Today's question comes to us from a "slightly confused sister in the Lord." "Hello Pastor John, I was wondering if you could help me think through two questions. First, I have a deep burden and desire for missions as a calling. This is true of me and brings me a lot of joy.

However, it also brings confusion, especially in dating. I feel guilty in fostering relationships with wonderful men who don't share my calling. Would I be in sin if I married a godly man who didn't share my calling to missions? Second, while I feel inspired to spread the gospel to unreached people, I don't feel called to minister in remote places.

I'm much more drawn to international cities. I wonder if this helps alleviate the first question. In APJ 1422, you said, "Marriage is not fundamentally the linking of arms in the pursuit of an agreed-upon vocation." You seem to have a less restrictive view on calling. What thoughts can you offer to me as a woman who does not have the gift of singleness to think through missions and marriage?

Last night, as I was thinking about this question, I asked my wise wife if she had any thoughts about it. I suppose it's because we've shared life for 52 years that the first thing that she said was the first thing that was coming to my mind as well. She said, "I suppose it hangs a lot on the seriousness and confidence about her calling to missions." As our young friend had said, "I have a deep burden and desire for missions as a calling." I think Noelle and I would say, "That's serious.

You're right about that." She also said, "I feel guilty in fostering relationships with wonderful men who don't share my calling." So Noelle's first thought and my first thought was that however our young friend conceives of her calling or however she arrived at a sense of this calling, we don't want her to act against her conscience.

We don't want her to sense a deep burden and desire and even leading from God only to forsake that burden and desire and leading for the sake of a marriage relationship. It's always dangerous to act against your conscience, even if your conscience is not infallible as a guide for God's will.

Now it's true that the Bible portrays marriage as a good and beautiful and even normative pattern for men and women in this world that God created. The Bible begins at the very beginning of Genesis by creating, God creating, human beings as male and female and saying that it's not good for a man to be alone.

In other words, marriage is the normal way that God has planned for the human race to fill the earth for his glory and a man-woman relationship is the normal and good and beautiful way that God aims for the human soul to experience the kind of togetherness that we all long for.

But, and I put a big exclamation point after this, but, but with the fall of the world into sin and the disruption of the normal course of created life and the horrible lostness of the human race and the urgency of rescuing people from eternal destruction with the inbreaking of the age to come with Jesus Christ, an age which will have no marriage and no giving in marriage, Jesus said, with all of that, it would be wrong, be wrong for me to say that marriage is a mandate from God for all his children because the inbreaking, the breaking in of the kingdom may in fact call for a self-denial even of marriage and children for the sake of more pressing kingdom purposes.

This was certainly true for Jesus and it was true for Paul. Neither of them married. Paul blessed marriage, but he also exalted singleness for the sake of the kingdom. To all that to say that our friend who asked this question has more than one door open to her in the Bible.

Both doors, the one leading to the path of marriage for the glory of Christ and the other leading to the path of singleness for the glory of Christ are both biblically legitimate and can yield a beautiful and fruitful Christ-exalting life. I think if I were having a personal face-to-face conversation with this young woman, I would want to take the approach that I have so often taken with people when they present me with either or dilemmas, both paths of which seem bad.

I would want to say that God, precisely because he is God and not man, is never boxed in in the way we think we are between two options, both of which feel disappointing. In her case, one option would be marry a man who doesn't share her mission passion and be disappointed about her calling, and the other option would be stay true to your missionary calling and be disappointed that you forego marriage.

And I would want to say, don't think that way. God is God, and there are more options than you know. God may have a third way for you. And this is exactly the direction that Noelle's thoughts were taking when we talked last night. Noelle has given a good deal of time thinking about single women missionaries and interacting with young women.

She's written about these things in her book, Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God, and she reminded me of a story. It was at one of our Desiring God national conferences, and at the end of one of the sessions, two single women who were pondering missions engaged Noelle in the hall outside where the session was about this very dilemma.

Should I wait to find a husband before I go to the mission field, or should I go and perhaps never find a husband? And Noelle pointed out to me now 20 years later that the young woman who went to Pakistan as a single woman found her husband there, which seemed absolutely crazy, impossible.

That's not going to happen in Pakistan. And the woman who stayed is still single. And I'm not saying, "Oh, don't hear me say that the woman who stayed was disobedient." That is not the case at all. She's living a productive, Christ-exalting life right now. But I smiled when I heard that story that Noelle recounted, because the way I was going to put it is this, the best place to find a like-minded husband or wife is precisely on the path of your missionary calling.

That's the best place. In other words, the third possibility is to follow your sense of God's leading toward missions with a patient trust that if you indeed don't have the gift of singleness, if you would dishonor God by singleness, God will lead you to a like-minded spouse, even when you think it looks absolutely impossible.

Last December at the Cross Conference, the missionary conference for 18 to 25-year-olds, one of the panel participants who leads a pretty rigorous missionary preparation ministry said in all seriousness, standing on the platform with David Platt, that—he was not joking—"Many of the single men and women who come to our training find their spouses there." Now it's easy to joke about that and to joke, say, about Christian colleges being matchmaking institutions.

Well, how fitting and beautiful and appropriate and wonderful is it that the place a person finds a like-minded husband or wife is precisely on the path where you're doing what you believe God called you to do, for goodness sakes. That may be getting a solid Christ-centered education in a college, for living a God-centered life.

That may be a place to find a spouse, or it may be missionary training or a missionary life in a place where you think, "There's no way I'm going to find a spouse out there. Pakistan, for goodness sakes." Look, he's God. He's God. It's just like God to bless his mission-minded followers with the desires of their heart.

God knows what we need. God is good. God is wise. God is sovereign. God is able to do what seems impossible for man to do. So I return to my wife's first thought. How serious and how deep and how confident is this sense of calling in this young woman?

Because if it is serious and deep, then probably she should set her face, her heart, to pursue it, and trust God that on that path she will find her greatest joy and do the world the greatest good and bring Christ the greatest honor. Wonderful. Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you, Noel, for pointing out those stories as well.

We appreciate her wisdom here on the podcast. And thank you for listening. As we see in this episode today, many topics we address on this podcast provoke new questions that also need to be asked and answered. And if you have a follow-up question, get those questions to us at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

You'll see a button for submitting a question, which opens up a new email. And we appreciate it a lot, all of the emails that come to us. I know we get to answer so few of them, but we appreciate all of them. Well, in our fight against sin, do we focus our attention on Christ, or do we focus our attention on ourselves?

Who do we focus on? It's a very tangible question from a listener. And it's the next question on the docket for Monday. I'm Tony Reinke. Thank you for listening to the podcast, and have a wonderful weekend. 1 you you