Yesterday in Sunday School we looked at the Pro and Con of being single, as laid out in I Corinthians 7. I think the idea that struck me as I was preparing for the lesson was just how Paul saw singleness as such a gift from the Lord, and it was becuase he knew that there was no way he would be able to accomplish all that God had called him to do, in the short time he'd been given. I think so often in the Bible we see men and women who just felt the urgency of the hour. Over and over again biblical writers talk about the time being at hand, or the present as being the end of the age, and I don't think they're doing it in the same way that folks did before "Y2K." I think that when you see your mission on this earth to spread the glory of God throughout the earth, there's no way you could ever think you'll have enough time to do that.
My prayer for us singles at Oak Mountain is that we would be a group that would be so captivated by the grandness of what God has called us to do that our singleness would be seen as a tremendous blessing, for however long God gives it to us, and that we would be racing against the clock to see it accomplished.
2 comments:
JNoah - I enjoyed the Sunday School lesson as like all of them in this series, but this one in particular. It was a refreshing reminder of how our interest are often split or distracted once we find ourselves married or even when we become deeply involved in a relationship. Paul was dead-on in his warnings in 1 Corinthians 7 as he talked about how the single man's interest is devoted to Lord, but when he becomes married, man's interest seem to become more consumed with the matters of his wife.
We are blessed with the opportunity NOW, while we are single to establish that personal devotion to His service in our lives, before a special someone may come along and cause a little distraction - because I don't care who you are, you will be distracted at one time or another, it just happens because we are sinners and we are just prone to wander.
Thanks again for leading us in the Truth.
Jason J: Thanks for the encouragement. I was feeling so lousy and on so much medication on Sunday, I wondered if anything I was saying was coherent at all! Glad to know at least a few points came out.
I will say that the more I look at the I Corinthians passage the more intrigued I am by the way the Bible thinks about the marriage relationship. Now, to be sure, no human being or any human thing should EVER take your devotion away from God. I mean, that's idolatry, right? But there is a sense in which the Bible makes it clear that your devotion for your spouse goes way, way beyond any other distraction in your life to the point that, it seems like or feels like you're "anxious" (to use Paul's word) to please your spouse over God. I guess that's the fight a married person has to wage, but it's just fascinating to me that the Bible really does command Christians that your primary Christian work will shift as soon as you make that covenant, and you never again have to worry about who God's primarily called you to invest in.
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