Is giving up romance a sacrifice?
Originally published at The Equip Blog
Some Christians are theologically convinced that gay romance/sex are sins, but deep down they still feel like people need romance to be happy. Deep down, it doesn’t feel fair that celibacy often seems like the only option God offers to gay people. Some earnestly wonder whether God is asking gay people to sacrifice more than other Christians and whether that’s good.
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So, is giving up gay romance a sacrifice?
In short, no. But to fully answer that, we’ll explore the following questions in this blog post:
Do any of us need romance or sex? Did God promise any of us romance, marriage, or sex?
Is God’s wisdom for gay people arbitrary? Is God asking gay people to give up truly good things?
If not, what are the best things that God is still offering to gay people?
Why does gay celibacy still seem more difficult? And what can the Church do about it?
Before we jump into those questions I want to call to your mind Genesis 22, where God tests Abraham by commanding Abraham, in verse 2, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” Abraham gathers the supplies and journeys with an unsuspecting Isaac to the place where Isaac would be sacrificed.
Picking up in verse 9 we read, “When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’ ‘Here I am,’ he replied. ‘Do not lay a hand on the boy,’ he said. ‘Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.’ Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, ‘On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.’”
A standard rabbinical teaching of this passage encourages the reader to consider this episode in its context. Throughout the book of Genesis, one of the big things God is doing is showing His people how He’s different from the other gods they would have been familiar with. He’s the real God, and He’s a good God. In that context, most of the gods of the ancient Near East asked for child sacrifice, therefore Yahweh asking Abraham to sacrifice his son would have seemed like a typical god request to Abraham. Painful but not surprising. Yet Yahweh ultimately shows that He’s different. Instead of asking humans to sacrifice others to stay in good relationship with Him, Yahweh provides the sacrifice. He’s different. He’s good.
With that in mind, I want to highlight that our God is a God who asks, “Do you trust me? I’m not like other gods. I won’t ask you to arbitrarily suffer. I won’t ask you to give Me something that’s actually good for you. But I will ask you to give up lesser loves. I will ask you to give up things that the world says are the best things, things the world says will satisfy you. And at times, it’s gonna seem like I’m asking you to sacrifice everything. Will you trust Me?”
What does it mean to sacrifice?
According to dictionary.com, sacrifice as a verb often means “to surrender or give up, or permit injury or disadvantage to, for the sake of something else.”
Is giving up gay romance a sacrifice?
If that means doing something that’s good for me but involves strain (like lifting weights or going on a run), then I guess the quick answer is yes. God-honoring sexual stewardship–all Christian stewardship, practicing any kind of self-control–is taxing. So in that sense, when anyone is following God’s wisdom for their sexuality, it’s a sacrifice.
But when most pose this question what they’re asking is, “Is God asking me to do without something good? Something I need?” The short answer is no. He’s not asking us to give up spiritual friendship or the need for connection in community. He’s only asking us to give up lesser love and to say yes to the pathway to fullness in life and love that He wants to invite us into.
Do any of us need romance or sex?
Do any of us need romance or sex? Did God promise any of us romance or marriage or sex?
Scripture promises none of us romance or sex. God has never promised us romance or sex or said that either are necessary to meet our intimacy needs. The Bible doesn’t teach that we need sex or romance to be whole people. Quite the opposite. Jesus didn’t have sex. Paul was committed to celibacy. Many of the mothers and fathers of the Church have been celibate.
And Jesus says that in Heaven, there won’t be any more marriage or sex. In Matthew 22:30, He says this: “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven” because the non-romantic, non-sexual ways we’ll connect with God and each other will be a thousand times better than any romance or sex in this life. It doesn’t make too much sense that the example of our faith was celibate or that we will all be celibate in Heaven if marriage and sex are necessary to be fully human.
Some might object, “But I want to marry and have kids. That must be God’s desire for me.” By that logic—that a desire to marry, a desire to be a parent, or a difficulty being single tells us we’re called to marriage—the only people who are called to vocational singleness are asexual people. Clearly that was not Christ’s intention. Most of the celibate Protestants and Catholics I know still experienced a healthy desire for marriage, sex, and children before committing to vocational singleness, so those desires aren’t an indication of God’s preference.
