Category Archives: Relationships

Why You’re Still Single

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I am going through some of my past journals and I came across this revelation that the Lord spoke to me back in 2010, now almost 2 years ago (My how time flies! I remember this season as if it were yesterday!) I felt it was crucial to share this revelation today. By the power of the Spirit, may your heart be open wide right now, to the truth of this word:

Attention, all singles!

Here’s the question:

Ever wonder why you’re still single??

Here’s the answer:

You’re single because God’s not ready to share you just yet.

Settle the question in your heart with THAT answer. It’s the truth. And it’s the ONLY answer.

You’re not single because you’re unwanted. You’re single because you are SO WANTED.

God is not ready to share me just yet. While at the altar the other night, I received EYE-OPENING revelation to the past 10 years of singleness (well, truly, my entire life so far). The revelation was that God has shut the doors to marriage and relationships with the opposite sex because He has valiantly and relentlessly pursued me and is jealous for me and He didn’t want any swine to steal my attention, my heart! He didn’t want me to throw my pearls to swine. (Note: not all men are swine, but in truth, some are!) In God’s pleasure, He has sought me out, so I would be wholly devoted to Him – and He doesn’t want to share me. Who’s to know if this is permanent or just an extended season? Who’s to know if He will one day share me with an earthly husband? But it’s about time I stopped taking my love life in my hands, and begin to truly, truly, truly TRUST the heart and intentions and timing and choices of my Heavenly Father, who truly knows best. It’s not because God hates me, that I’m single. It’s because He LOVES me so much, that I’m single.

It’s about time we flip the tables on our skewed PERSPECTIVE on how we view our singleness. We have often just thought that we are single because we are unwanted by a man. But the truth is that we are single because we are SO WANTED BY GOD. He is keeping us from marriage in this season because He wants us so much. He wants our whole heart. All our attention.

So, rather than see your singleness as a proof of your being unlovable, unwanted and worthy of rejection, see your singleness as proof that you are…

…SO LOVED

…SO WANTED

…SO WORTHY OF BEING CHOSEN BY THE GOD OF THE UNIVERSE!

He has set His seal of Love upon your heart, and He has sealed off the door to other men in this season. He has thwarted the purposes of swine who have tried to come and take His pearl of great price away from Him.

You ain’t single because you are unwanted. You are single because you are SO WANTED.

You are single because God isn’t ready to share you just yet.

Think upon that. Chew on that. Digest this revelation and let it FILL YOU and seep into every corner of your hungry, hungry heart. Let this truth FILL YOU with dignity and honour, knowing that, because you are chosen, you have been set apart in this season for God.

He loves you so much.

Truly, you are so loved.

 

Singleness and Celibacy

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“Celibacy is a vacancy for God. To be a celibate means to be empty for God, to be free and open for God’s presence, to be available for God’s service.” (Henri Nouwen, Thomas Aquinas)

If you are single, you are called as a celibate. To be celibate is to leave a vacancy for God. To be empty for God, open for His presence to fill you.

If I am a single believer in Christ, I am consecrated (set apart) as a celibate for my First Love, for God alone, unless the Lord leads otherwise in a new season.

Jesus was single. Jesus was a celibate. Jesus had a vacancy (an emptiness) within Him reserved for God alone. Even with this vacancy, this emptiness, Jesus was a fully-realized man. He wasn’t a half-realized man. He wasn’t a half-fulfilled man. He was fully fulfilled as a human, and as a man.

And so it is with us, also.

Contemplate this for a moment. Take some time and go for a walk, or think about it wherever you are right now.

If you are single, you are a fully-realized, fully-fulfilled human being, AND woman or man. We are not above our Master, our Beloved, who also walked out His entire life on earth AS A SINGLE MAN who died at a young age, IN HIS PRIME.

Yet, Jesus fulfilled everything He was called to do. He was not jipped. He was not a disgruntled, ripped-off, discontented man who complained to the Father that he was not being given what He was entitled to in order to fully live the life He was meant to live. Jesus did not feel that He had to postpone His “real life” until His “partner” or “spouse” came. He went forward, in joy and serene acceptance, and did not see His singleness as an obstacle to be removed, but saw it as the path in which the Lord’s will would be fulfilled on earth.

And He did fulfill God’s will, without a spouse. Without children. Yet His life is the most fruitful one in all the universe.

To be single, to be celibate, to be a man or woman who never partakes in sexual union, does not make you less of a woman or a man. If it were so, we would have reason to say that Jesus was only half a man…

…but He was the most alive Man this world has ever seen. And we will never see another as real, as fruitful, as fulfilled as this Man, whom we adore and willingly lay down all of our agendas for, to pick up this high calling, this privileged position as a single, as a celibate for our Beloved.

Selah. Ponder that.

