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Roadblocks To The Successful Single Life

By Debbie Adebayo
Discover how to live a successful single life!
There are four common roadblocks that keep single adults from a successful single life.  This article will identify those roadblocks and tell you how to deal with them. 

 


The first roadblock is ignorance of purpose.  Hosea 4:6 says:  My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge.  If you don't know your purpose, you can't accomplish it.  Most single adults have never been taught God's purpose for their single adult life.  I have heard it said that if you don't know the purpose of a thing you will misuse it.  Many single adults are misusing their single life because they fail to understand the purpose of their single life.  They are trying to seduce men and manipulate women into ungodly relationships. They are shacking up and sleeping over. They are experiencing unnecessary pain, loneliness and frustration.  They are overweight and in debt and they are living unfulfilled and mediocre lives because they are ignorant of their purpose, God's intended aim, goal and desired result for their single life.  As you begin to apply the Word of God to your life, the Spirit of God will begin to cause you to operate in a revelation of your purpose and when you get a genuine revelation of the purpose of your single adult life, it will take on a dimension of fulfillment and impact that you did not realize was possible. 


 


The second roadblock is the lack of desire to accomplish God's purpose for your single life.  Your desires must be submitted to God's will.  You must want God and His will more than you want anything else.  God's will brings completeness, satisfaction, fulfillment and ultimately glory to his Great Name.  Entering into undivided, undistracted devotion with God will mold your desires into Godly desires, so that you begin to want what God wants.  You will begin to understand that God has seasons for your life and this season is for singleness, and He has something He wants you to do for Him and His kingdom that can best be accomplished while you are single and totally focused on Him without the distraction of a family.  Some of you may be saying right now, "but I have been single for so long," and that may be the case.  But remember from God's viewpoint, you still may not have accomplished His plan for your life as a single adult and to God that is more important than your getting a marriage partner.  The Apostle Paul, one of the most successful singles that ever existed in: 1 Corinthians 7:32 -35 (NIV) defines the focal point of the unmarried life.  But I want you to be without care. He who is unmarried cares for the things that belong to the Lord, how He may please the Lord. 33.  But he who is married cares about the things of the world how He may please His wife.  34.  There is a difference between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman cares about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit. But she who is married cares about the things of the world how she may please her husband.  35.  And this I say for your own profit, not that I may put a leash on you, but for what is proper, and that you may serve the Lord without distraction.    Paul had a revelation of what it took to have a successful single life and he had a testimony of a successful single life.  He had grown to the point that he recognized the key advantage of the single life was the opportunity to have undivided and undistracted devotion with God and he saw that as more advantageous than the distractions of married life.  He also had the productivity and fulfillment that comes as a result of that level of devotion.   I don't believe Paul was putting down married life, but he was saying that while you are single, you should  recognize that you have an opportunity to interact with God like you will never have as a married person.  Take advantage of it.  Most of us resist that type of thinking.  I know as a young adult single, I did.  I didn't want to interact with God, I wanted to interact with a man and I wanted God's involvement in my life to the extent that it would help me get a man.  God had to change my desires and He did that as I began to yield my life over to Him and His purposes.  It took a season of sexual promiscuity as a single adult, a bad marriage and an excruciatingly painful divorce to break me to the point that I was willing to change my desires so that I began to want His will and purposes for my life more than I wanted a man and marriage.  Philippians 2:13 says:  For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.  If you lack desire for God's will for your life as a single adult, pray and ask Him to work that desire in you as this scripture passage says.  Pray as the most powerful single that ever existed, prayed.  Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane -- when I am sure he would have rather have been married and had a family than face what he had to face, crucifixion, prayed, "Father not my will, but your will be done."  God, the Holy Spirit will begin to usher you into the Word of God for revelation and revolutionize your desires so that they come in line with the will of God.  Psalms 37:4 says: Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.   Contrary to popular opinion, that does not mean God will give you want you want, but what it does mean is God will give you what He wants you to have.  The Hebrew study of that scripture reveals that God actually bends your desires so that they come in line with His will and then He grants you your desires.  God is interested in your well-being.  He is the only one that can bring you ultimate satisfaction --  not marriage, not children, not sex on a regular basis.  Only His will!  God is not trying to withhold marriage from you to be cruel or mean to you, He knows what's best.  He could have a kingdom assignment for you to accomplish that you can best do while you are single and undistracted with the concerns of ministering to your family.  If you get ahead of His plan and select a mate before His timing, the people you are to bless suffer, and so do you and the person you marry and the children you produce because you are out of God's will.  He could need this time to give you a kingdom assignment that performs a crucifixion on you to prepare you for the Godly mate He has for you.  Maybe you need to lose 75 pounds so your God-given mate can recognize you, maybe you need to get out of debt so you can be a responsible father to the children he has planned for you to care for.  Maybe God will have you start a ministry so you will have the experience that will be able to offer the right kind of help or leadership to the woman or man God has for you, or maybe God wants you to remain single and experience the awesome life of a single person, like the Apostle Paul, giving your life totally and completely to serve the Kingdom of God. 


