How Singleness Helps You Discover Your Purpose
Don't be confused.
Why Singleness Is Meaningful
Most people treat singleness like a problem to solve or a waiting room to endure.
In reality, for the average person it makes up roughly one-third of life.
If the average person gets married around 28 and lives to about 85, that leaves nearly three decades of singleness. Calling a third of your existence meaningless is not just unwise—it is a quiet form of self-sabotage. The foundation of everything that comes after (marriage, family, legacy) is poured during those years. If you refuse to build it well, you walk into the next season already behind.
So why does singleness actually matter?
1. Proper Singleness Kills Idolatry
Marriage and family were the biggest idols of my adult life—bigger than pornography, bigger than food, bigger than almost anything else.
That may sound strange. Porn and gluttony are obviously destructive. Marriage and children are good gifts. But good gifts become destructive the moment they take the place that belongs only to God.
I wanted to be a husband and a father more than almost anything. The desire itself was not the problem. The problem was the weight I placed on it. I idealized the future season so intensely that I could not fully live in the present one. I clung to preferences, timelines, and mental images of what “the one” was supposed to look like. All of it kept me stuck.
The breakthrough came only when I finally surrendered the whole thing—preferences included. I stopped trying to control the process and simply said, “God, do whatever You want.” I went on dates I previously would have dismissed. I met people where they were instead of trying to force them into a mold I had invented.
Shortly after that surrender, I met the woman who is now my fiancée.
Your idealization of the next season may be the very thing keeping you in this one. Singleness, when received properly, has a unique power to expose and dismantle the idols we build around love, belonging, and the future.
2. Singleness Is the Gateway to Contentment
Many people treat singleness as a trampoline—something useful only because it launches them into marriage. That is not how Scripture frames it, and it is not how life works.
You should desire marriage and family. The desire is good and natural. But you should not despise the season you are currently in. Learning to be content while single is one of the most valuable skills you can develop. It trains you to receive whatever God gives next without constant restlessness or resentment.
I spent years aching to get out. Looking back, I am grateful I didn’t. The time forced me to pursue God, write books, start projects, build habits, and confront parts of myself I would have otherwise ignored. I did not steward every moment perfectly, but I did not waste the season either. That sense of having used the time meaningfully is what allows me to walk toward marriage now without feeling like I’m fleeing something incomplete.
Contentment in singleness does not mean you stop wanting marriage. It means you stop treating the current season as worthless while you wait.
3. Singleness Trains You to Receive Your Future Well
When you learn contentment in the present, you stop fighting the future when it arrives.
I used to beg God to end my singleness. He kept saying, in effect, “Not yet. You’re not ready.” At the time it felt frustrating. Now it feels like mercy. The waiting refined my discernment. It clarified what actually mattered. It made me able to recognize the right person when she appeared instead of projecting my unmet needs onto the wrong ones.
God’s timing is never late and never early. Giving a car to a five-year-old is different from giving one to a sixteen-year-old. The difference is readiness. Only the One who knows the full picture can determine when that readiness has arrived.
Singleness, received as a meaningful gift rather than a meaningless delay, prepares you to say yes to whatever comes next—marriage, longer singleness, or something you never expected—without bitterness or panic.
The Bottom Line
A third of your life is not a throwaway.
It is the season in which you learn to lead yourself, kill your idols, practice contentment, and become the kind of person who can receive the next chapter well.
Treat it as meaningful, and it will form you.
Treat it as worthless, and you will carry that same emptiness into whatever follows.
The choice is not whether you will be single for a significant portion of your life.
The choice is whether you will waste it or steward it.