Dear Single Woman, God Sees You

This program contains portions from the following episodes:

"Keeping God at the Center"

"Trusting God in Singleness"

"To the Woman Who Feels Invisible"

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Dannah Gresh: The beloved missionary and author Elisabeth Elliot wrote, 

Single life may be only a stage of a life’s journey, but even a stage is a gift. God may replace it with another gift, but the receiver accepts His gifts with thanksgiving. This gift for this day. The life of faith is lived one day at a time, and it has to be lived—not always looked forward to as though the "real" living were around the next corner. It is today for which we are responsible. God still owns tomorrow.¹

So we have this responsibility to accept with thanksgiving whatever circumstances God has chosen to give us today.

And yet, at the same time, God gives us freedom to acknowledge, "This is hard." He tells us He sees us when we feel hidden and overlooked. He invites us to bring Him our pain. 

So today, we hold these two realities together—acknowledging that singleness can be both a source of real sorrow and a gift. I’m your host, Dannah Gresh. You’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. 

As many of you know, my dear friend Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth was single until age 57 That’s when she married the man she affectionately called her DH (or Dear Husband, Robert). Robert went home to be with the Lord in early January, so Nancy has entered into another single season, leaning on the lessons she learned during those earlier years, and learning new lessons, too. Back in 2001, she shared about some choices that led to trust and contentment in singleness, even on the hard days. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: The first choice: I choose to receive my singleness as a gift from God. That's a choice I make, to receive my singleness as a gift from God, to thank Him for that gift, and not to demand that He give me the gift of marriage.

I love that response that the Virgin Mary had in Luke chapter 1 when the angel came to her and said to this young teenage girl who was engaged to be married." You're going to have a baby and Joseph is not the father. God is the Father."

And you can just imagine how Mary's world just went into a whirlwind at that point. But I love her response in Luke chapter 1, verse 38. She said, "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said."

You know, that is a great answer for every circumstance that God brings into our lives. "I am the Lord's servant. May it be unto me as you have said."

"Lord, I receive Your decision for my life. I receive this gift for my life. I'm not going to resent it. I'm not going to demand that You give me a different gift."

Now, singleness as a gift may or may not be for a lifetime. I don't know if I will be single for all of my life. God hasn't revealed that to me. He probably hasn't revealed it to you. But the neat thing is that I don't have to know. What I do need to know is that He's made me single today, and my focus is on pleasing Him today.

Now, that doesn't mean that if I choose to receive my singleness as a gift from God, that I won't have unfulfilled longings. And can I say that it's okay to have unfulfilled longings? Can I also say that everyone has them? Every married woman has unfulfilled longings. Every single woman, every man, young, old, every person has deep, inner longings that cannot be filled here on this earth, that cannot be filled by any created thing.

There are times, when as singles, those unfulfilled longings particularly surface. I can remember not too long ago going to the wedding of the 20-year-old son of some of my peers. Some of my friends' children are starting to have their own children. I went to this wedding. It was a sweet, young couple and a really precious wedding. I sat there in that service so thrilled for them. But it was just one of those moments when it hits you, I'm probably never going to be married. Or I may never be married, depending on what age you think about this. And there was a moment of sadness for me. I was thrilled for them. But there were tears in my eyes and a sense of unfulfilled longings.

I can remember the Mother's Day Sunday when the worship leader in our church said, "Everyone who is not a mother, I want you to stand and read Proverbs 31 together." I stood with all the men in the church. It was kind of what it felt like. Most of the women are sitting listening to this. There's that hard moment where it hits you, all of these other women are mothers. Here I have the physical capacity to bear children, but God hasn't given me that privilege to have children of my own . . . and likely, I never will.

There were tears. It was a moment of experiencing unfulfilled longings. But in the midst of that, I can still through my tears thank God and surrender to Him afresh realizing that this "unfulfilled longing is material for sacrifice."1 It gives me something to offer God that costs me something.