 


The third roaddblock is the inability to handle the pressure of the single life.  It takes fortitude and courage to remain single and discover purpose, fulfillment and fruitfulness.  Just like it takes courage to have a successful marriage.  You must develop the ability to endure difficult times.  You must learn the secret to avoiding loneliness.  You must learn how to live without sex, you must learn how to be genuinely happy when all your friends are married and have children and you are still single, you must learn how to be at peace being the only single in a crowd of married couples and their children, you must learn to accept that there are those who will be convinced there must be something wrong with you, if you are over 35 and still not married.  You must learn to eat alone and participate in other activities when there is no other available companionship, you must learn to handle the painful void that comes during the holidays such as Christmas and Valentines Day, you must learn how to wait on God and live by faith, you must learn to take care of yourself, your home, your car, your clothes, your food - this is especially true of single men.  The single life at times is not easy.  It is pressure and if you are going to discover purpose for your single life you must be able to deal with the pressure of that life.  If you don't deal with the pressure you will take matters into your own hand and miss your God-ordained purpose for singleness.  Being married is not being better off than being single.  The married life is not better than the single life.  They both have their purpose, their pleasure and their own set of unique challenges and problems, but one is not better than the other.  To believe that is to be misguided.  If you believe marriage is better than being single you will never discover the purpose of the single life.  You will never walk in the revelation of our ministry slogan that "Being Single Is Not A Problem To Be Solved, But a Gift to Be Enjoyed."  You will always feel like you are missing out on something.  You will not value, esteem or recognize the worth of your gift, but instead devalue it, misuse it, give it away prematurely or give it away to the wrong person.


 


The fourth roadblock is failure to celebrate your singleness.  Married people set aside time to celebrate their success in marriage.  They call it an anniversary celebration and once a year, if it's a decent marriage they spend time together in gratitude to one another and to God that they made it through another year successfully.  But how many single people do you know that celebrate another year of success at being single?  How many single people do you know that give themselves credit for being successful at the marital status God has called them to? It takes the same amount of grace to be successful at being single as it does at being married and it should be celebrated in the same fashion that married people celebrate a successful marriage.    The single man who understood the single and the married life more than anyone else, the Apostle Paul, referred to being single as a gift and being married as being a gift and then he lets us know that the decision of marriage and singleness is a choice that God makes for us.  God then gives us the grace to successfully live out either marital status.  Listen to what 1 Corinthians 7:7 in TLB says: "I wish everyone could get along without marrying, just as I do. But we are not all the same. God gives some the gift of a husband or wife, and others he gives the gift of being able to stay happily unmarried."   So if you find yourself single, you need to begin to view your marital status as God views it, the gift He has chosen for you during this season of your life and Father knows best.  This biblical truth is the foundation for the Singles Pleasing the Lord ministry slogan "Being Single Is Not A Problem to Be Solved, But a Gift To Be Enjoyed."  God did not intend for you to be miserable and single, but successful and single.  Quit trying to solve a problem, which God did not intend for you to have by permitting you to be single.


 

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