Others might argue, “But singleness is too difficult and isn’t natural!” Christian marriage and vocational singleness are actually equally unnatural. Does the average Christian automatically possess everything they need to thrive in vocational singleness? No. But the same is true of Christian marriage. We don’t inherently have what we need to do marriage well either. In light of the Fall, romance, casual sex, and polyamory are what come easily to us, not faithful celibacy or faithful monogamy. Each of us has the same inherent but incomplete capacity for both vocational singleness and Christian marriage. But to do either well, we must step into that vocation and receive an additional gift to do it well.
And still others might argue, “Doesn’t 1 Corinthians 7:9 say that it’s better to marry than to burn? So if I don’t find abstinence easy, that means I’m supposed to get married, right?!” That’s a common misinterpretation. Instead, Paul was narrowly addressing a group of Corinthian Christians who had adopted strange beliefs that their bodies didn’t matter, so they were claiming to be celibate “in spirit” but then were engaging in unrestrained sexual immorality. Paul was chastising people who claimed to be celibate but weren’t actually trying. Regardless, we should read 1 Corinthians 7:9 to caution us against committing to vocational singleness unless we have the gift from God to do it well. But Jesus said the same about Christian marriage in Matthew 19: don’t commit to Christian marriage unless you have the gift from God to do it well.
Yet many of us feel in our bones that we need romance and sex to be happy, whole people. Why? The idol of romance.
The idol of romance is not our friend. It’s deceitful, and it seeks to destroy our relationships. In Disney movies and Taylor Swift songs we hear and see a beautiful depiction of connection that will fulfill and satisfy us more than anything else can. It’s exclusive, it’s special. The idol of romance promises us we’ll be united with the person meant specifically for each of us, who matches each of us perfectly. We’re promised it’ll be easy, effortless, and self-sustaining because it’s the love we were destined for. That’s the magical lie of romance idolatry, and that false hope destroys every relationship we step into, dooming every connection to fall short of the effortless, deeply-satisfying, Disney romance we’ve been promised.
Ultimately the idol of romance promises us love, belonging, family, pleasure, and an escape from loneliness, but in reality, it leads to casual connection, thoughtless contraception, abortion, codependency, adultery, divorce, and loneliness. You might notice I’ve been intentionally focusing on romance idolatry, not marriage idolatry. Why? Because healthy theology and practice of Christian marriage are not the problem. And romance idolatry takes root long before marriage. Disney movies and Taylor Swift songs teach our children that magically coupled love is the best thing the world has to offer. Unfortunately, Christians offer the same idolatry, but with a facade of spirituality.
From an early age, parents and pastors highlight Bible stories and holidays centering romance and marriage. When parents comment, “When you get married…” or ask, “Are you dating anyone?” they leave no room for stories or celebrations of singleness for the sake of Christ’s kingdom. Christian teens assume they are free to indulge in romance as much as they want, as long as they don’t cross certain lines. 72% of pastors surveyed by Equip believe “If a person desires to marry and have kids, then God wants them to marry.”
Many western Christians mistakenly believe the following five statements about sexual stewardship:
God gave me desires to marry and have kids because He wants me to get married.
Marriage is about companionship and mutual fulfillment.
I only have to have kids if and when I want them.
God calls a select few to vocational singleness and sustains them spiritually.
Friendship can’t provide what marriage can and shouldn’t be too close.
We may disagree on the wisdom/foolishness of some of these, but regardless, the top line belief is that we need romance/sex to be whole and happy people and we’re promised those things by God if we’re good Christians. This leads to painful results. Half of Christian marriages end in divorce, and a 2017 Barna Study found that singles struggle more with depression, anxiety, doubt in God’s existence, and rebounding from doubt.
Okay, but it still feels unfair to gay people, right? And what’s so wrong with gay romance, anyway?
Is God asking gay people to give up truly good things?
I think it’s helpful to start by clarifying that God’s wisdom in the Scriptures isn’t arbitrary.
God’s wisdom in Scripture for what will bring goodness versus pain in my life isn’t arbitrary. God didn’t intend for me to be gay, notice that I’d want gay sex, and then draw a boundary around gay sex to test me.
I believe God made the world perfectly, He gave humans choice, and then humans chose to disobey Him. Our sin bent everything about the world, yet God looked back at the world and noticed what would bring us harm, but He also noticed the ways His best still shined through. So He revealed to us in His Scripture what would bring us harm and what His best still is for us, and He gave us the Church to read and interpret the Scriptures with.
