Trusting God for the Future

Dannah Gresh: Seasons of life may change. You may be married or single, but your heart can remain set on the Lord no matter what your circumstances. Here's Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth .

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: If you pursue Christ, the way you spend your money may change. The way you make decisions about how to spend your time may change. But what won't change is the core of who you are.

Dannah: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of "Singled Our for Him," for Wednesday, February 23, 2022. I'm Dannah Gresh.

Did you know your view of God impacts how you think about your relationship status? Maybe even more than you realize. Nancy will explain as she challenges you to consider what you think about God and how much you trust Him. This is day three of a series called "Thoughts for My Single Sisters . . . Before I Become a 'Mrs.'" Nancy gave this message in 2015, just days before she married Robert Wolgemuth. Here she is to share some of the valuable insight she learned as a single woman.

Nancy: In the conclusion of this little mini-series, I want to talk a number of things, and the first, I think, is so foundational as we think about singleness or marriage—and that's the importance of having a right view of God.

In fact, I've told you through these days that the bottom line of everything I want to say in this little series is: God is good, and You can trust Him to write your story. You can trust Him to write the script for your life.

You can't trust Him if you don't have a right view of Him, if you don't know what He's like, because ultimately, what you think about God, what you believe about God will drive your emotions. It will drive your contentment level. It will drive your behavior and your actions and your choices and your priorities. It will drive everything about you. What you think about God is so important.

I have a friend who serves the Lord with a mission agency. She's in her early forties. She is one of these who has longed to be a wife and a mother, and God has not brought this into her life yet. Karen wrote me when I asked for some input on this series, and here's a little bit of what she shared. 

The turning point for me was when I began to realize I had a wrong view of God. Here's my story. I was in a counseling session with a godly, single lady. She asked me, "Karen, what if you never get married?" My only response at that moment was, "I just beg God not to do that to me. Please don't ask that of me. I can't accept it." That thought scared me SO much.

Then this woman began to help me think through the lies I had been believing. I never would have said verbally that God didn't love me, but deep inside, that's how I felt. I didn't even realize it. I needed someone to point it out to me. These were the lies: I felt that He was punishing me. I felt that there must be some lesson I needed to learn. I felt He didn't want me to get married, that He was withholding it from me because I wanted it so bad. I would say bitterly to my friends, "Well, He hasn't allowed it yet, so He probably never will."

When my counselor said, "Oh, Karen, your Father is not like that. That is not His character," the tears began to flow (oh dear, tears even now as I type). I had to begin confessing to God the lies I had believed about Him and embrace and believe in faith that He did and He does love me, that He does care about me.

Nancy, when you got engaged, I thought to myself, Well, there's still hope for me! I don't know the end of my story. Maybe God still has someone for me, maybe not, but no matter what the end of the story is, I know without a doubt God loves me.

I love that! You don't know what the end of the story is for your life. I don't know the end of the story for my life. I don't know how many days, weeks, months, years God will give Robert and me together. There's no guarantee on that. But what I know is that God is good, and I'm trusting Him to write my story.

Regardless of what the end of the story may be, we can know without a doubt that God really does love us. So we need a view of God that's grounded in the Word of God, not grounded in our feelings, which are fickle and feeble and changing, but a view of God that's grounded in His Word.

I referenced earlier my friend Lydia Brownback's book, Fine China Is for Single Women, Too. It's one I highly recommend. She says, in that book,

What governs God's ordering of our marital status? The same thing that governs all He does—love, mercy, grace, and His desire to conform us to Jesus Christ. Why would we want to change that? It's all for our blessing. If you are single, it is because, for the time being at least, God has determined that you will most glorify Him and come to enjoy Him most fully as a single woman. If the time comes when those two ends will be achieved through marriage, God will change your life so that you will be married.

So as you think about your view of God, I want to encourage you to get so grounded in the Word of God that you're continually counseling your heart according to what is truth revealed in God's Word, the truth that:

• God does love you. 
• He wants only your best.
• He wants only what is good for you. 
• Marriage is not a reward for godliness or beauty or patience. 
• Your marital status is not a measure of your worth.
• God finds you desirable, and so on.

Go to the Word of God, and let the Word of God be that which drives and directs and owns and tethers your thinking and your heart and your emotions so that your emotions become connected to the truth, to the Word of God. And that's when sometimes in those hard times you have to keep telling yourself what you know to be true from God's Word.

