Kingdom Woman: Embracing Your Purpose, Power, and Possibilities (17 page)

Yet Paul encouraged singles to realize that they can, and should, be both satisfied and fulfilled in their higher purpose. Paul wrote frankly, “But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this” (1 Corinthians 7:28). Essentially, Paul equated “trouble” with marriage in this passage. He went on to explain:

One of the points Paul brought up is that in marriage you have now become bound to other people’s expectations and needs. You can’t go where you want to go as you once did as a single. You can’t do everything that you want to do as you once did as a single. Everything you do must first be passed through the grid of how it intersects with meeting the needs of your family. Paul was emphasizing the freedom of singlehood. This is an area that I think a lot of singles fail to take advantage of or even enjoy to the full extent, because they are wishing that they were married. Yet if you are single, you are free.

Paul wants you to know as a single that you have a unique opportunity to maximize a heavenly perspective on earth. When you allow heaven to dictate your actions and thoughts as a single, you can become one of the most productive and significant kingdom women God has available.

The moment you become distracted by the idea of singlehood being nonfulfilling—on desiring or chasing after a mate rather than waiting on God’s plan for your life (whether or not that includes a mate)—you have let your singlehood get in the way of God’s purpose. In fact, you have let your singlehood get in the way of God’s kingdom and your well-being because you have chosen to spend your time thinking about, feeling frustrated over, or attempting to create a way to get married. God desires you to be content where you are as a single. You have the opportunity that married women do not have to fully maximize your gifts, skills, time, treasures, and talents for the glory of God. Not only that, but you also have more time to sit at Jesus’ feet as Mary did and develop an intimate relationship with the Savior.

When God made Adam, Adam didn’t have a wife, but he had a purpose. He was so totally occupied with the purpose God had given him that it wasn’t even Adam who noticed that he was alone and needed a helper. Scripture tells us God noticed. God made Eve and brought her to Adam. Adam didn’t go looking for Eve.

Under the new covenant, there is neither male nor female in God’s kingdom equation of advancing His glory on earth. As a single, you have a purpose,
and God has equipped you with the power to live out your calling as a single. God will bring you a mate—as He did with Adam—if that is His will. You don’t have to go looking for one. What you can do in order to live a satisfied life as a single is focus on your purpose as God’s child, His kingdom daughter. And never forget, or settle for less than, your true value.

A man was shopping one day at an antique store where the owner, a woman, had a beautiful table for sale. The price on the table was six hundred dollars, yet the man thought he would try to get a deal, so he offered her four hundred dollars. They began having a conversation about the table, and she informed him that she wouldn’t take less than the asking price for it. The man continued to ask for the discounted price, so the owner began telling him all of the unique qualities about this particular table.

Their conversation continued for some time. Then the man asked if she would be willing to take five hundred dollars. She said, “No, we’ve talked so much about this table, I’ve been reminded of its value. The price, sir, is now one thousand dollars.”

Kingdom single, you are much more valuable than you may even realize. You are a child of the King; you are uniquely called and positioned to live devoted to God as one of His primary agents for advancing His purposes on earth. That is a high calling, and He will enable you to live it well. Never forget your value. Never settle for less than who you truly are.

Abiding

Several years ago, when I first preached a message on abiding to my congregation in Dallas, I wanted to illustrate how vital it is to “abide” in Christ, as the King James Version puts it in John 15. So on Saturday morning, I pulled a branch off the tree in front of my house and laid it on the porch. Then, just before I left for church on Sunday morning, I pulled a similar branch off the same tree and brought both branches with me to the pulpit. As I held them up
for the congregation to see, the difference was clear. The leaves on the Sunday morning branch were still fresh and green, while the leaves on the Saturday branch were already dry and brown around the edges.

That’s what happens when a branch stops “abiding” or “remaining” in the tree. It is cut off from its life source. Without being connected to the source of sap in the trunk of the tree (or vine), death begins—even though it may take several hours before it becomes apparent.

Jesus said that the key to being a fruitful, productive disciple is to abide in Him, just as a branch “abides” in a vine. As long as we do, the sap of His Spirit will continue to flow through us, and His character will burst into flowers on our branches that will ripen into luscious fruit.

The trouble with many of us is that we are not good at abiding. We fool ourselves into thinking we can survive apart from the vine. But we can’t. Without abiding, it is only a matter of time before our leaves begin to wither, dry up, and turn brown, and we become unable to bear any fruit at all.

An informal study, “Obstacles to Growth Survey,” reported that Christians are too busy to abide. The study gathered information from about twenty thousand Christians in nearly 140 countries. More than four in ten Christians worldwide say they “often” or “always” run from task to task. Six in ten say it is “often” or “always” true that a hectic life keeps them from going deeper in their walk with God.
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The main problem here is in prioritizing their time to be able to abide in Christ. Abiding doesn’t mean you simply pop in or pop out. To abide can be defined as “loitering” or “hanging out” with. It implies a continual and ongoing connection while in the presence of another.

Keep in mind that abiding has benefits: “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (John 15:7,
KJV
). This verse is often quoted by certain unscrupulous and unscriptural preachers you see on late-night TV. All you need to do is write in for this special prayer cloth or a vial of water from the Jordan River, and
presto
! your prayers (no matter how selfish and self-defeating) will be answered. But these men tend to overlook the key to this passage. It doesn’t simply say to ask. It tells us to abide, and then ask: “If you remain in me and my words remain in you . . .” The world is full of people who ask but don’t abide.

Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the
LORD
and he will
give you the desires of your heart
.” Do you see the structure of this verse? It has the same if/then construction we just looked at:
If
you delight yourself in the
LORD
,
then
He will give you the desires of your heart.
If
you abide in Him,
then
ask whatever you wish. When we delight ourselves in the Lord, His agenda becomes our own. His priorities outrank ours. We make our decisions according to His standard. His desires become our desires.

A kingdom woman who delights in the Lord may very well desire a house, a car, or some other amenity. But she will pray, “Lord, give me this house, car, or whatever so it can become Yours. Meet my need so I can build Your kingdom.” It is as though God is saying, “If you want My blessings so you can build a kingdom of your own, don’t expect much. I’m only interested in answering the prayers of women who are serious about being fruitful for Me.”

Bearing Fruit

“This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples” (John 15:8). As with every other facet of your life, you are to bear fruit to glorify God. The more fruitful you grow, the better you reflect the glory of God and the less you clutter your calendar with your own shortsighted agendas.

Many of the world’s observatories still use giant reflecting telescopes. They work on a simple principle: An enormous curved mirror gathers light from faint, distant stars and reflects it back in crisp focus on a small eyepiece. The reflecting power of the mirror enables astronomers to view the wonders of space. Your fruitfulness as a kingdom woman makes you more reflective of God’s glory and enables you to more effectively focus His light on a dark and needy world.

We’ve seen how vital it is to abide in Christ as the pathway to fruitfulness,
but how do you actually do that? Verses 9 and 10 contain the answer: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love.”

Remaining, or abiding, is a matter of love, not a matter of duty. Biblical love is an action, not an emotion. You abide in God’s love by keeping His commandments. Without obedience, there can be no abiding. Without abiding, there can be no fruit. If you lack obedience, you might as well stop praying. If you are not obeying, you might as well get up off your knees, unfold your hands, open your eyes, and go for a walk. You can do whatever you like, but you don’t need to pray. Jesus said that only those who remain in Him can expect to receive what they ask for. Yet if you are vitally connected to Jesus Christ and committed to obeying Him despite your flaws and failures, then don’t hesitate to tell Him what’s on your heart. It is His good pleasure to grant you whatever you wish.

You may say, “All right, Tony, I’m abiding. I have committed myself to obedience. And when I fall short of that mark, I confess my sin, repent, and get myself back into the abiding mode. I have been praying for something for the past three years, and nothing has happened. How do you make it between the time you start abiding and the time the answers show up?”

I have good news for you. If you are abiding, God has given you something to make the wait worthwhile: joy: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (verse 11). Don’t be confused; joy is different from happiness. Happiness is a warm, bubbly feeling you get when things are going well. Real joy has nothing to do with how things are going. Joy is a question of your state of mind, regardless of how things are going. In fact, joy itself is called a fruit of the Spirit. Joy has to do with a God-given internal ability to cope well. It can produce peace in the midst of panic and calm in the midst of turmoil.

On the eve of His crucifixion, Jesus prayed in the garden that the cup might pass from Him. After all, there was no happiness associated with death on the cross. Jesus was willing to suffer; He was not eager for it. Many of us pray similar prayers. Your particular “cup” may be a contentious spouse, an overbearing employer, a barren womb, an empty bank account, or a chronic health problem. Just as God did not take away Jesus’ cup, God doesn’t take away many of our hardships. So how do we cope well? The same way that Jesus did: “For the joy
set before him [He] endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). Jesus decided to look past the pain and see the purpose. The agony and the shame had a purpose.

If you are totally committed to this truth, you will gain insight to see beyond your circumstances and catch a glimpse of God’s craftsmanship in progress. As long as you continue to seek joy from your circumstances, the best you can hope for are some fleeting moments of happiness. Some marriages, for example, are not happy ones. But they
can
be joyful. Not every job is ideal, but it can be joyful. Not every child will rise up and call you blessed, but the child-rearing experience can be a joyful one—provided that you continue to abide and obey.

Let me give you another example.Taking a sick child to the doctor can be unnerving. The child is obviously not feeling well; that’s what prompted the visit in the first place. If you also happen to be sick, the experience can be doubly stressful as your crying, restless kid squirms in the seat next to yours, anticipating what the doctor might do. That’s why I was especially pleased to see that our pediatrician had set up a play area. There were blocks, puzzles, coloring books, crayons, and toy cars—plenty of activity to keep my kids interested and occupied until the doctor was ready to see us.

Friend, I know you’re tired of waiting. You’ve been waiting for the Lord to come through and make a way out of your personal wilderness for a long time. Still, the doctor may not have called your name yet. But God has set up a room called “joy” where you can spend your time waiting with a smile on your face.

Kingdom Fruit

God doesn’t take it lightly when the branches on His vine fail to yield fruit. So He will lift the branches that have fallen to the ground, nourish them, and get them up out of the dirt. But that isn’t enough; He prunes the branches until
they bear more fruit. Still, He is not satisfied. He will settle for nothing less than a lot of fruit.

Chrystal’s Chronicles

I want to be a kingdom woman because I desire the best possible me that God had in mind when He created me. The problem is that the road to the best possible me is not always lined with roses. There have been many moments of pain and many more moments of pruning. Of course, with the passing of time and the acquisition of a few more years under my belt, I can see the blessing of hardships and trials. I can see the woman I was and the transition to the woman I am becoming. And I am learning to love it all: the past, the present, and the journey.