Whenever a Christian asks a question about morality, the right question to ask isn’t, “What can I get away with?” Instead, it’s “What is God’s best for me?” And we answer that question by studying His Scriptures and discovering whether there’s a historic Christian consensus or a contemporary global Christian consensus on the question.
But when we ask, “What’s God’s best for gay people?” we don’t even need to look at the verses that many believe call same-sex sexual activity a sin. They are meaningful evidence, but I don’t think they’re necessary to know God’s wisdom for my sexuality. What is truly convincing is not those few passages but the whole of Scripture. Consistently, Scripture reveals God’s design for our lives and God’s order for the world, even in the midst of brokenness. When it comes to what to do with our capacities for romance and sex, God seems to be pretty clear. There are two options for all Christians: vocational singleness or Christian marriage with someone of the opposite sex. To arrive at that, we just need to read the words of Jesus.
In twelve verses in Matthew 19, Jesus tells us everything we need to know. Jesus calls His people back to God’s original intentions for marriage: a lifelong union between one woman and one man to serve God, not themselves. And then Jesus introduces an alternative: permanently giving up romance, marriage, sex, and biological children for the sake of doing kingdom work with undivided attention. Those are God’s best for us, regardless of our sexual orientation. That’s what a vast majority of Christians have believed over the past 2,000 years, and that’s what the majority of global Christians believe today.
Some would respond, “But a loving God wouldn’t deny me a loving marriage!” The problem with this argument is that when Scripture says “God is love,” that doesn’t mean that whatever you think love is, God is for that. It’s saying that God is the author of love, that the kind of love God offers is the original, the purest. It’s saying that if you want to know what love really is, search for what God says love is.
We need a better understanding of love than just being nice or kind or giving people what they want. Real love is willing someone to enjoy the best things life has to offer. And the best things come from God, so loving someone is willing them to enjoy what God offers. How do we know what God wants to offer us? By reading the Scriptures with the historic Church!
For me, the bad fruit of my own experiences has been most convincing. Satan told me for years that if I just had a relationship with a man, everything would be better. I’d finally have everything I needed. I wish I could have just trusted God that Satan’s lies were lies, but I couldn’t. I had to test them for myself. And my experience was that romantic relationships with men were not everything I hoped they would be. They were painful; they were not good for me.
Because God loves me, He has shown me what is inherently good for me and what will inherently bring me pain. He urges me to pursue what is good. He cautions me against what is broken. So complying with God’s wisdom by giving up gay sex/romance isn’t a sacrifice. It’s a blessing. Leaning into God’s design for me and my need for relationship and community is what will bring me the greatest meaning and truest joy. God guides me toward those best things.
If God isn’t asking gay people to give up the things that are truly good, and if God still wants to offer those best things to gay people, then what are those best things?
What is God offering to gay people?
If we don’t need romance/sex, then what do we need? What are we promised? What will satisfy? What are we made for?
God made us for genuine connection; community; love that lasts; rich, meaningful, steady relationship; to feel safe; to trust that the people who love us love us well and keep doing so until we die; to go on this life journey with people who truly know us and therefore know how to accompany us well on that journey; to offer the same to others; and to enjoy the delight that can only be achieved after decades of that known-ness.
God made us for those things. Our capacity for connection and need for community isn’t a test, it’s a gift. He made us in His image to enjoy intimacy with Him and each other, and He wants us to enjoy that to the fullest.
So let’s start with the basics: God created you for connection in the context of community. How do we know that? Because God is a being who enjoys connection in the context of community, and He created us in His image for those same things. We call our need to be in community, our capacity to connect with other humans, “sexuality.”
So how can we think more broadly about sexuality and our created need and capacity for connection in the context of community? More generally, our sexuality is our need to know others and be known by others, to give and receive love. But I’m not just talking about romantic love. This also includes brotherly and sisterly love. Friend love. That’s key to understand: we don’t need romance or sex to meet our needs for connection.
There’s actually a rich tradition of intimate friendship throughout the history of the Church and in the Scriptures. If we look at the friendships of David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, Jesus and John, and Paul and Timothy, we find deeply connected, non-sexual, non-romantic committed friendships. They were family in the truest ways for each other and often offered just as much companionship as a marriage in a way that neither competed with marriage nor took away from it. These spiritual friendships let each other need each other and give each other permission to ask of each others’ time, emotional energy, etc. They expect to get hurt and commit to forgive. These friendships were enough to sustain those who were single, and a hearty supplement for those who were married.
