Welcome to a new week on the podcast. Today's question comes from a listener named Caitlin. "Pastor John, thank you for the podcast. I recently listened to Francis Chan's response to the question, 'Why are Christian singles marrying later?' I have been deeply impacted by the writings and the teachings of Francis Chan in the past and have profound respect for him.

But his reasoning that singles in the church are engaging in sexual immorality and therefore marrying later felt dismissive for a lot of us. I cannot name a single Christian couple that is in the situation he describes and is therefore delaying marriage. His response felt like it skimmed over a topic with so much more depth to it.

I know many godly unmarried Christian women in particular who desire marriage, yet there seem to be so few unmarried Christian men around interested in pursuing any of them. These women fight daily for purity and joy in the Lord. This is not a fight we take lightly. So to be told that the reason we are not married is because we are engaging in sex before marriage makes us feel profoundly misunderstood and swept to the side.

I also happen to know that the majority of these women carry moderate to large loads of student loan debt that they are working diligently to pay off. This means the majority of our time is spent working long hours, often multiple jobs. As you can imagine, this leaves little time for socialization.

This job situation is likely going to be a reality for many of us well into our 30s. I would love to hear your response, Pastor John, to this same question. What encouragement can you offer us single women who are pursuing the Lord with all of our hearts and functioning in this world as best as we can?

First, I know Francis Chan, and I am sure if he were with me here at this microphone he would say that the reasons people are marrying later are indeed much more diverse and complex than the fact that lots of couples are substituting sex for marriage. So I'm starting with the assumption that Francis was emphasizing a particular factor rather than stating it as the only factor, even though I know because of the way people have taken my kinds of communication that it would be easy for Caitlin to feel the way she felt.

So I'm going to start there. The real question here, it seems to me, for Caitlin is not so much that we can figure out—we've got to figure out—why since 1970 the median age for women to get married has increased by four or five years to 25 plus, and for men a little less, increased up to 26.8, I read recently.

There are lots of factors feeding that phenomenon, like twice as many women go to college today as 30 years ago, and careers are often a priority, and fear of marriage commitments for both men and women because half of those young people have divorced parents and therefore are terrified that they don't want to do that, they don't want to do it the way their parents did it.

Loss of community is a big one, I think, where finding a spouse isn't as natural and communal as it used to be and the way the world was once upon a time. Changes in expectation about what makes a good spouse, largely owing, I think, to entertainment and media. Delays in maturity for men and women.

Good night. Adolescence just gets longer and longer, so the whole books are being written on adultolescence. It's a very complex setting, situation, cluster of factors that make things harder today, just really harder for young people. But what Caitlin points out here, and I'm really happy to hear it, is that there are—I'm adding the word thousands, she said many, and I would agree totally that there are thousands, thousands of young women who, and men, I think, who would like to be married, who are not having sex before marriage.

Believe it or not, there are people like that, lots of them, who have to work full time if for no other reason than to pay back student loans, which puts a good deal of pressure on her and their energy and time for being active and flexible in social relationships.

So she asks, and this is the question that I assume she wants me to address, not all that, is what encouragement can you offer us single women who are pursuing the Lord with all our hearts and functioning in this world the best we can? And I like that question because that's what the Bible is for.

It is to help us where we are, not just say, "Wouldn't it be nice to be in another world?" My encouragement, Caitlin, is this—I'll put it just in a simple phrase and then I'll unpack it—God is sovereign over your life, and God is good. Now, if you are his child, and just like you say you are, pursuing the Lord with all your heart, we have it on God's authority that he will withhold from you no good thing, nothing that is good for you.

Psalm 84 11, "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." So I'm going to suggest, with that promise as the background, that you linger over two stories in the Bible for your encouragement.

One is the story of Ruth. Ruth. She resolved as a young widow to leave her homeland, Moab, and to be faithful to Naomi, her mother-in-law, with these words, "Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge.

Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts me from you." That's Ruth 1 16-17. Now, that meant that as a Moabite woman in Israel, the prospects for marriage were zero.

Apart from an extraordinary work of God, what godly Jew would marry a Moabite and a widow and all the other circumstances surrounding this? But God—I like that phrase—but God rewarded her faithfulness, faithfulness to God and to her human relations, with a total surprise. His name was Boaz. You cannot plan things like this.

You can't. You can't strategize as a young woman, "I'm going to have a Boaz. I know what to do. I know what fields to go to. I know a country to go to." You can't. You can't strategize for this kind of matchmaking. You can only do your work with joy in the Lord and watch the sovereign God work for you.

That's the first suggestion. Meditate. Linger over the book of Ruth. And lest you think, Caitlin, that I'm a hopeless romantic with only happily ever after marriage endings, my second suggestion is that you linger over the story of Anna in Luke 2 36 and 37. There was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher.

She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years. So I'd guess maybe from age 17 to 24, from when she was a virgin and then as a widow until she was 84. That'd be 60 years. She did not depart from the temple, worshipping with fasting and prayer night and day.

What is that? That's a seven-year marriage as a young girl and then a widow, probably from her mid-20s until she was 84. But she was faithful to what the Lord called her to do, and he rewarded her with the sight of the Messiah. He was pleased with Anna, and that's what matters ultimately.

So, in other words, your sovereign good God is able to stun you with a boast out of nowhere, and he is able to keep you chaste and fruitful and happy, unmarried, until you are 84. Now here are my concluding brief four simple pieces of counsel. One, don't look twice at an unspiritual man.

Yes, spiritual men are far too rare. That's one of the biggest problems of the day. But they do exist, and God is guiding their lives. Number two, be an integral member of a doctrinally solid, loving church. It may have 60 people in it and no 20-somethings, while the church with all the hip singles and weak doctrine has thousands.

But guess where boas may choose to go to church? Number three, find your joy in knowing Jesus and serving others. Marriage is not the greatest good. Faithfulness to Christ and his people around you is the greatest good. And number four, in your prayers, tell the Lord your heart's desire, and then make him your supreme treasure.

Amen. Thank you for responding to this, Pastor John. And Caitlin, thanks for the articulate and excellent question. It's exactly the type of thing we're looking for, so thank you. And thank you for listening and supporting the podcast. You can stay current with the Ask Pastor John podcast episodes on your phone or your device by subscribing to us through your preferred podcast catcher.

And you can search our past episodes in our archive and send us an email of your own, even questions about marriage and trends that you see and what God offers to those who are not yet married. You can do all that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. And also, we've got to mention here at the end of this episode that be sure to check out our very own Marshall Siegel's book on Amazon titled Not Yet Married, The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating.

It's a solid book you don't want to miss. Well, we are going to return on Wednesday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then. 1 Desiring God's Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating 1 Desiring God's Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating 1 Desiring God's Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating 1