There is much at stake in being single. It is a very important condition to be in. In Acts 10:34 we read that God is not one to show partiality. It is fair to say that he is not biased toward singles desire to marry. He truly wants to give us our heart's desires. Psalm. 37:4. Being single is a great opportunity to develop character. God's will for us is to master any condition he allows you to be in. He is teaching singles that a relationship with Jesus Christ will bring about eternal existence.
His will for us is to master living life and he is judging our performance. There comes a moment in time that your life could go one way or another. Life is filled with diverse situations that can cause you to have to make a decision. In your mind you must decide one way or the other.
These are moments of manipulation. At each moment of manipulation, Christ and Satan stand at this crossroads. Your character is developed according to how you choose your direction. To be manipulated is to be handled in a disguised manner. Both Christ and Satan will handle us in this manner. The difference being that Christ manipulates us toward our ultimate good and Satan always toward evil. Life is a choice of direction. Joshua 24:15. Part of the nature of Christ is that of being a revelator, he reveals himself to us. Revelation 1:1. In his own word and in his own time frame he will show you how and why he manipulates you. Jesus can always be trusted. Satan's manipulation is to throw us off balance and keep us that way while he hides his intentions. He is a trickster and a master of manipulation.
Singles need to recognize and distinguish these moments of influence. One of the favorite manipulations of Satan targeted toward singles is marriage itself. Although he hates marriage, he will use it to distort the life of two singles. He knows that many of us covet marriage before we or our intended mate is ready. Satan hammers hard at singles in this area. There is a profound difference in God giving you a mate, than you manipulating one for yourself.
To desire marriage is fine. To covet marriage is a desire to have something or someone that is not for you or to take your place in something that God is not finished preparing you for. This is why being single is so important. It is a glorious opportunity to learn to factor in God as a partner. Matthew 6:33. Christ is more interested in joining you to him than he is you to another person. He wants you to set your mind on him first, not another piece of flesh. Look at Matthew 26:41.
Christ knows that our Spirit is willing, it is the flesh that is easily manipulated. Many moments of manipulation are battles between Spirit and flesh. 1 Peter 2:11. A spiritual mind in a physical body has to be renewed daily. 1 Cor.15:31. Many singles are manipulated easily by Satan by refusing or neglecting to go to Christ daily for renewal. Living in a fleshly body, the daily drains of working, the cares of this world, the influence of a society that is not designed to help you spiritually, the list goes on and on. We come to the moments of manipulation and instead of standing on the promises of God, we are all bent over in shame, grimacing in guilt or spread out in sin.
There is no need to feel lost at these points. Satan will not forgive or give eternal life, but he cannot manipulate either one from you with Christ as your Lord and Savior. As Christ reveals the devil's manipulations, the whole experience will make you more realistic to your need for spiritual guidance. God will use being single to our advantage and make sure we are strengthened by the situation. Romans.8:28. There are many lessons in life that are best learned single. God incorporates all conditions you experience into a weave called your life. Even the character you need in marriage is developed while you are single. When we enjoy the single experience God's way, we avoid finding things out by evil experimentation. Our relationship with Christ is attacked constantly. 1 Peter 5:8. We all know that God calls us before we are born. Did you know that Satan is also trying to manipulate you before you were born? Satan will try to disrupt a family environment before a child is born in order to disrupt the rearing of the child. Is that hard to believe? Look in Genesis 25:22. These two babies were so influenced they were fighting inside of their mother's womb. They were the forefathers of two nations that are probably still fighting even today. We all know about the infamous Hatfield and Mc Coy family feud. Satan can manipulate people to kill each other for generations for any reason he chooses to instill. It is not possible to deal with this type of manipulative power without God.
The spiritual mind must be renewed, revived, resupplied, refreshed and restored daily. This creates a continual habit of reliance on Christ. This is how to survive any condition we are faced with. God is not a temporary being. He is eternal. He is a continuum. He is constant and our service to him must be constant. The definition of eternal life is to be in a constant state of being. This is what God is doing. His will is to create beings that are constantly righteous, that is his ultimate purpose.