We’ve described what God made us for as sexual beings. Now let’s explore the best paths God has given us to enjoy our sexualities to the fullest. God has made all of us to find connection in the context of community, but what does that look like practically? And how do we do that well? In short, God has designed two paths for Christians to do that–two vocations–and He wants to give some of us the gift to walk down one of those paths and others the gift to walk down the other path: vocational singleness and Christian marriage.
Vocational singleness is a lifetime calling to abstinent singleness for the sake of kingdom work with undivided attention. Christian marriage is a lifetime commitment between one Christian woman and one Christian man with an openness to raising children for the sake of the kingdom. Both of these are particular ways adult Christians can enjoy connection in the context of community.
This is the key lever of God-honoring and life-giving sexual stewardship. If you want the most satisfying connection in community for a lifetime, then accept the gift that God wants to give you and live fully into God’s design for the vocation He gave you.
The key to sexual stewardship isn’t focusing on what we’re supposed to say no to. More often than not, when I meet lonely, disconnected, relationally wounded people it’s because there are ways they could more fully say yes to God’s calling for their lives and His design for that vocation.
God is offering all of us spiritual friendship. God is offering all of us connection in the context of community. God is offering each of us lifelong, lived-in human family. He’s not asking gay people to give up any of those; He’s only asking us to give up lesser love and to say yes to the pathway to fullness of life and love He wants to invite us into.
Plus, this appreciation for God’s wisdom and the intimate, committed, non-romantic friendship He invites all of us to cultivate can actually help us make sense of the fact that when a lot of us look at the same-sex romantic relationships around us, there seems to be some good there, right? Of course there is!
Just like any romantic and/or sexual relationship, most of the day-to-day of the relationship is just committed friendship. The moments and parts of the relationship that are friendship are good. God isn’t asking those gay people to give that up or flee from that or mortify that. He’s inviting us to leave behind the romantic and sexual parts that actually get in the way of allowing that potential for life-giving spiritual friendship to fully flourish.
For me, this has looked like responding to my sexual brokenness by investing more in meaningful friendship with other men instead of living in fear of them. Through pastors in my life and the Scriptures, God made clear to me that I don’t have to give up the desire for lifelong, lived-in family with men I love. Instead, God pointed out that I could do that without romance or sex with those men and actually enjoy more of what I truly desire, which is community and companionship. God reassured me that I need committed community in order to be faithful to my celibacy and the kingdom work it empowers, and He urged me to find what I needed.
In 2017, I met with my priest, the late Father Thomas McKenzie, to share that I felt called to vocational singleness but didn’t feel a magical gift of celibacy such that I didn’t need human family. I asked, “How can I find the family in the body of Christ that I need at our church?” Here’s how he responded: “To be honest, I don’t think you’re going to find the kind of family you need at our church or any church in Nashville any time soon. But monasticism has been the most common way celibate people have found family. It’s been the greatest source of evangelism in the Church, the greatest source of theology in the Church, and the greatest source of social justice in the Church. I think you should start something in Nashville, build the family you need, and stay connected to our church to teach us how to do family better. Find three other people, commit to doing something together for a year, and see what happens!”
Fast forward to today, the Nashville Family of Brothers is an ecumenically Christian monastery building lifelong family in Nashville for men called to vocational singleness. We’re still a part of our local churches. We’ve got jobs outside of the brotherhood leveraged for the sake of the kingdom. We’re still connected to parents and their kids. The six of us pray and eat and worship and vacation and serve and live together in a home as a family while we discern how God is calling us to leverage our singleness for the sake of the kingdom and discern whether to make lifetime commitments to each other.
I’ve actually made lifetime commitments to vocational singleness and to this family. I know who some of the guys are who will see my ugliest parts but won’t run away, who I’ll grow old with, and who will hold my hand when the people we love pass. If I’m honest, when I look around at most of my gay friends from college who have been hoping to find same-sex romantic love they’re just rotating through boyfriends. It seems like following God’s wisdom is actually paying off, that it actually does lead to more stable love and family.
