Welcome to Gospel in Life. The power of marriage is that it is a reflection of the Gospel.

Today Tim Keller explores how marriage can help us more deeply understand Christ's love for us

and how Christ's love for us can completely transform our marriages.

You heard Jordan saying before lunch that there's a wide spectrum of how individuals experience singleness.

Some of you no doubt would describe it as suffering. Others might just call it sadness.

And still others say, it's a sense, well you saw the video, a sense of freedom.

I can do whatever I want. I can turn on a dime. I can go on a mission's trip.

You know, anytime I want to, I can serve God without the burden of a family.

A single is sort of like a little zippy sports car. You can zip around and a family is like one of those 18 wheelers

that you take three blocks to make a turn. And you're carrying diaper bags.

It's important to recognize though that the experience of suffering and unhappiness is a part of life for everyone

no matter what you are, whether you are a single Christian, a happily or unhappily married person,

whether you're ill or whether you're financially secure or insecure.

Our challenge is to live a godly and a holy life in whatever condition that we're in.

That's the core challenge. Every situation in life will have its own particularities.

But the similarities are more than the differences. I'm pretty much sure I can prove that.

Tim's going to talk about a theology of singleness after me, but before I do that, before we get to that,

before we talk about singleness in particular, I want to talk about how to live godly lives in Christ under any circumstances.

Ira Jessica Hong also talked about having a plan in our head about how our lives are supposed to go.

I think that's a brilliant insight that she had. We grow up starting in our childhood and just pulling from all sorts of sources,

TV and books and conversations and magazines that we've read and who knows where.

And we get this sort of wibbly, wobbly, timey, whimy, messy kind of idea of how we think our life is going to go

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