Tony Evans - Kingdom Single

Kingdom Single: Living Complete and Fully Free

2018 Tony Evans. All rights reserved.

A Focus on the Family book published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188

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Peoples names and certain details of their stories have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved. However, the facts of what happened and the underlying principles have been conveyed as accurately as possible.

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Cover photo by Sally Dunn

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ISBN 978-1-58997-951-2

ISBN 978-1-68428-119-0 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-68428-120-6 (Kindle); ISBN 978-1-68428-118-3 (Apple)

Build: 2020-05-08 10:11:34 EPUB 3.0

This book is lovingly dedicated to my sisters-in-law Ruth Ann Cannings, Bernice Cannings, and Elizabeth Cannings and to my special niece Clarise, for their conscientious review and input on this book. Thank you for your investment in my life, my ministry, and my family.

An omelet is only as good as the eggs you put into it.

Thats probably not how you expected a book on singleness to begin, but stick with me for a moment. When you cook an omelet and you crack open two rotten eggs, you will wind up with a nasty-tasting omelet. Even if one egg is good and the other egg is rotten, you will still wind up with a nasty-tasting omelet. The good egg is not going to make the bad egg better. No, the bad egg is going to contaminate the good egg.

Simply put: One bad egg destroys a good egg and causes the omelet to become inedible.

What does cooking an omelet have to do with singleness?

Everything.

Far too often, the discussions surrounding the topic of being single focus primarily on the future aspect of finding a mate. They focus on how to wait well until the joining together of the two eggs creates a marriage. In fact, most singles I talk to, counsel, or pastor are so keyed in on finding their future spouse, praying for marriage, or looking for a romantic partner that they altogether miss the benefits, purposes, and importance of singleness. They miss the critical aspects of cultivating a healthy life themselves while also setting their standards high enough for their future spouse. When the benefits, purposes, and importance of singleness are skipped in a persons developmental process, you wind up with a rotten marriage later on.

Thus, my goal in this book is not to advise you on how to wait well. No, my desire is to completely shift your thinking out of the waiting cycle. This is because, from my experience in counseling hundreds of singles over the years, emphasizing a waiting well mentality leads to a multiplicity of unintended but very real consequences.

To encourage someone to live in a posture of waiting for something or someone places that person in a perpetual state of conscious want, need, and future-oriented thinking. It produces a mentality of lack. In thinking that way, the individual runs the risk of missing out on the now.

If this describes you, you run the risk of selling yourself short during your present. You run the risk of settling for less than the best in a rush to make the future happen sooner than it ought. You run the risk of exchanging a life you passionately embrace one day at a time for a life where you simply exist as you look for the next part to come along. And that is not what I want for you.

Thats not what God wants for you.

Kingdom single, you are not merely to learn how to wait well.

Now, dont close these pages fearing what I might say next. Im not going to walk you down the all-too-familiar path for singles, telling you that God is your husband and that this truth should be enough. I understand singleness is not a permanent calling for most people. In fact, most surveys reveal that roughly 90 percent of all singles want to get married. Singleness is not some super-spiritual status chosen by everyone. I realize that many people are single due to the breakdown in our culture and a dismissal of family values. Divorce, selfishness, a consumerist mind-set, and overall relational dysfunction in families of origin and social circles have led to a cultural shift that has delayed the onset of marriage and availability of healthy (mentally and spiritually), stable marital options.

Yes, God is your husband (Isaiah 54:5), but that doesnt mean He brings you flowers, opens your car door, fixes your garbage disposal, keeps your feet warm at night, helps you find your contact lens when you drop it, or gives you hugs when you feel vulnerable and alone. To say that God is your husband from a spiritual standpoint is true. But to say you have no remaining physical or emotional needs, whether as a man or a woman, is nave.

One of my closest friends over the course of my life started out as my professor and mentor. His name was Zane Hodges. Zane passed away at the full age of seventy-six after decades of service to God as a seminary professor, Bible scholar, pastor, and author. Zane loved his work and dedicated his life to it and to the people he shepherded. Zane was also never married.

Ill never forget the somber, quiet tone he used one day in the latter years of his life when he told me: Tony, there is a loss that comes with being single. With all the spiritual goodness and profits that surround it, there is this reality of a deep loss when youre single. It is a space that isnt filled; there is something you feel that is missing because there are physical and relational needs that are just not met.