Clearly, God isn’t asking me to give up anything that is truly good for me. He beckons me to enter into intimate, lifelong friendships with men and women, without the need for romance or sex. Ultimately, I’m grateful for God’s warnings of painful paths, and I joyfully follow God’s invitation to truly life-giving relationships.
So if God wants to offer gay people the best things, why does gay celibacy still seem more difficult?
Why is gay celibacy so difficult?
It feels harder for gay celibate Christians than for straight Christians refraining from sex outside of marriage in their teens and 20s, right? It feels like we’re being asked to strain more.
I want to be clear: being a gay Christian committed to a traditional sexual ethic is painful and difficult, but that’s not because God is depriving me of something I need, something good (He isn’t). It’s not because vocational singleness is inherently more difficult than faithful Christian marriage (it isn’t). It’s not because vocational singleness or mixed-orientation marriage for gay Christians have to be more difficult than faithful sexual stewardship for straight people (they don’t).
Our callings are difficult because of how poorly the Church has embodied a traditional sexual ethic.
1. Parents and pastors don’t know how to minister to us
Many parents and pastors first react to teens sharing about their attractions by sending teens to a therapist or a para-church ministry outside of the church to be “fixed.” Parents and pastors don’t know how to minister to gay people well, so they outsource the care. The shame and loneliness of gay people is amplified because their challenges are treated as weird problems that need special treatment. They are told to make sense of a key aspect of their personhood away from the church family they worship with, pray with, and take communion with.
2. Churches fail to invite everyone to God-honoring sexual stewardship
Too often, communities fail to teach what the Bible really has to say about vocational singleness and Christian marriage or offer robust support for either. They enable straight Christians to ignore God’s wisdom to their own detriment, but then they call gay Christians to a higher standard of sexual stewardship. This is hypocritical, and leaders lose credibility to ask gay Christians to live according to biblical wisdom.
3. Parents wait to talk about sexuality and unwittingly empower the closet
Many churches wait until a kid shares that he or she is gay to address the topic of homosexuality. This is a problem. Gay kids spend an average of five years in the closet, making sense of their sexuality, often without the love and wisdom of parents—left alone with the lies of the Enemy and culture. This leads to loneliness, anxiety, shame, depression, sexual sin, addiction, abandoning God’s wisdom, suicide, and loss of faith. Gay teens are five times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers, and 54% of gay people have left the church. The wounds of the closet become the greatest barrier to gay Christians thriving according to a historic sexual ethic, haunting them for a lifetime. If we wait for kids to come out to us to share about God’s love and wisdom for gay people, it will be too late.
4. Churches speak poorly about God’s wisdom for gay people (or are silent, at best)
Many churches avoid the topic of God’s love for gay people, so the average church-goer doesn’t know how to have compassionate and theologically accurate conversations with friends. As a result, gay people don’t know whether it is safe to share their story. Churches that refuse to speak publicly about God’s love for gay people hurt gay Christians, and their indecision limits their ability to invest in something better.
5. Vocational singleness and mixed-orientation marriage are inviable in most churches
Many churches may have the right beliefs about sexual ethics, but the pathways they offer for sexual stewardship aren’t viable. Those churches are places where few gay people are thriving in vocational singleness or the complexities of marriage with someone of the opposite sex. In response to the ways many Christians misused mixed-orientation marriage, the pendulum has now swung the opposite direction, and many churches teach that lifetime singleness is the only option for gay people. But these churches never teach about vocational singleness, there are no models in their church for doing this well, and they don’t invite straight people to consider vocational singleness. Vocational singles feel alone as roommate after roommate moves out—they’re starved of a consistent experience of family in the body of Christ. It begs the question: if we aren’t offering vocational singleness to straight people, do we really believe it is good?
But, your community can become a place where gay Christians thrive according to a historic Christian sexual ethic. And in the process bless every Christian in your community. How?
How can churches become places of thriving?
