Should a Single Parent Get Married?

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:04.000 | Pastor John, here is an interesting question from a single mom who has the

00:00:08.680 | gift of singleness, or she thinks she has the gift of singleness. Anna is her

00:00:13.540 | name and she writes this, "Pastor John, thank you for all of your wonderful

00:00:17.400 | service to our Lord. My question for you is one that I have wrestled with since

00:00:22.080 | the birth of my only child, a son. He's now three. I'm a single parent and have

00:00:27.320 | been since his conception and I thank the Lord for his work in my heart that

00:00:32.040 | has transformed my soul and lifestyle from where it was until now. Now as I

00:00:38.960 | attempt to wrap my head around the overwhelming task of raising this boy

00:00:42.440 | into a man by myself, I do not feel called to marriage, but am I obligated to

00:00:49.080 | find a godly mate to complete the model of a family that's clearly laid out in

00:00:53.840 | Scripture? As a single parent, is it forbidden for me to embrace a life of

00:00:59.160 | singleness and unhindered service to the Lord as described by Paul in 1

00:01:04.480 | Corinthians chapter 7?" Well I joined Anna in rejoicing that God has changed her

00:01:12.040 | life from those days, and it sounds really true that he has. Here's my short

00:01:19.000 | answer. No, no. Anna is not obligated to find a godly mate so that her son can

00:01:27.640 | have a father. I don't see any direct mandate in the Bible or clear

00:01:36.760 | implication of biblical teaching that rises to the level of obligation, so

00:01:42.320 | that's my short answer. My encouragement would be not in terms of obligation, but

00:01:48.640 | rather perhaps openness to marriage and prayer towards marriage. Let me

00:01:57.640 | just sow a few thoughts, Anna, into your thinking so that as you ponder and pray

00:02:02.640 | over the Scriptures, God might use these to direct your thinking. First,

00:02:10.040 | Jesus, the incarnate Jesus that we know in the Gospels as an expression of God's

00:02:16.160 | own heart, has a special concern for mothers who have children to raise on

00:02:22.800 | their own. For example, in Luke 7, "As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold

00:02:28.560 | a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a

00:02:35.640 | widow." So you got husband is gone and only son is gone, and this is the next

00:02:42.280 | thing we read. "And a considerable crowd of the town was with her, and when the

00:02:47.280 | Lord saw her, he had compassion on her." Now I think sentences like that are in

00:02:55.560 | the Gospels precisely to encourage us to take heart. I mean, why would we be told

00:03:01.520 | that our Lord Jesus, the creator of the universe, the one who holds everything in

00:03:06.760 | being, the one who died for us, reigns over us now and cares for us and is with us to

00:03:12.200 | the end of the age, has compassion on a woman who has lost her husband and who

00:03:19.840 | has now lost her son. And he says, "Do not weep." So I think the point of the story

00:03:26.480 | is definitely he has power to raise the dead, which he does. He raises the

00:03:31.640 | boy from the dead, but he does it, he uses that kind of power in the service

00:03:36.840 | of compassion for someone for whom life has dealt a very difficult hand, and that

00:03:45.600 | would be the case for Anna. So the first thing, I think, Anna, is to take heart

00:03:50.120 | that Jesus has a special kind of compassion for women in your situation.

00:03:59.160 | Number two, never think of the family, the nuclear family, husband, wife, children, as

00:04:08.080 | the only or the eternal or the main family with which God is concerned. The

00:04:17.520 | church is God's main family on the earth. In the age to come, there will be, it

00:04:27.640 | seems, no nuclear family because Jesus says in that age we will have neither

00:04:34.240 | marriage nor giving in marriage. The nuclear family is temporary, and the

00:04:40.640 | eternal family is the church with God as our Father and all of us as brothers and

00:04:46.200 | sisters. So I would want to elevate—she didn't mention the church, but

00:04:51.000 | I'm sowing the seed for her to think about—I would want to elevate the local

00:04:56.200 | church as the expression of God's family for her life. I think that's

00:05:01.800 | precisely where she should embed this child in relationships with the wider

00:05:12.600 | family—men, women, boys and girls—so that that's where the child will connect in

00:05:20.760 | all the varying ways that he's going to need in order to be as rounded as he

00:05:26.840 | should be. That's the second thing. The third is just an expansion of it. The