Unfulfilled longings are material for sacrifice.

And with that moment of teariness, that moment of longing, comes an opportunity for a fresh surrender, a fresh chance to say, "God, I trust You." 

Just last night I bowed my head before the Lord and said through my tears, I gave to the Lord a request. It's an unfulfilled longing in my heart. I was sad about something that was not being fulfilled. I asked the Lord if it would please Him, to fulfill that longing. Then I just laid it up to Him. In a fresh surrender I said, "Lord, I trust You to do what is best, and I receive whatever Your answer is. Whatever Your will is in this matter, I receive it." There is a freedom that comes from that.

Dannah: Amen. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth on offering unfulfilled longings to the Lord. Notice Nancy doesn’t say singleness is a breeze. There were real tears during her single years. But by God’s grace, she learned to say “yes, Lord,” and she found freedom in those words. What might it look like for you to step into that freedom? Would you take a moment now to ask the Lord that? To say, “This is hard, Father, but I want to offer my singleness to You today, to receive this truth: that Your way is best. That You are always working for my good.”

I want you to hear from another dear friend of mine, Charmaine Porter. She has learned to confess throughout her own single years. Once upon a time, Charmaine toured with me as a lead True Girl teacher. And today, she’s the Learning Community Coordinator at a ministry called Impact 360 Fellowship. It’s kind of a gap year, and she’s the female leader. She does a weekend retreat on biblical womanhood and coordinates a lot of the other biblical worldview learning that these students undergo for nine months.

She has this real passion for the Church to approach the topic of singleness more biblically. And her wisdom on this topic has impassioned my heart to approach singleness differently. Here’s Charmaine.

Charmaine Porter: I think it’s 1 Corinthians 7:17 that says, in the Message version, “Let God, not your relationship status, define your life.”

I started to not only believe that and let that shape how I was living my life, but I started to become a fan of God defining my life. And so the conversation started with, “Lord, help me in this area of singleness to trust You there.” But eventually it went into, “You’re a holistic God. You’re not just concerned about my relationship status, You’re concerned about my relationships with my family. You’re concerned about my relationships with the people that are around me. You’re concerned about what I eat. You’re concerned about how I spend my days.”

So I started to invite Him into my life, my relationship status included. But I didn’t just let that, the relationship status, define me because God doesn’t define me just by that.

Dannah: Let’s stop there in 1 Corinthians 7 because as this part of your story was unfolding, you’re touring with True Girl. I’m listening to that honest declaration to God sometimes in our prayer circle as you would just say, “God, I trust You with this desire.” And I think, for me, that was the beginning of my rethinking of singleness. And I thought, I think we’re getting this wrong as the Church.

I think, maybe not everyone in church, but I was guilty of it, and others around me were. We weren’t satisfied to just pray for Charmaine to glorify God. We were praying for Charmaine to find a husband. My husband confronted me and said, “You need to stop praying for Charmaine’s husband, and you need to start praying for Charmaine’s worth in Christ.”

Charmaine: Wow!

Dannah: So, between your honesty, and his confrontation . . . My husband has a great passion to approach the topic of singleness with biblical honesty and integrity.

Charmaine: Yes. I’ve experienced that.

Dannah: So I began studying this passage, 1 Corinthians 7. First Corinthians 6 and 7 is a lot about how the Corinthian church, the Greek and Roman culture, had a lot of lies they were believing about sex, marriage, and singleness.

Now, I didn’t realize that there were things in here about singleness. I was hyper-focused, as is the problem, on the sex and the marriage stuff. But in 1 Corinthians 7:8, it says, “To the unmarried and the widows, I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am.” And what Paul was addressing there, in part, was the fact that, beginning at about 31 BC, Augustus Caesar had widows fined if they weren’t married within two years of their husband’s death.

Charmaine: Wow!

