenly become patient, loving or compassionate when you get married….That is only the product of long years that you’ve shed blood, sweat and tears. It’s better to learn that BEFORE you get married…not after.

3) Don’t give your heart away to another. Your affections belongs to your future husband…anyone else who takes it is merely a thief. Here’s a good piece of advice: Treat EVERY man as ANOTHER woman’s husband. Would you flirt with another girl’s husband? Ya, I know….the thought is repulsive, but you get my point. 99% of the guys out there will be married to other women….Therefore, keep them out of heart and mind.

Gals….there is so much more I could say about singleness. If there is one thing that I want you to take away from this is that singleness is essentially your boot camp…Training you to become a godly woman. Make God the center of your heart….Wait patiently for His timing…And keep guys at arm’s length while you fall in love with CHRIST.


(Bug)

Hey ladies! I’m sorry we’ve kinda slipped from blogging right now! I will be posting on singleness as soon as possible; however, I wanted to share something with you first. This has been a very difficult week for me…one of those weeks where God truly tests your faith. During this time my sister at collage sent me this amazing sermon by John Piper, the author of Desiring God. The title of this sermon is “Don’t Waste your Cancer”…Most of us do not have cancer. However, God has placed challenging things into our lives to test us and make us more like Him. Don’t waste this time of trial!! So as you read though this sermon, instead of reading “cancer” think about what God has placed in your life to test you. And thank him for it. These times of testing are meant to CHANGE us…for the better. Don’t waste that opportunity!

Bug


Don’t Waste Your Cancer
John Piper
Desiring God

I write this on the eve of prostate surgery. I believe in God’s power to heal—by miracle and by medicine. I believe it is right and good to pray for both kinds of healing. Cancer is not wasted when it is healed by God. He gets the glory and that is why cancer exists. So not to pray for healing may waste your cancer. But healing is not God’s plan for everyone. And there are many other ways to waste your cancer. I am praying for myself and for you that we will not waste this pain.

1. You will waste your cancer if you do not believe it is designed for you by God.
It will not do to say that God only uses our cancer but does not design it. What God permits, he permits for a reason. And that reason is his design. If God foresees molecular developments becoming cancer, he can stop it or not. If he does not, he has a purpose. Since he is infinitely wise, it is right to call this purpose a design. Satan is real and causes many pleasures and pains. But he is not ultimate. So when he strikes Job with boils (Job 2:7), Job attributes it ultimately to God (2:10) and the inspired writer agrees: “They . . . comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him” (Job 42:11). If you don’t believe your cancer is designed for you by God, you will waste it.

2. You will waste your cancer if you believe it is a curse and not a gift.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). “There is no enchantment against Jacob, no divination against Israel” (Numbers 23:23). “The LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11).

3. You will waste your cancer if you seek comfort from your odds rather than from God.
The design of God in your cancer is not to train you in the rationalistic, human calculation of odds. The world gets comfort from their odds. Not Christians. Some count their chariots (percentages of survival) and some count their horses (side effects of treatment), but we trust in the name of the LORD our God (Psalm 20:7). God’s design is clear from 2 Corinthians 1:9, “We felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.” The aim of God in your cancer (among a thousand other good things) is to knock props out from under our hearts so that we rely utterly on him.

4. You will waste your cancer if you refuse to think about death.
We will all die, if Jesus postpones his return. Not to think about what it will be like to leave this life and meet God is folly. Ecclesiastes 7:2 says, “It is better to go to the house of mourning [a funeral] than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.” How can you lay it to heart if you won’t think about it? Psalm 90:12 says, “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Numbering your days means thinking about how few there are and that they will end. How will you get a heart of wisdom if you refuse to think about this? What a waste, if we do not think about death.

5. You will waste your cancer if you think that “beating” cancer means staying alive rather than cherishing Christ.
Satan’s and God’s designs in your cancer are not the same. Satan designs to destroy your love for Christ. God designs to deepen your love for Christ. Cancer does not win if you die. It wins if you fail to cherish Christ. God’s design is to wean you off the breast of the world and feast you on the sufficiency of Christ. It is meant to help you say and feel, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” And to know that therefore, “To live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 3:8; 1:21).

6. You will waste your cancer if you spend too much time reading about cancer and not enough time reading about God.
It is not wrong to know about cancer. Ignorance is not a virtue. But the lure to know more and more and the lack of zeal to know God more and more is symptomatic of unbelief. Cancer is meant to waken us to the reality of God. It is meant to put feeling and force behind the command, “Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD” (Hosea 6:3). It is meant to waken us to the truth of Daniel 11:32, “The people who know their God shall stand firm and take action.” It is meant to make unshakable, indestructible oak trees out of us: “His delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers” (Psalm 1:2). What a waste of cancer if we read day and night about cancer and not about God.

7. You will waste your cancer if you let it drive you into solitude instead of deepen your relationships with manifest affection.
When Epaphroditus brought the gifts to Paul sent by the Philippian church he became ill and almost died. Paul tells the Philippians, “He has been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill” (Philippians 2:26-27). What an amazing response! It does not say they were distressed that he was ill, but that he was distressed because they heard he was ill. That is the kind of heart God is aiming to create with cancer: a deeply affectionate, caring heart for people. Don’t waste your cancer by retreating into yourself.

8. You will waste your cancer if you grieve as those who have no hope.
Paul used this phrase in relation to those whose loved ones had died: “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). There is a grief at death. Even for the believer who dies, there is temporary loss—loss of body, and loss of loved ones here, and loss of earthly ministry. But the grief is different—it is permeated with hope. “We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). Don’t waste your cancer grieving as those who don’t have this hope.

9. You will waste your cancer if you treat sin as casually as before.
Are your besetting sins as attractive as they were before you had cancer? If so you are wasting your cancer. Cancer is designed to destroy the appetite for sin. Pride, greed, lust, hatred, unforgiveness, impatience, laziness, procrastination—all these are the adversaries that cancer is meant to attack. Don’t just think of battling against cancer. Also think of battling with cancer. All these things are worse enemies than cancer. Don’t waste the power of cancer to crush these foes. Let the presence of eternity make the sins of time look as futile as they really are. “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” (Luke 9:25).

10. You will waste your cancer if you fail to use it as a means of witness to the truth and glory of Christ.
Christians are never anywhere by divine accident. There are reasons for why we wind up where we do. Consider what Jesus said about painful, unplanned circumstances: “They will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. This will be your opportunity to bear witness” (Luke 21:12 -13). So it is with cancer. This will be an opportunity to bear witness. Christ is infinitely worthy. Here is a golden opportunity to show that he is worth more than life. Don’t waste it.

Remember you are not left alone. You will have the help you need. “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).