I've had to do that as a single woman. I've learned to do it. I will have to do it as a married woman—starting tomorrow—to learn to counsel my heart according to the truth of God's Word because my ultimate happiness and well-being does not depend on Robert Wolgemuth. Now, he has made me very happy. He loves me very much. But he's not God. He's a shepherd, small "s,"in my life. But together we're committed to following the Shepherd, the great Shepherd, capital "S," and that's where our happiness and our well-being is assured.

Now, I know as singles, that often a big concern that's expressed is, "What about the future?" I think there are fears about the future for many single women, many widows. "How will I handle this?"

One woman who serves in another ministry wrote me, and she said, "I can get fearful of what's around the corner." This woman's in her early fifties.

She said, "With no parents to help me, and siblings in other states, one huge catastrophe could wipe me out. Who would take care of me should I get ill or injured? Unemployment for more than a couple of months could clean my clock. When my father died I took my mother in and supported her financially." And she did this beautifully. I was around when she was doing that.

She said, "Who will help me? Beyond frightening. I remind myself, 'Never have I seen the righteous forsaken or His seed begging bread.'"

You go back to the Word of God as you think about the future. You don't live with those fears for the future. You counsel your heart according to truth.

Proverbs 1:33, "Whoever listens to me [to wisdom] will dwell secure and will be at ease, without dread of disaster."

Luke 12, starting in verse 29, "Do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried."

I don't know how many times in our courtship and engagement Robert has said to me, "We're not going to worry about this—whatever it is. God has told us not to worry. Worry is a sin. We're not going to do it."

I'm going, "That's easy for you to say!"

It's not easy, but it's necessary to say, "He has said don't be worried."

For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father [capital "F"] knows that you need them. [He knows!] Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you. Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom (vv. 29–32).

Listen, He's going to give us all that. He's given us Christ. Do you think He will not give us the measly little things we need, daily bread, for which He's told us to pray and for which we must trust Him? And the absence of that puts us in a place of needing to trust Him more, to call out to Him.

So what about the future? "Fear not. It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."

There's so many promises from God's Word, promises to give us a future, to give us a hope.

Isaiah 56, God says, "To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, [those who have foregone marriage for the sake of the kingdom of God, these single people, single for a long time, those who keep my Sabbaths] who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls [God says] a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off" (vv. 4–5).

I've watched so many single women get to that "about forty stage." They know the biological time clock is ticking. When they realize that they're probably not going to be able to have children, because God hasn't provided a husband, there's something that's really hard in a lot of women's lives, and a lot of you have been there.

God's Word says, to those who choose to accept "My calling in their lives, I will give a name, a home, a place, a family that is better than biological sons and daughters."

You say, "What could be better?"

Whatever God gives you is better. How thankful I am for the children God has given me—the spiritual grandchildren—for the relationships, for the ministry, for the fruitfulness in a single, in a way, during my decades of singleness that would have been very different had I been married during those years. Robert will be the first to tell you I have so many rich, sweet, deep, meaningful, helpful, huge, close, intimate relationships with people that I've poured my life into. They've poured their life into me. We're connected. We're family.

So Robert is going to be connected to my life in a whole different way than any of those people, but what a healthy thing for us to be getting married at a time when he has a family. He is a widower with two grown daughters, five teenage grandkids, lots of friends, lots of family, lots of relationships that he has established over the years as a married man.

And now, him as a widower, me as a woman who's been single all these years, to be bringing those lives and families together. We often say to each other, "Your people will be my people." And for the glory of God, and for some kind of fruitfulness that God anticipates that we could never have anticipated.

I wouldn't have written the script this way. I'm telling you, I wouldn't have. It never entered my mind to think that this might be what God has for me in this season. But it entered His mind. And, "Eyes have not seen; ears have never heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him" (1 Cor. 2:9 KJV paraphrased).

So love Him first, and then know whether your view of God is being drawn from the Scripture, that God is good, and you can trust Him to write your story.

I think about the seasons of life, the seasons God has had me in, the season He's taking me into. I just want to say how grateful I am, so, so grateful. Not just because I'm getting married tomorrow (I'm really grateful for that), but I'm grateful for a whole lot more than that.

I want to tell you, had I not been grateful for what's come before, I don't think I could experience the same level of grateful for what's coming ahead. I'm thankful for the nearly forty years that the Lord gave me as a single adult. And by His grace, only by His grace, I have really tried to make the most of that season. I'm thankful that, by God's grace, I did not waste those years pining for something that God had not provided.