First, your community needs to invite all Christians to think theologically about their sexual stewardship. You need to teach that God first calls everyone to a period of temporary singleness during which they discern whether they are called to vocational singleness or Christian marriage with someone of the opposite sex. Your community should teach that every Christian has the same inherent capacity for both vocations and every Christian, gay or straight, should offer the question of vocational singleness or Christian marriage to God. And then your community needs to come around gay and straight people to help them faithfully live out the one God calls them to
Second, your community must talk publicly about the cultural questions in the intersection of faith and sexuality. With compassion and theological accuracy, churches need to explore the following questions: How does same-sex attraction develop? What part did God play and why? Does same-sex attraction change? How should gay people meet their intimacy needs? How do gay people fit in God’s story? and How is God’s invitation to gay people good? As a result, everyone in a church would know how to love gay people well and reflect the love of Christ in conversations about sexuality. Plus, closeted gay people in that church would know what the church believes and that it is safe to share their story.
Third, churches must protect kids from the wounds of the closet. Churches need to equip parents to lead kids ages 2-12 in age-appropriate conversation about God’s wisdom for everyone’s sexual stewardship before puberty, demonstrating safety and inviting children to share early about their sexuality. If kids hear before puberty that gay people don’t choose who they are attracted to, that they have nothing to be ashamed about, that we won’t try to fix them, that we don’t love them any less, and that God has good and beautiful plans for them, hopefully when some of them realize they experience same-sex attractions, they’ll quickly share with their parents and pastors, inviting the adults in their lives to help them learn how to steward their sexuality in God-honoring ways and preventing the wounds of the closet from ever being inflicted.
Fourth, pastors and other Christian leaders need to know how to offer compassionate one-on-one pastoral care to gay people. They need to do what it takes to gain the competency to provide pastoral care to gay people. While licensed counselors still may be included to help address clinical levels of anxiety or depression, these churches must recognize that same-sex attractions are not a mental illness to be cured. Parents and pastors should help gay people integrate their faith and sexuality in ways that lead to thriving in this life and deep relationships with God and friends.
And last but not least, churches must become places where gay Christians can thrive in vocational singleness or a mixed-orientation marriage with reasonable effort. These churches should teach about the theology of vocational singleness in Scripture, adults should model thriving in vocational singleness and be celebrated in the church, and the church should invite all people—gay or straight—to discern whether God is calling them to vocational singleness or marriage. These churches need to teach about the possibility of mixed-orientation marriages for gay people, cautioning against getting into such a marriage recklessly while highlighting the beauty and brokenness of real stories. Most importantly, these churches must be places where celibate people can find the same depth of family that married people find by helping vocational singles start intentional Christian communities by suggesting the idea, helping them cast vision for it, providing pastoral support while they explore the possibility, coaching them through the process, and even providing financial support in the early years.
What can gay Christians do in the meantime?
If you’re a straight Christian, resist judging gay people for hesitating to give up gay romance and sex until your church has taken these five steps. If you’re not offering a community where gay Christ followers could actually thrive according to God’s wisdom with reasonable effort, then you have no credibility to call them to something more difficult than what you’re calling other Christians to.
And if you’re a gay celibate Christian, well, you know this just as well as I do that our churches probably aren’t going to become places of thriving anytime soon. So what do we do? It’ll be difficult, but I want to encourage you to own your celibacy and do what it takes to make it beautiful for yourself.
I know that’s unfair, but it’s even worse for us it we wait around for others to do what they should do but may never do.
Every Christian young adult should open-handedly discern between vocational singleness and Christian marriage between one Christian woman and one Christian man, including gay Christians. This doesn’t mean that I think every gay Christian has to date someone of the opposite sex, but it means at least being emotionally and theologically open to the possibility and genuinely discerning both.
Why might discernment help us own our celibacy and step fully into it? Defaulting to long-term singleness often feels forced or involuntary, and this involuntary celibacy leads to self-pity, resentment, and self-loathing that Satan uses to tempt us to self-destruction. Instead, we’ve got to own our celibacy because there are significant advantages to being all-in.
You see, discernment is about much more than just identifying the most likely path forward. It’s also about accepting, embracing, choosing, taking a leap of faith, seeking confirmation, and stepping forward. Discernment can help us move from seeing our celibacy as involuntary to seeing our celibacy as chosen.
I know many in uncommitted singleness who find it difficult to commit to a particular spiritual family or kingdom work because they feel like they need to be ready to reorganize their life around a future marriage. They struggle with job dissatisfaction, kingdom work unfulfillment, loneliness, and a sense of waiting for life to start.
Lean into owning your celibacy and making it beautiful. It’s not an easy road, and we’re not meant to do it alone, but it’s worth the cost.
