One final time we're joined by Matt Chandler, the lead pastor at the Village Church in Dallas. Matt is the author of the new book, The Mingling of Souls, God's Design for Love, Marriage, Sex and Redemption. I have a list of 10 questions on relationships queued up for Matt, and we've worked through all 10 of them.

So Matt, we have time for one more question we receive all the time on the podcast. I'll throw it in as question number 11. Many Christian singles who do not find a spouse end up dating non-Christians and compromising themselves. What does Christ have to offer to a Christian who is tired of the weirdnesses of Christian dating, who longs to be married, who is sick of being lonely, who doesn't have any Christian prospects at the moment, and who isn't getting any younger?

What would you say to this listener? Oh gosh. Well, a couple of things. I want to just, I want to totally affirm the desire to be married. I just don't, I don't want anybody to ever feel guilty about that desire, because I feel like so often, particularly single women, God bless them, I just feel like they can get, you know, find your contentment in Christ.

Why, I mean, why is Christ not enough? And I just think that's such a terrible, terrible response, because the desire to get married is a good desire. It may be one that's been woven into them by the creator of the universe. If the Bible says, "He who finds a wife finds what is good," that's all I need for both the man and the woman to go, "This is a good thing to be desired." If to find it is good, then let's desire it.

But like all desires, they have to be placed where they belong. And so I want to affirm this desire to be married. I want to warn against loneliness and this desire being a desire that's so far up in your list of desires that you would be willing to compromise and put yourself in a situation that would be far more horrific and far more lonely than you currently are.

And so one of the things that I have unfortunately been able to watch on repeat the last 20 years of Christian ministry is godly women get to that place where the "weirdness" of Christian dating and the apathy of Christian men to actually pursue them has led them to marry—I won't even go as far as say just lost guys, but what I'll just call "neat Christian voice." So maybe they go to church a couple of times a month, or maybe they just have a Bible that they own, and oh yeah, they're Christian.

So they justify getting into a relationship with a man who will not lead them, who doesn't really love the Lord, but does come to church. And this ends almost every time in heartbreak, where now they're in a covenant, they feel trapped in that covenant relationship, and so they try to fix their husbands.

That's not working, so then they hope maybe having children will fix their husbands, and that's what will engage their husband's heart back towards the Lord and back towards them. And then they have children, and now the father is discipling their children, not towards the Lord, but from the Lord.

And so in all of this, the way I've tried to counsel our single women here at the Village Church is, "Men, give yourself over to ministry and to serving the Lord." And I mean give yourself over. So there's a woman who lives with us, she's in her mid-30s, and she leads a ministry where she's running these discipleship groups of women all over the country.

It's like in 11 or 12 states, and there's like 50 or 60 leaders that she's pouring herself into. She walked these dGroups through Grudem Systematic Theology, then she's walking them, I think, this semester through the Book of Genesis, and it's a very serious, robust study of God's Word. And she desires to be married, she would love to be married, but she's not waiting to be married for her life to matter, for her life to count.

So she has moved in with us, she's very much a part of our family, and she's given herself over to Christian ministry. And even when I think of the young woman who helped shape some of these questions, she's given herself over to serve the Lord, to write and to teach and to disciple and to open up her home to care for other women and to encourage other women to grow in biblical literacy.

And I think that that's what Christ has for them, fulfilling, soul-stirring, soul-satisfying gospel ministry. Amen. Thank you, Matt, for your example and for joining us in this podcast. We really appreciate it. It's my pleasure, brother. That was Matt Chandler, the lead pastor at the Village Church in Dallas and the author of the new book, The Mingling of Souls, God's Design for Love, Marriage, Sex, and Redemption.

He joined us in episodes number 522 to 529 to answer some of the most pressing questions singles face in the church. And we are very grateful for his time and for his pastoral wisdom. Well, we are back with John Piper tomorrow. I'm your host, Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.