I'm thankful that I didn't insist on having marriage sooner. Look at what I would have missed! Look at who I would have missed! Remember that verse in the psalms, "God gave them their request [He gave them what they demanded], but He sent leanness into their souls" (Ps. 106:15 KJV).  He sent a wasting disease among them.

If you want a mate badly enough, you can get one, but don't settle for something or someone that is less than what and who and when God has that plan for you.

I'm thankful for the amazing relationships He has given me.

I'm thankful that over these years I have not pursued marriage or men. I'm a big champion of marriage, you know that if you've listened to this program. And I believe that in the will of God, there's no higher calling than to be united in marriage and to be spiritually and physically fruitful if that's the season of life where God has you marry. But I'm thankful that over these years, that's not what I was pursuing.

I'm thankful that in God's sweet providence I had parents and other people, from the time I was little, little, little, who spoke into my life, "You pursue Christ. Pursue Him."

I'm thankful that I sought to know God, walk with Him, and to love and serve Him and others faithfully. And in many senses, this next chapter of my life is not something really all that different. It's really a continuation of a way of life and a walk that I have been experiencing and enjoying for decades—not without failures, not without falling. But God has kept bringing me back to that point of enjoying Him, seeking Him (capital "H"), pursuing Him. And that's what I'm going to keep doing as Mrs. Robert Wolgemuth.

There are a lot of girls who pursue marriage or hope so deeply for marriage in and of itself that when they get it, it's hollow, because marriage was never intended to be the end as much as it was intended to be the means to the end. And what's the end? The glory of God and the advancement of the kingdom of Christ.

So that is what women, single or married, must pursue first and foremost. And if you pursue Christ, the amount of space you have in your bed may change, the way you spend your money may change, the way you make decisions about how to spend your time may change—as it will for me making this transition from singleness into marriage. But what won't change is the core of who you are and the focus on godliness and service and the kingdom of Christ. I'm thankful that I waited for the Lord, not waited for marriage, but waited for the Lord.

So life is short. Eternity is long. We need to set our eyes on Jesus. Fix our eyes on Him. Don't put your life on hold waiting for a man to fulfill your life. If you're single, this is not a time in limbo. Develop skills to serve the Lord. Plug in. Be all there. Open your heart, open your home to others. Singleness is a gift while you have it. Use it for His glory.

And as we think about all that is to come, moor your heart, tether your heart to the promises of God's Word, promises like this:

Fear not, I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, they will not overwhelm you. You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, says the Lord. Fear not for I am with you." (Isa. 43:1–2)

2 Corinthians 9, "God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work" (v. 8). That doesn't sound like a desperate person. That sounds like somebody who's experiencing freedom and fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.

Put your hope in the Lord. Wait for Him. In singleness or in marriage, it's still true: "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want" (Ps 23:1). Wait for the Lord. Scripture says those who wait for Him will never be put to shame.

There have always been needs in my life that only the Lord can meet, and that will continue to be the case as I move into this new season. So married, single, young, old, it's better to wait on the Lord than to move ahead and try and do things on your own.

There's a song by that title written by John Elliott. We've heard many of his songs over the years. But for many years John led worship at Revive Our Hearts conferences—ten or more years. We did scores of events together. And at the end of each of those conferences, I was talking to the women about coming down off the conference high and what they were going to face when they got home—some challenges, difficult things. I would say to them, "Wait on the Lord. Whatever you're facing when you get home, things you know about, the things you don't know about, wait on the Lord." And then I would ask John to sing this song. I'm going to play it for you in just a minute.

But what I didn't know until just very recently, John told me that throughout those years that he did that song for us—probably fifty times at the end of Revive Our Hearts conferences—he said, "Many, many of those times he felt God impressing him, as he was singing it, that in God's way and in God's time, God would bring a godly man into my life—a husband."

I didn't know that until just recently. How thankful I am that John, and others that I've found out, have prayed those prayers over the years. And let me say to those of you who are married, that's a way you can minister into the lives of your single friends. If God prompts, pray that in His time, His way, God will bring that husband into their lives. But pray, not just for a mate, but for grace to wait on the Lord. It's better to wait on the Lord. So take heart, and be strong, though His ways may seem long, it's better to wait on the Lord.

John Elliott:

It is better to wait on the Lord God Almighty
And put your trust fully in Him.
It is better to look for His wisdom and timing
Than lean on what you understand.

We have a Father who sees from above,
He knows when we have been tested enough.
And He works together all things
On behalf of the children that He dearly loves.