Dannah: The value of singleness was so . . . Well, there was no value for it in the culture. Even the rule of the land as: Don’t be single. So Paul was addressing that in here. He’s saying, “Wait a minute!” And, of course, we know that Paul also said, “Hey, if somebody is single or they are a widow, you pay their way,” because that was a very practical need in the day. Women couldn’t have a job. He said, “We as Christians value singleness so much that we’re going to pay their way.”

And this confronted me in terms of: We are so guilty, as the church of Corinth was, of not valuing singleness and responding to it differently.

And the passage you just quoted, 1 Corinthians 7:17, in the ESV version says, “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches.”

And you just quoted it in the Message version, which, I think, a lot of times we’re, like, “Oh, change of topic now.” But it wasn’t.

Charmaine: No.

Dannah: So, say that again in the Message version.

Charmaine: In the Message version, it says, “Let God, not your marital status, define your life.”

Dannah: Of course, that’s a loose paraphrase.

Charmaine: Right.

Dannah: He’s saying, “Hey, listen: This verse is still attached to the topic of singleness. So let each person lead the life the Lord has assigned to him,” which is what you were saying you were discovering in a hard way on the hot pavement of life.

Charmaine: Yes. You know what’s funny, Dannah, is that one thing over the years that I started to realize that there was a disconnect between what the Bible was saying and what the Church was telling me is that God has never made me feel belittled or less than or unqualified because of my singleness. I have, unfortunately, felt like that in the Church, though. So that, to me, was, “Well then, I need to start redefining how I’m thinking about my singleness. I need to start redefining when people say: ‘Do you think you have the gift of singleness?’”

At first, I honestly would be like, “I don’t want you to say that about me because I’m not trying to be labeled by that.” I assumed that people were saying, “Because you have the gift now, then you’re going to have the gift forever.”

But as I started to do some research on this and getting back to the Bible, what Paul was actually saying, getting into the Greek and things like that, I started to realize that Paul’s saying, “If you’re single, you have the gift. If you’re single, you have the gift of singleness. But also, if you’re married, you have the gift of marriage.”

Think about receiving a birthday present: You wouldn’t just have that gift and sit it on your table and just leave it there. Or you wouldn’t just put it in the back of your closet. You would take that gift; you would open it up and see what was inside. You’d see: “How do I work this? What can I understand about it? How can I use it in my everyday life?” You know, if it’s a good gift.

I think that’s what the Lord is waiting for a lot of us to do, to realize that, whether you have the gift of singleness or the gift of marriage, open that baby up. See what it is. It’s a tool for us to use for however long the Lord has us have it to bring Him glory.

Dannah: What a powerful flip of the singleness script! Thank you, Charmaine Porter, for turning our eyes toward God’s glory. Single or married, that’s what it’s all about! Charmaine has told me she likes to pray, “Lord, squeeze all the glory possible out of my single years.” I love that. May it be so, Lord. For sweet Charmaine and for every single sister listening today.

Well, last but not least, we’re hearing from Portia Collins and Christine Hoover. Many of you know Portia from our days together on the videocast Grounded. She’s a dear friend of mine, as well as a wife, mom, author, and speaker. On Grounded, she sat down with pastor’s wife Christine Hoover to talk about her book You Are Not Forgotten. That’s how we want to close today—meditating on the God who always sees, always remembers, and always cares. 

This isn’t a message for single women explicitly, but for every woman who worries she’s overlooked and unseen. If that’s where you’re at in your singleness today, I hope this conversation will be richly encouraging. 

Portia Collins: So, let's start with the obvious. Have you ever felt forgotten?

Christine Hoover: I have felt forgotten in several ways, in my marriage, in ministry. I think if we were honest, I mean, I think everyone at some point has felt forgotten, unseen, disregarded, overlooked. A lot of my questions that were coming up in that time I was directing toward God. I felt unseen by people, but really, I started to question does God see me? Has he forgotten me? Why do I feel like I'm languishing? Kind of in the desert, in the wilderness? Does He see? Is He going to act on my behalf? 