God is always happy, and this is his gift to all creation. Satan understands and hates this reality. This is another area that Satan hammers hard at singles in. He suggests to your mind that you are not happy because of your state of being. He wants us to feel that being single is a distortion. He tried to handle Adam and Eve in this same manner. Satan is a manipulating seducing spirit. He seeks to handle you in a disguised form. He leads the single Christian to believe that happiness is having another person to love you or having another body to make you feel good. Some things become an end to themselves.
If we believe happiness is another person, place or thing—then that is our reward. Happiness is a by product of the way we live, the way we treat others and how much we factor Christ into those two realities. Satan will constantly bear false witnesses to the single Christian. He will suggest to you that you are incomplete and lacking wholeness.
The condition of a Christian is not defined by anything on the outside of the body. Spiritual condition is defined by the individual's heart felt service to God. If you serve God with all of your heart then you are whole. Anything less will define how less of a condition you are in. God will define and design our condition, we cannot trust ourselves with that responsibility. To do that is to make the mistake of Adam and Eve and decide for us what is good and evil. Contentment is knowing that you are doing what God says to do, trusting him in all your circumstances and being satisfied with your state of being. Being discontented is mostly just not getting what you want.
God is ultimately responsible for the outcome of his children, we must trust that wholeheartedly. He will not fail. Read Christ' promise in John 6:35-40. Christ said the will of God is that he will not lose any of us. This is a wonderful resurrection promise. A sense of godly manipulation is vital to our spiritual confidence.
Satan must run interference into that confidence. He seeks to influence subconscious desires, thoughts and ideas. He tries to ingrain and develop unthinking patterns of doing things that are against the belief system of God. He looks to psychologically seduce our minds to pry us away from God and blur and blend the ways of this world into our consciousness. His method of manipulation is to form something else in the mind other than the truth. To cause a way of thinking that will absorb sin. He looks to carry us away and entice us. James 1:13-16.
Satan is lost and he wants our hope in Christ to be lost. Matthew 15:13-14. Satan is blind and wants to take your sight away. He is lonely and wants you to feel that way. He is constantly lusting for power and position from God, always wanting things he cannot have. This is the attitude he projects into others. He injects disobedience because he is in a constant state of disobedience. He is always angry and will always look to inject that spirit. He is in a state of pure hatred and will never forgive. When we refuse to forgive others, we are in the same type of emotional confinement and bondage that he is in, only we are flesh- we can repent and change.
Sin should never be accepted and absorbed into your lifestyle. If sin is accepted, it will create a void. Sin has no valuable substance. It will place a vacuum in the mind. This is one reason some singles feel like they have just got to have a mate. They expect another person to fill a vacuum sin has created. This is another manipulation of Satan. When the filling of this vacuum becomes the reason for marriage, the other person immediately is put at a disadvantage. Only Christ can fill a vacuum sin has created.
Only the blood of Christ can erase the guilty stain. This is why Satan must cause separation from Christ. The natural presence of Christ will fill voids. It will heal anything in need of healing and it will teach truth. Luke 4:18-19. Christ must be first in our lives; only he can fill the cup of need. Matthew 23:26.
There is a desire in single men and women to make each other happy, but we must first please God. We cannot neglect the greatness of salvation. Heb.2:3, 1Tim.4:14. Anything else will just have to wait. God is preeminent; a Christian's first reaction must be toward him. That is the mannerism that will help guard against Satan's manipulation. John 14:26. In Luke 15:11-32, a single man goes out in desire to find out for himself what is good and evil. He is eventually overwhelmed by a life of Satan's manipulations. This type of conduct will create a mind that is not aware of its condition. Satan separated the man from Christ and his family. Christ is Satan's ultimate hatred and he hates God centered families. He hates couples that God has joined, he hates proper Christian dating and he even hates good male to female friendships. He wants to take single Christians on a journey away from Christ and keep them away. He desperately wants to manipulate the Christian mind. Notice verse 17, "And when he came to himself." This single man lost his mental grasp of Christ. In verse 13, he wasted his life with loose living. (Also reference Prov.23:21, 29:3.)
