God Made You to Shine

Do you cringe when you hear the phrase “the gift of singleness?” For a long time, whenever I read 1 Corinthians 7:7 or heard someone reference “being blessed with the gift of singleness,” I thought, “Is there a return or exchange receipt with this gift?”

But then God made the big picture start to click in my mind of how singleness truly can be a gift for me and for you. In the times of the early church, after Jesus had ascended, people who were Christian were incredibly different from the people around them. They helped the widows and poor. They respected women. They took in and helped the hurting people that no one else cared about.

Our society now generally sees all of those things as good, and plenty of non-Christian people are doing them. So how do we now show that our renewal in Christ makes us different from people around us? With singleness!

So many people believe that you need to be in a relationship to be happy. It’s what the movies show, what the songs on the radio proclaim, and even what the people in our own communities can tell us as they keep trying to set us up.

But if we show that we are single and happy, that is going to start making people think. That is going to start making people wonder, “What do they have that I don’t have?”

I have had friends, coworkers, and even people sitting next to me on planes ask me about my dating life. I used to feel awkward saying I was single. But then God changed my heart, and I started responding with a big smile on my face, “I’m single.” Over and over the reaction was shock. “How are you so happy?” And then I got to share with them the awesome message of how much God loves me in my singleness and that is all I need to be happy.

Remember, “You are the light of the world, a town built on a hill cannot be hidden (Matthew 5:16).” Singleness is a gift to show the world, that we are complete, loved, and whole as a single person because we have God. You have the gift of singleness right now. Use it to shine and show the world how great God’s love truly is.