Set Your Sights: How to Stop Seeing Singleness as Less than Marriage

How do I change my view of singleness to stop seeing it as less than marriage?

This is a question I wish I had known the answer to about 7 years ago: I was 24 and coming to realize that my singleness was stealing my joy. Or rather, that I was allowing discontentment about my singleness to take root in my heart.

And when discontentment is the root, joy won’t be the fruit.

I was blaming singleness for my lack of joy, but the real cause for my incomplete joy was how I viewed my singleness: as less joyful, beautiful, and purposeful than marriage.

And because this was how I viewed singleness, this was also how I was living my singleness: waiting for marriage and motherhood to give my life purpose and meaning; looking to fulfilled dreams for my fulfillment; enduring singleness as a burden rather than embracing the beauty already present.

As my 25th birthday approached, I recognized that if things were going to change, I needed to change how I viewed singleness.

I needed to stop seeing it as less than marriage, and start seeing it as already abundant.

I think most of us would say we want to enjoy our singleness, even as we may hold a desire for marriage.

Maybe in our heads, we know that singleness is full of goodness and purpose—just as much as marriage—but we’re struggling with believing this in our hearts.

So, how can we change our view to see singleness not as less-than, but as abundant?

Colossians 3 is a passage that teaches us about living life in Christ and growing in Christ-likeness. Here’s how the passage starts:

"Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory." (vv. 1-4)

Living this new life—this life as a child of God and co-heir with Christ, this life of abundant joy and peace and hope that Jesus has come to give, this life that grows to bear the fruit of Spirit-shaped character—begins not with outward behavior modification, but with inward transformation of setting our hearts and minds on the realities of heaven.

This is just one of many places in the Bible that speaks of transformation starting with renewing our thoughts and rooting our hearts in the truth of the Gospel, so that this truth is what shapes our attitudes and actions.

Here’s what this can look like in connection to how we view singleness:

Focusing on God’s goodness
When we view singleness as less than marriage, we’re often looking at our lives through a lens of lack: focusing on what we wish we had, but don’t have.

When we shift our focus to the goodness of God already in our lives, we begin to view singleness not through a lens of lack, but through the lens of God’s love.

And in God’s love, we lack nothing.

We can focus on God’s goodness through gratitude, praise, and meditating on God’s character.

Finding our worth in Christ
Sometimes we believe singleness is less because we believe we are less as single people. We’re looking to a significant other to be the proof that we have worth and significance.

But our worth is found in Christ; in the truth that we are created for relationship with God, that Jesus came to restore that relationship, and that when we trust in Him as our Lord and Savior we become children of God and co-heirs with Christ.

We can find our worth in Christ by learning what God says in Scripture about our identity in Christ, how He see us as our Father, and the purpose for which He created us.

Fixing our eyes on Jesus
In speaking of living the purposeful and victorious life God has for us, Hebrews 12:2 says, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith…”

It’s not just our worth that’s found in Christ. We find our purpose, our joy, our hope, our peace, our strength, our victory—all the fullness and abundance of life—not in our relationship status, but in relationship with Jesus.

For He is the Author—the Source—of our faith: the assurance that we are forgiven and set free, the confidence that we are loved and accepted, the hope that our future is secure.

And He is the Perfecter: through His Spirit in us, He grows us in His likeness as we trust and obey Him, so our character bears the fruit of joy, peace, hope, and love.

We can fix our eyes on Jesus through prayer, community with other believers, resisting temptation, and taking steps of obedience as He leads.

Changing how we view singleness will take time, but as we set our hearts and minds on the truth of who God is, who we are in Christ, and the full life Jesus makes possible, there will be a shift to not only seeing the joy, beauty, and purpose of singleness, but to embracing and enjoying it as the gift it is.