So take heart, and be strong
Though His ways may seem long. 
It is better to wait, better to wait on the Lord.

Nancy: Would you just in this moment place before the Lord whatever may be an unfulfilled longing in your heart? Would you say, "Lord, by Your grace, I want to wait on You, to put my trust fully in You. Thank You that You can be trusted to write my story, and that You're good, wise, and loving"?

And can I just say to my single sisters, here on this eve before I become a Mrs., I don't know if or how or when He will grant the desires of your heart for marriage, but here's what I pray: I pray that He will strengthen and sustain you in this season, that He will sanctify you by His grace, and that He will satisfy you deeply with His steadfast love.

And Lord, keep us all waiting on You until the day that faith becomes sight, and prayer becomes praise, and we're forever with our heavenly Bridegroom for all eternity. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Dannah: That's Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth in program that originally was broadcast the day before her wedding. For several decades she provided valuable perspective on singleness as a single woman. I hope the truths you heard today have encouraged you to trust God right now and for the future—whether you’re single or married. Nancy shares more insight about singleness as a gift in her booklet called, "Singled Out for Him: Embracing the Blessings and the Challenges of Singleness." This is a helpful resource for discovering how to be grateful and trusting God and His plan for your life.

When you make a donation of any amount to Revive Our Hearts, you’ll receive a copy of this booklet. It’s one way we want to thank you for supporting this ministry. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959, and ask for "Singled Out for Him."

Have you ever viewed singleness as a problem? Tomorrow, we’ll hear from Colleen Chao, a dear friend of this ministry. She learned how to see her singleness, not as something that needed fixing, but as an opportunity to give glory to God. She’ll explain more tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts.

As a podcast listener, you're getting some bonus material today. To follow up today's teaching, Nancy is talking with a good friend in the audience on the day she recorded this.

Nancy: What we've been talking about here, Paula, you have been a sweet illustration of. I've watched you on this journey. Your book, Confessions of a Boy-Crazy Girl, you wrote a number of years ago. When you came to this ministry, you were a boy-crazy girl. You were a boy-crazy girl from the time you were, how old, what, two or something?

Paula: Seven, maybe?

Nancy: You waited until seven? You're very transparent in that book, which I highly recommend to teens, to young women, to moms who are discipling young women, because the subtitle is, "On Her Journey from Neediness to Freedom."

When you came to this ministry, eleven or twelve years ago, you were, as we all are, a needy girl, but particularly in this area of your singleness, and there were deep longings. And I watched you go through some of these relationships and just different issues that would surface, and your fears, and theirs, and then different ones that didn't work out.

And then I watched as you preached the gospel to yourself. You received the grace of God. I watched the transforming power of the gospel in your thinking, in your emotions. And then I watched this journey, not because you had arrived, but just in God's providence of God bringing Trevor into your life.

So you've been listening to me doing these three sessions on this transition from singleness to marriage. You're now an old married lady of seventeen days!

Paula: That's me!

Nancy: So, speak to us what you've just heard in light of your journey and what PS would you want to say, just to affirm, confirm out of your own story. Kind of relate to this a little bit personally. I think that would be an encouragement to these women.

Paula: Well, it was really sweet to sit back there and take notes as you were talking, because I thought about all the times I stayed in this chapel after a chapel service and knelt down at my chair and cried fresh, hot tears over another disappointment. I was just thinking about the many women who came alongside me in this room and put their arm over me and prayed for me. It has been a painful, long journey.

I wasn't quite like you where I was as content as you were. I wasn't at all. I filtered life through wanting someone of the opposite sex to love me, and just feeling like I could never quite obtain that.

But, yes, I loved what you shared. It was just so practical and true. The part about being in community . . . I remember when I sat on your back porch of your home. I was actually mad at you because you said that you didn't think I should live alone if I wanted to get married, and that just kind of rustled my feathers, but it was so very wise.

And something that I learned along the way is that God really does answer our prayers. He really does provide for our needs. He just doesn't usually do it in the way that we expect Him to. I see how He provided that love and that care for three decades, four decades? (I'm not good at math. I married an accountant for that!) But He provided that through older people, through younger people, through Christ's Body.

I'm so grateful for Christ's Body; it's such a gift.

Nancy: So you did, after that conversation on the back porch, and as you processed and prayed it through, you ended up at that point moving into . . .

Paula: Yes. I ended up moving into a family's home. They traveled some of the time, and then they were home some of the time, and it was such a blessing. The Lord put me next door to another family with kids. I would pull into the driveway to enter a dark home (you know, no one leaves the lights on for you when you're single), and they would step out onto the porch and say, "Do you want to come over for supper?"