Here is an important lesson for singles. Satan is teaching humans to split up from their families. All we singles see are a world of families and couples splitting up. Some only stay together when personal gain is involved. It is hard for us to view this without shedding a tear or two. The prodigal son is a parable of how Satan can cripple the mind of man. The man's father is a "type" of Christ, our first love. The single man leaves home to do his own thing. Many singles are like-minded. We are free to do our own thing. Satan infected the memory of the prodigal son, in effect separating him from Christ. Note this important lesson. When a baby elephant is being trained, to keep it in place a 20-foot pole is dug into the ground. When the elephant is large, they switch to a 6-inch pole to hold him in place. The key is the elephant's memory. It knows from its childhood that it cannot pull away so it never tries. It has more than enough strength, but believes it cannot do it. This is manipulation. It cripples great strength. It is being handled in a disguised manner. Satan looks to disguise the mind of Christ. It has great strength. Phil. 2:5. Like the prodigal son, some may view being single as being in heaviness for a season. Everything in the emotional make up can draw you down. At this point Satan seeks to crack your psyche and cause you to become irrational and to do irrational things. During this period we are vulnerable to his manipulations. We are led to believe that our conditions tie us down and he tempts you to run wild, to be on your own. Being single can become a 6-inch pole Satan has tied you to. He will hammer hard at your feelings and lead you to believe that you are alone or crippled. Job felt cut off from God. Job 23:3. Actually he was the center of attention in the universe at the time.
Single Christians—you are the center of attention in the universe now! Nothing is more important than the development of God's elect now. Matt.24:22. If it were not for us, God would allow the destruction of a world. We are God's delight and his favor. God delivers or manipulates his own. Satan's manipulative ways will be present throughout your entire human life. We cannot change the nature of his ways, but God can give control as to how we react to them. Gal.5:23. The love of God will not stand idly by while his children are being manipulated. We must depend on him for the converted mind to put down the carnal mind. 1 John 5:4.
The end result of a manipulated mind is not what you think. It's what you do and how you live. Character is how you resist things. It is self-direction with Christ' help resulting in spiritual response. God's Spirit raises your level of awareness and causes you to be more alert to the manipulative ways of Satan. It does not allow a blurring of the thought process in a crippling manner. You will be aware of the great strength that lives in you. The mind will turn toward God's Word whenever it can. The desire to follow Christ and do his will intensifies.
God is creating righteous character in humans. He is giving us the capacity and willingness to think what is right, the will to choose that right way, then the strength of will to resist all other impulses and actions and do what is right. This whole process is made perfect by the indwelling mind of Christ. A solid Christian mind is not a feeling. It is a choice. It is a gift, not based on life's circumstances, but on an attitude of the acceptance of the gift. It is a mental by product of a growing relationship with Christ. It requires a born again commitment in your mentality.
That commitment is part of the protection of your mind. Christ can add any kind of mental ability to anyone at any time. That is the miracle of conversion. The mind of the alcoholic, the pervert, a thief, murderers, the prostitute, the list has no limitations—all can be healed, all are included. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker—it does not matter who you are, what you have done or how long you did it! Jesus can alter the mind and condition of anybody who exists. Whatever Jesus does to your mind will last forever. Read Eclec. 3:14.
Humans are temporary but God is a continuum. When God says forever, he means forever! Born again we will think like Christ forever. When the moment of manipulation comes, when you stand at the crossroads, look to please God. Read Ps. 19:13. Ask God to not let Satan's manipulative ways have dominion over you. In ROM. 6:11-13, these are vital keys to avoid satanic influence. Verses' 14-18, sin will not master over you. Singles were not baptized in lemon juice. We can be happy in Christ, with him as well as each other. Let us not allow Satan to separate us from God and each other.
