Well, prolonged singleness raises some pretty deep questions and personal insecurities.

As we see in an email question today from a female listener to the podcast whose name

is Rebecca.

Pastor John 2B married is in a sense to be cherished.

The New Testament talks about cherishing within a marriage.

So if I cannot get married and my singleness persists, does that mean that God made

me to be less cherishable?

Pastor John, what would you say to Rebecca?

Let me see if I can say something helpful and true and encouraging to Rebecca first

by distinguishing between not being cherished and not being cherishable.

Is right that Paul describes one of the aspects of husband's love as cherishing a wife

Ephesians 529.

He says, in the same way, husband should love their wives as their own bodies.

He who loves his wife loves himself for no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes

and cherishes it just as Christ does the church.

So I want to be realistic and empathetic with Rebecca in agreeing that not to be married

means that there are kinds of experiences that are unique to the marital relationships

which she will not have.

And she is putting her finger on one of them, namely there is a unique kind of cherishing

that happens between a husband and a wife that happens nowhere else in the world among

human beings except in marriage.

It's part of what marriage is and if we are not married, we don't taste that peculiar

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