 Singleness is not preparation for marriage. Marriage and singleness are preparation for glory. There's a couple of fundamental things I wanna talk about in this video. Number one is the fact that for me, okay, maybe you've been the same in the same way, a lot of life points to marriage. A lot of aspects like career, you wanna get a good career because you wanna be able to support a family. You wanna be a mature Christian because you wanna be able to be in a mature relationship. You wanna be in a solid church because you want a nice place for your family ultimately to be and to grow up in their faith. A lot of our life or how we live our life seems to point to marriage, seems to point to this one time when, you know, maybe you're in your 20s or in your 30s or in your 40s or whenever, you're gonna meet somebody and you're gonna get in a relationship and you're gonna get engaged and you're gonna get married and then bingo, it was all worth it. It happened, that is the summit, all that stuff that you were doing in terms of career, in terms of spiritual growth, in terms of mature, just personal development. It all pays off because now you're in a nice, wonderful relationship and you're happy and there's just great meaning there and that is great and that's wonderful. And maybe you too, you've bought into this idea that that's kind of how it works. That's maybe not the main point, but it is a big point. But here's the thing, here is the biggest thing and this is probably the biggest problem is we treat singleness as preparation for marriage and could it be, can it be, yes and yes, but that is not its primary purpose. Being single is not just a stage in which you are waiting to become married because if that were the case, then people that are married, they got nowhere else, nothing's left. They've reached the summit, but that's not true either. Singleness is primarily preparation for glory to be glorified with Christ, to become more and more formed into the image of Christ. That is the purpose. It's that idea of sanctification, growing more and more like the savior because if we forget that and all of a sudden marriage is kind of the pinnacle. Now it's not having that perfect, intimate relationship with Christ, ultimately when he comes back. No, it's this idea that, hey, we want to be nice and we want to be prepared and mature and financially ready until we can get in this thing, which is the goal, which is marriage, and then we'll be, that's it, that's the goal. I know I'm rambling here, but what I'm saying is that if we prepare for marriage as if we're preparing for a savior, right? And the Bible talks about presenting ourselves blameless and pure before God, right? That like tons of verses are about being holy as God is holy, presenting ourselves as living sacrifices to God. If we treat our future spouse as if they are that savior and we are working in order to be mature, be spiritually mature in order to be pure in order to present ourselves to our future spouse as blameless and pure, we're going to be fundamentally disappointed. This is the reason because if we expect or if we treat them like a savior and we find out that they're not actually that savior, our world will be shattered because even though we realize that Jesus is the ultimate savior, we act like our future spouse will be our savior, our savior from our problems, our savior from our loneliness, our savior from our sadness, when in fact they can provide none of that, right? They can provide none of that. And if we put those expectations on there or prepare as if that is our mission, we are preparing for marriage and not fundamentally preparing for Christ and moving more and more into the image of Christ as our primary goal, we will be so off the right path, it will just lead to so much crap. And we're doing it like, I don't know if like for me, I think I bought into this too, right? And as a single person, right? You in this mindset that some things are out of whack and some things are, you know, it's just not, it doesn't feel right. It's not, everything's not put together. Maybe you still feel lonely. You still feel sad sometimes. Maybe you're just more of an anxious person too. Maybe you're dealing with some other problems and you're just like, you know what? I wish I could just find that person and all of that stuff would kind of go away and they would fix all that. What we're doing is we're placing on our future spouse like a savior complex, right? This idea that they will be our deliverer from these things when in fact they can do none of that, right? So here's the mission. Here's the goal, right? It's to understand what I've said at the beginning, right? It's this idea that singleness is not just preparation for marriage. Singleness and marriage, whether you're watching this in your single or married, those are both preparations for glory to be glorified with Christ, right? And also on top of that are avenues to glorify Christ. I think this plays into a lot of the stress and anxiety associated with like finding a spouse, okay? Or however you think that that happens, okay? Because I think sometimes we'll put so much, so many expectations on what that future person is going to be like, that we crush any person that maybe, you know, seems like it could be a possibility, but we have all these expectations, not built on scripture, but built on this savior complex that we have thinking that, look, I've been preparing, I've been presenting, I've been ready to present myself blameless and pure before my spouse. I've been, you know, doing all the right things. I've been working, you know, all this kind of thing. And you have these expectations that because that is what you've done, now you deserve a certain thing. But you know what that is? That is all law, that is all law, that is no grace. There's no gospel in that. If it's just this idea that our future spouse is a savior and we need to work, work, work, and then we are owed something from them, which in fact they cannot deliver, that is a huge mess. That is a huge mess. We want to be holy, obviously, but we can't be perfectly no, right? That's why we need the gospel. That's why when you see these, when you do happen to be in a relationship, you understand these are two broken people that need so much grace, it's crazy, right? Just think about yourself, step down from your high horse for a second and just remember, man, we're not that special, we're not that great, you know? We all need a lot of help, a lot of work. And when you go into a relationship, when you have a spouse, that person doesn't have the capabilities to save you from your problems. They don't have the capabilities to save you from your mental issues. They don't have the capabilities to save you from your sadness or depression or any of that. They don't have that. The main purpose of marriage is reflecting the beauty of Jesus and the church, right? That is the symbolic nature of marriage is this idea that, look, the bride is the bride of Christ, the church and Jesus lays his life down for the church, the groom lays his life down for the wife. Like this is an amazing, amazing picture of the gospel. And yet we have treated it and almost taken it into like a really heretical place where we've not understood it as kind of a symbolic nature, but we've thought, no, actually, my spouse is gonna be my savior. They are gonna be perfect or they are gonna save me from the things that are wrong in my life, which is not true. Okay, I think that's all I have to say. I wanna give a huge shout out to everyone on Patreon, all the Daily Disciple Club members. Daily Disciple Club members are people that are passionate about Jesus and support me in my mission to help other people follow Jesus daily. And so I am just so grateful that everyone on the Daily Disciple Club, and if you wanna help support my mission and ministry head on over to dailydisciple.ca slash club and you can join the Daily Disciple Club. Give this video a like if you enjoyed it and make sure you subscribe because I'm putting out new videos every single Thursday. Thanks so much for watching guys and I will see you next time, bye.