And so, I started asking those questions of Scripture, and going and finding that there were people in Scripture asking the same questions that I was asking. So thankfully, God showed me some truths about who He is that helped me come out of that season. But yes, to answer your question, I have felt unseen and forgotten. 

Portia: Me too, me too, my friend. You work with a lot of women. What are some of the unhealthy or maybe even unholy ways that we try to get the attention that we crave when we feel overlooked?

Christine: Yeah, that's a great question. As I was going through this processing with Scripture with the Lord, I didn't want to see at first that I was involved in the process of being unseen. I was hiding myself in certain ways. I think the way that we can determine how we are doing that is to think about how we clamor sometimes of: who am I looking to for a sense of being seen, a sense of value, a sense of validation, that, that I am worthy of attention? 

We see this all over our culture. I mean, you look around on the news, and you see that there is clamoring to be seen for maybe a certain issue that people think is important. We do the same as Christians, sometimes clamoring for others to affirm, for example, our gifts, that we're waiting for somebody to give us permission to do what God has called us to do. For me, it was I'm going to hide myself a little bit, my real self, but I'm going to perform. I'm going to do well externally so that people will pat me on the back. It really became an idol for me of performance, but I was looking for that sense of validation from people rather than knowing God sees me and I'm doing what I do for him. That's where I'm gonna have a sense of peace, rather than a sense of I have to clamor for what I would want and what I desire.

Portia: You sound like me. Everything you said are things that I could very well say myself. I love where we're headed here. Okay, I want you to take us to the story of Hagar. Who is she? And what can she specifically teach us the next time we feel overlooked?

Christine: Well, that's where the Lord took me when I started realizing I was in a pit. That is what it felt like. The Lord spoke to me, “I see.” I knew immediately that He was taking me to Hagar. So, I went and opened my Bible to Genesis 16, looking at her story, and how did God meet her? Where she said, “God, I name you the God who sees.” She had an experience with Him. 

And what I found was interesting about Hagar is that she was an Egyptian slave. She was a part of Abraham's household. Sarah, when Hagar became pregnant, she sent Hagar away. So, it was a whole mess. Everybody was involved in the mess. 

Hagar goes out and she says, “I'm leaving.” She's going home. So, she's in the desert. She sits down, and she's in a hopeless place. Knowing that she's not going to make it, her unborn child is not going to make it unless somebody intervenes. She sits down, and that's when God meets her. 

I love that God says to her, “Hagar, where have you come from? And where are you going?” That question is the question that the Lord asked me through Hagar: where have you come from? So, name the unseen that you feel? What is the pain that you feel? But also, where are you going? Are you going to walk down a path of bitterness, hopelessness, despair?” 

God says to her, “I want you to go back. I want you to go back to your life and live your life.” And the reason why He says that is not an excuse to go back to an abusive situation. He's saying, “Go back under my protection, under my blessing. This covenant that I've made with Abraham, and this child that he will have through Sarah. 

And so, I think that for me, Hagar’s story is that we're going back, we're doing hard things, to come out of that idolatry of clamoring and to truly walk and be seen. What Hagar takes us back to is really Abraham's son with Sarah, Isaac, and fruit through Isaac's line comes Jesus. So really, He's bringing us back to Jesus to show us that through Christ, God sees us, He's acted for us. He acts for us in specific ways when He sees us in our wilderness.

Portia: Absolutely. So, let's dig in a little bit more here. How can we find comfort and strength in knowing that God sees us? 

Christine: That’s a great question. I think that when we are sure that God sees everything we do in His name, including the things that we're doing in our heart, to forgive, maybe, to obey when it's hard, to reject bitterness, when we know that there is a peace and a security that that we can live in, that can come from no other person seeing us. 