00:05:32.120 | church is where this little boy is going to find or should find strong,

00:05:38.520 | humble, godly men in action. Here's where the men should emerge into your life,

00:05:46.640 | Anna, besides any family members you have. Maybe your father could be

00:05:52.400 | involved, or uncles or cousins, but the church is really crucial in his

00:05:58.560 | upbringing because your son is going to need to have mature, healthy, godly men

00:06:07.160 | around him. And you want him to grow up not just to be a kind of freewheeling

00:06:11.960 | man, but a godly churchman, a lover of the people of God, the church. And the

00:06:19.160 | fourth thing to say is, to be sure, marriage is more than the creation of

00:06:26.320 | parents. Marriage is more than providing masculine and feminine role models. So

00:06:34.240 | you should not marry merely out of a sense of hope that your son will get an

00:06:41.240 | example of manhood. It's more than that, and you're going to need more than that

00:06:46.360 | out of it for it to be what it ought to be. But I would encourage you, and this

00:06:52.960 | may stretch, I would encourage you to ask, that is pray, ask the Lord for a

00:06:59.680 | heart for marriage. You say you're not called to marriage. That means there's no

00:07:04.760 | burning desire for it, no sense of desperation or need for it, and that's

00:07:09.000 | fine. But I would ask that you seek the Lord for a natural, not desperate, but

00:07:19.720 | natural emerging heart for marriage and an opportunity for marriage, and that the

00:07:27.840 | heart and the opportunity come together, lest there be frustration. The reason I

00:07:35.080 | say this is that even though I would not call marriage an obligation, I would say

00:07:42.960 | it is doubly natural in your case. Natural first, because marriage is the

00:07:52.360 | ordinary pattern that God set up in the world. It is not good for man to be alone.

00:07:57.840 | And I think he would say the same thing about the woman. It's not good for the

00:08:01.840 | woman to be alone unless various circumstances make it so. So first,

00:08:10.280 | natural because that's the way he set up ordinary relationships. The second thing

00:08:16.280 | that makes it natural is that it's natural for children to have two parents,

00:08:20.600 | even though this is not possible in many cases today. So it seems right to me that

00:08:28.120 | you would pray something like this. This would be my sample prayer for you if I

00:08:33.720 | were you. "Lord, I don't feel any need for marriage in myself. I don't have any

00:08:42.920 | passion for it, but I see it in your Word as natural for men and women. I see it as

00:08:49.960 | good for children and as a beautiful testimony to Christ's covenant with His

00:08:55.760 | church, to the world, a testimony to the world like that. So I am open to your

00:09:03.240 | working in me and in my relationships to bring this about. If this is what you

00:09:09.620 | want for me, would you give me a heart for it and bring the man into my life

00:09:17.160 | with whom I could fully, joyfully serve you and raise my son?" That's my prayer.

00:09:25.400 | I think it is possible, Anna, to pray that, pray like that, and not fall into the

00:09:31.560 | trap of being so preoccupied with what might be that you're unable to live the

00:09:39.320 | happy, fulfilled life that you can live without that. So you see the tension.

00:09:46.640 | The Lord is able to give you contentment both in singleness and give you

00:09:54.400 | the ability to seek the heart for marriage and the possibility of a

00:09:59.480 | partner in life and a father for your son. Both are possible. So my

00:10:04.360 | closing promise would simply be 2 Corinthians 9, 8, "God is able to make all

00:10:11.600 | grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times

00:10:17.560 | you may abound in every good work." And that would be the good work of being a

00:10:23.520 | single mom or the good work of being a wife. That's a beautifully balanced word,

00:10:28.800 | Pastor John. Thank you. And Anna, that is an excellent question, well-worded. Thank

00:10:33.120 | you for sending that in to us. And I appreciate you listening to this podcast.

00:10:37.320 | We publish three times a week, and you can subscribe to our audio feeds. You can

00:10:41.680 | even search our episode archive and reach us by email with a perplexing life

00:10:46.040 | question of your own. Do all that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:10:50.240 | Well, it is a perennial question. It's an important one.

00:10:58.040 | Do all religious paths lead to God eventually? Why or why not? And how do we

00:11:04.360 | know from Scripture? I'll ask John Piper that next time. I'm your host Tony

00:11:08.260 | Reike. We'll see you on Friday.

00:11:11.920 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Should a Single Parent Get Married?

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