~Alison

Marriage to Death

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My brother sent me this article. If my brother sends me something, I know it will be deep and profound; and this is no exception. Curious, from the title, what this article is about? Without any introduction, I will just say: read it, you’ll be better for it.

ARTICLE: A Bridegroom’s Reflections on his Wedding Day
By Sub-deacon Adam Deville

There comes a moment in life at which one’s perspective begins to shift from the unending gaze of youthfulness to the finite view of adulthood. There comes a point when the significant milestones of early life have all been crossed and one enters a new phase, acquiring a new outlook. There comes a time when one begins to think of death.

Such thoughts do not typically occur on one’s wedding day! For marriage, to be sure, begins in joy but – as Fr. Paul Evdokimov reminds us – “…the hour has not yet come.” That “hour”—as the word is invariably used in John’s gospel –pertains to the hour of Christ’s death. When one is baptized into Christ, one dies with Him; when one is married in Christ, one dies to self. In all things, one seeks that transposition of self which can only come about through death, so that, with Saint Paul, one may say “It is no longer I who live but Christ Who lives in me.”

The life and death of Christ is powerfully illustrated in the icon of Christ the Bridegroom. About an hour before I was married at St. Elias, I took my bestman – himself engaged to be married in the spring of 2004 – into the church to show him this icon. He and I had been having ad hoc discussions about what Christian marriage, properly so called, requires and entails, but I knew that all my disquisitions would be powerfully supplemented – if not supplanted – by that one sacred image which conveys everything I could hope to say in an hour or more. It is an exceedingly simple, and therefore exceedingly powerful, image.
For those of you unfamiliar with this icon, its most salient feature is a downcast Christ crowned with thorns and pierced through with many arrows. It makes that point that Saint Paul articulated so powerfully in his letter to the Ephesians: Continue reading →

WHO AM I? :: The starting point for all relationships

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I have been reading a great book by Kris Vallotton called Sexual Revolution, now renamed Moral Revolution which is described as “the naked truth about sexual purity”. He’s also set up a website devoted to helping people in their journey of sexual purity.  The book has been so clear in drawing the connection between our relationships and our values and the virtues we uphold within those relationships. I highly recommend it. You can read the first chapter for free here.

Relationships are ALL about our identity and HOW WE SEE OURSELVES FIRST. Vallotton so wisely wrote:

‘Once we decide WHO we are, then we will naturally work out our actions, attitudes and behaviours to manifest our person. It is vitally important that we answer the question, “WHO AM I?” BEFORE getting into a romantic relationship with someone.’ (Kris Vallotton)

Upon reading this, I was reminded of a season a few years ago where I was faced with some relational possibilities and I was faced with a challenge to my values. There seemed to be quite the WIDE divide between what I thought I wanted and valued, and the reality of the kind of guy that I seemed to keep getting involved with. This gap between values and reality really concerned me and sent me into a season of soul-searching and much writing. I started to write to get to the root of WHY I kept getting involved with guys who didn’t share my values. I came to discover that at the heart of the matter was shame — I was ashamed to admit to others (even to CHRISTIAN guys) that I was a really wholesome, clean-cut girl and that I liked to keep the rules and not push boundaries. I LIKED being “a good girl”. I just didn’t like being a rebel, or a boundary-pusher, and yet I felt that I had to go along with the flow of what others (and other Christians) seemed to think was cool — it seemed that it was cool to live on the fringe of pushing boundaries within the Christian life. Yup, this was the problem. I was trying to be cool because I didn’t want to be accused of being a “prude” (even though, now, you could call me a prude and I’d be fine with it, ‘cos God will call me pure and undefiled and that’s all that matters)  Continue reading →

The Wisdom of “I’m Sorry”

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We are fallen creatures. We are weak, frail, and broken. We fail one another, daily. This life gives us ample opportunities to learn about the wisdom of “I’m sorry.” This is a wisdom that does not come naturally to us. Our natural inclination is toward self-defense, self-preservation and self-protection because of our pride. Naturally, we do not like to apologize. No way. We’d much rather throw mud back at someone else and shift the blame off of ourselves. But, drawing on a quote that I read in a book when I was growing up, the truth of the matter is:

“When you throw dirt, you’re the one losing ground.”

So true. Blaming others and not owning our failures and wrongs, actually hurts us, in the end, and keeps us in emotional and spiritual immaturity. We can’t grow up if we can’t say “I’m sorry.”

It’s like a car without a reverse gear - it’s not safe to drive. Do you have a reverse gear in you that enables you to turn around and back up when you’ve gone down the wrong road? We don’t condemn the car that has a reverse gear and turns around when it’s gone the wrong way. No, we’d call it a car that’s working properly. We’d question the safety of a car that had no reverse gear and just kept trying to drive forward, when it was going in the wrong direction.

Are we a safe car, or are we dangerous, when driving down the relational roads of life?

Apologizing is like using the reverse gear in a car. It’s normal and expected. Continue reading →