And so, I've talked in the book about how there are different categories, events, scenes, that we may experience, like: disregard or being misunderstood or a lack of appreciation and several more. But I think that when we know that God sees us, He meets us. In each of those categories we’re not disregarded. We've been regarded, we were regarded at the cross, and through the resurrection. I’ve thought so much in my Christian life, about what God had done for me in the past through the cross and resurrection. 

But to think about and to meditate on Jesus, that He sees and is praying for me, interceding for me, the Holy Spirit's interceding for me. So to know, that is such security it gives for me. It's changed me in the sense, it's given me courage. It's given me courage to live the life God has asked me to live faithfully, to use the gifts that He's given me faithfully for Him and not waiting, not doing that to be seen, not for visibility’s sake, but to do it for the Lord. 

I think about Matthew 6 and how Jesus says, “Don't do these things so that people will see you, do these things for me privately, and I will reward you.” (paraphrased) And so, it makes me smile to think about it, just the joy of having a relationship with God, where we know He sees us and values us. And what we do for Him is for Him and for His eyes alone. All of that need for approval or validation or permission just kind of slides right off when we know those things.

Portia: I love it. So, you're a pastor's wife. Talk to the woman who particularly feels unseen in ministry. I know that as a woman in ministry, I think there is a misconception that we don't struggle with this because we are primarily seen that we don't struggle with this. And so, yeah, talk to the woman in ministry. Perhaps she feels like her efforts go unnoticed and that maybe she's not really making much of a difference. What hope and perspective can you offer her?

Christine: I will give her my favorite verse, which is Hebrews 6:10. And it says this, “For God is not unjust, He will not forget your work and the love you demonstrated for His name, by serving the saints and by continuing to serve them.” I go to that verse a lot to remember God. It is because He just sees everything that we do, and that others do sometimes to wound us or to wound others. 

But what we do to serve His saints in His name, He remembers. He sees and remembers and rewards. As I said earlier, Matthew 6, so I go to that a lot. People may not see, but it kind of doesn't matter. I mean, it matters to me that God sees and will reward and not that I get a sense of appreciation for that now that has come over many years of wrestling with my selfishness, my, “I want the glory.” I think when we want the glory, we want the appreciation. But if we seek God's glory, we can live in the truth that He sees and He rewards.

Portia: Amen, Christine. You're my new favorite friend. Thank you. 

Christine: Thank you, Portia, thank you so much. 

Portia: I know that you've encouraged me, and I know that you've encouraged our Grounded sisters to rest in the fact that we serve a God who sees, El Roi.

Dannah: Dear single woman, God sees you, really sees you, as you offer your singleness to Him. Embrace the good work He’s set before you today, and choose to spend yourself for His glory. Let me repeat Christine’s favorite verse as a benediction over you: “For God is not unjust, He will not forget your work and the love you demonstrated for His name, by serving the saints and by continuing to serve them.” Again, that’s Hebrews chapter 6, verse 10.

You may feel hidden during these single years, but God never forgets the woman who pours herself out for His glory. Instead, He honors her, always working for her good. 

If you’re desiring to say “yes, Lord” in this season, to pray like Charmaine, “God, squeeze all the glory possible out of my single years,” would you let us join with you? You can submit a prayer request at ReviveOurHearts.com/prayer. We’d love to hear from you and pray alongside you.

One of our prayers for you is that you’d discover God’s goodness right where you are. That’s why our team created a brand-new book, Finding Beauty in Every Season. You’ll enjoy thirty days of stunning nature imagery paired with encouragement drawn from Nancy's teaching. It’s a gentle, daily reminder that in every chapter of your story, God is writing something beautiful. Request yours when you make a donation of any amount to support Revive Our Hearts. You can do that at ReviveOurHearts.com. 

Calling all young moms! Next weekend, we’re focusing on your season of life. If you’re feeling weary and in need of some gospel-saturated wisdom for the little years, you’ll find that right here! In the meantime, I hope you enjoy sweet fellowship with your local church this weekend.

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

¹Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be a Woman.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.