And I so resonate with the Sunday morning thing, Sundays, ahhhh, were so brutal. . . walking into really family-centered churches, seeing couples with their arms around each other and feeling like a total misfit.

But it's sweet now because of my many years of singleness. I now walk into the church and spot a young single girl and go and sit down and talk with her. In fact, I began a friendship with one girl named Betsy. I said, "Hey, I know what it's like to sit alone in church. Would you like to come sit with us?" And I've been able to go out to Panera Bread with her and connect with her.

Nancy: So now as you're reflecting on your journey, you said it was painful, but there were also sweet points where the Lord met you, He made Himself known to you before you found Trevor . . . or Trevor found you. What are some of the key things you would say to that single woman who still has that unfulfilled longing, that unwanted singleness. You're close enough to it still that you haven't forgotten. What are some of the things that just not only made you survive but helped you to thrive in that season?

Paula: Well, it's a process. You're not going to listen to this program and then walk out of the door and be a changed woman. It's a lot of hard work. It's not just hearing Nancy or myself or others say that God can actually satisfy. It's beginning to work that out in your own personal life. It is choosing to put down that chick-flick or that Christian romance novel and instead, pick up the Word of God, even when you don't feel like it. And it's so true, what you said, Nancy, you can't trust someone you don't know.

God is absolutely lovely and fully able to meet all of your needs as you encounter Him day after day after day in His Word.

Nancy: And how is that way of thinking now? Do you anticipate that impacting your relationship with Trevor and making, giving you a different kind of marriage than you would have had otherwise?

Paula: Oh, I am so grateful for the journey I had because I would have sucked the life out of my husband if I had not had to experience that beforehand. And even seventeen days in, I see already the curse. I want to control my husband. I want him to be off of his phone more and paying attention to me more.

But it's really good already to depend on the Lord in prayer rather than just nagging my husband constantly. I see how I need God and time with Him by myself just as much as I needed it as a single. He's my life. And apart from Him, life is empty and not worth living.

Nancy: So, the gospel, you're a gospel-centered woman. You've experienced the grace of God in some amazing ways. How does the gospel, the grace of Christ, how has it made a difference in your single journey, and how is it going to make a difference in your marriage?

Paula: Well, I was in Ephesians 2 yesterday, I think, reading about how I was dead in my sins and my trespasses, and you were as well. We all were. And it camps out there for a while, and then there's this huge transition of, "But God being rich in mercy (that is who God is. He is a merciful God) because of the great love with which He loved us."

I love that because sometimes you hear people wanting to be right theologically, and so they'll say, "Oh, you know, Jesus came to earth to glorify His Father." Yes, but He came to earth also because of His great love for us. And so when I'm not feeling particularly loved by my husband or loved in the deep kind of way I want to, I can go back to the cross and remember that nowhere has God demonstrated more clearly His great love for me.

I continue to be His future bride. And, actually, you and Robert aren't the only strange ones who go to church after the wedding. Trevor is all about being with the Body of Christ, so we went the following Sunday and had so many people say, "What are you doing at church? You should be on your honeymoon." And Trevor just describes it as, "Marriage is a picture, an earthly picture of the heavenly reality. Like, why would we miss fixing our eyes on God for this?"

Nancy: Yes, and what you've just said points us again to the ultimate Wedding, which is the one for which we're living, to which our lives ought to be pointing, to which we're aiming, that eternal wedding with Christ.

And so every woman, single, unwanted singleness, thirty–forty years, a lifetime of unwanted singleness, and every lonely woman in a difficult marriage who knows Jesus can be looking forward to what is the ultimate, the eternal wedding to Christ. That's what we live for. That's what we're aiming for. All of this down here on earth is really just a dress rehearsal, a practice.

This wedding we're getting ready to have is a dress rehearsal. It's a practice for eternity for our wedding to Christ. So every woman, every man, will be married for all of eternity to Christ, those who are in Christ will be married to Him. So we want our lives to point people to Him and to find their deepest heart's, and only heart's, satisfaction in Him. And that's really something that transcends our marital status—married, single.

Paula: And we're all in the same boat—single or married—God is accomplishing one purpose, and that is to conform us more and more to the beautiful image of His Son. So let's get on His program, and let Him do it in whatever way He sees best.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth encourages you to find freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. 

All Scripture is taken from the ESV unless otherwise noted.

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