The Church of Eleven22 - [BONUS] Relate: a conversation about your love life - Episode 02: Singleness

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

This week, we are honored to have guest Pastor Ryan Kwon, Lead Pastor at Resonate Church in Fremont, California sit down with others and answer questions about singleness.

What's up 1122 family? Welcome back to Relate, where we're having a conversation about our love lives. Here at the Church of 1122, we are a movement for all people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ. And as we're studying Song of Solomon as a church, we're also going to get the opportunity to dig deeper each week into the scripture through this conversation. It's super exciting. My name's Ali, and if you're joining us for the first time, we're so glad you're here. If you're back for round two, we're glad we didn't scare you off last week, and we're glad you came back for more. Last week, Pastor Joby and his wife Gretchen talked about what it meant to be a godly man.

And you all have been married how many years? 20 years. 20 years. We met in the gym, and he was there again. I didn't remember him. And he was like, hey, Gretchen, remember me? And I was like, love that. What's your name again?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What? Yeah. My mom always said, it's better to be single and want to be married than to be married and want to be single. And so for me, that, take, write that down.

Right. That's a great quote. Yep. Fundamentally, it comes down to this. It should be serious about your relationship with Jesus. I mean, that's the first thing in what I just preached. And simultaneous to that, I was growing up and just taking the responsibility of manhood, you know. It was the tank top.

He had muscles. A tank top. Tank top and muscles. And so oftentimes. when wives criticize husbands, they think they're helping. But he feels like it's a hostile takeover. And ultimately, what every man needs from his wife is he needs to feel like the man. First thing, I would say, who told you to be nice?

Nice has no place in the kingdom of God. The underlying part of that question is, should I try to change who I am in order to get a date? No way, man. Because then you'll never be you to keep her. So just be the you, God created you to be. But Gregs went for the nice guy. Look how nice on you. He loved Jesus, but he was not the nice guy.

Yep. Today we're talking about being single with some amazing people. We have Pastor Ryan Kwan who brought a word this weekend. Pastor Kwan, you are a part of the 1122 family, and we are so excited that you're here. Thank you. On the end down here, we have Pastor Ryan Britt and his incredible wife, Jen. If you think Pastor Britt has wisdom and insight, wait until you hear Jen. No pressure, Jen.

Amen. It's just true. Amen. And then in the middle here we have one of my dear friends and part of our staff family, April Cruise. April is deeply connected with Jesus and has been through it, you guys. And her contentment in singleness is incredibly inspiring. She also likes vanilla lattes, long walks on the beach, and karaoke. Her phone number is...

Just saying? All right. You guys ready? Let's do it. Alright, let's do it. So we're going to start out with some rapid-fire questions. This means I'm going to say the question. You get no think time and you have to answer immediately.

Jen, we're going to start with you. Three words, only three words of the worst date. For example, wings, mouth breathing, not from personal experience, of course, but that's just an example to give you one. So, Jen, go for it. Three words. Okay. I'm going to do three pairs of words. Costume party, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake.

Interesting. Okay. She was Britney Spears. Did not go well. Hey, we're already cheating. We did six words, so now three words. Consistent, coughing, burp. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Sounds too. Yeah, it was something. Yeah. It actually happened on the next date with a different person, and I began to think that it was just the effect of my face on people. Two did, too big. Yeah, it was strange.

All right, April. He got drunk. Wow. Ew. It was just, yikes. Brought that right in. I know. It was very terrible. Okay, pasta rhyme.

Loud burp her. Multiple burping scenarios. Like 10s as loud as you could possibly stand. Where was it? About 22. The restaurant stall. You kind of got to respect it, though. Well, I did with a particle that hit me.

All right. Okay. Next question. All right. We're going to start down at this end. Fill in the blank. Biggest no-go on the first date is, Talk too much.

Bad breath. Picking out names for your kids. That's a southern thing, no? Not on the first thing. I don't know. Jen. Sweat pants. Oh.

Right? Yeah. I like you know. Sweat pants on a first day. I like it. All right. She loves my sweatpants, by the way. All right, let's get into it.

So we had people submit questions, right? And we got a lot this week. And a lot with. similar themes. And so the first question we have, and Pastor Ryan, I would love for you to answer this, is there such a thing as finding the one, one, one, you know? In other words, is there one person that the Lord has planned for you to be with in this life? I don't think so. I don't think so for many reasons. Number one, I think that's a lot of pressure for a person. If there's just only one person in this globe that you're to be with and you're supposed to find them and they're

supposed to find you at the same time. I think there's enough pressures in the society in this world to not incorporate or to even adopt such a thing. But I think secondly, I think just in relationship-wise, I think marriage ultimately, the covenant is more of a gospel expression of who you are and who are you meant to be. And if you have that one, it's virtually impossible for you to actually be sanctified. There's no room to grow if you found that perfect one. The beauty of marriage is that you always marry the wrong person in the sense, right? And there's such freedom there because you start with knowing that there's so much to work through. There's so much that you think you know, but you really don't know. And that's okay because you have

a lifetime to discover that. That's right. But you don't have to know everything. And you will never know. I've been married for 20 years and I still don't know fully who my wife is. I mean, She's done some things this year, I'll tell you, and maybe later on the show, I'll tell you. That has surprised me. I don't think that she's the same person today as she was 20 years ago. And I think that's the growth part that is fun, that is amazing, that's unifying. And ultimately, it's our covenant. And after all, Jesus loved us for who we are, not who we are going to be.

And in that sense, I think marriage is supposed to be a reflection of that glory. of our acceptance, of our covenant, and our growth together. So, yeah, I think we don't have that one. There's no such thing as one. In fact, we marry the wrong people every time. Yeah, I mean, I thought the same thing. You just, you said it perfectly, that there's only one right person in his name is Jesus.

Amen. Amen. And all the rest of us are the wrong persons that are completely dependent on His grace and all of our relationships, specifically the covenant relationship of marriage, that is two wrong people that have been married to the right.

right person and by his grace, he's pulling us toward himself. Yeah. So it's good. I think in my experience and kind of throughout scripture, you can see God leading people to other people. I don't think there's one right person for us. But I do think, you know, if you're surrendered and you're walking with the Lord, he will lead you to who he has called you to and wants you to, you know, who he thinks

is best for you, for our good and his glory. Yeah, I mean, the one you choose to marry. is the one. Yeah. The one you choose to marry is the one. And so in hindsight, I can't imagine my life without Jennifer. And I know for sure that as I plan my way, God directed my path.

And, you know, and so I think in hindsight, we can look back on things and see God's help and God's plan in it. But as we're going, we're making choices and we're trusting God. The real question is, is God the one? Yeah. Is he the one thing that drives everything?

And if he is, then in his time, he will bring all the things together that he has planned for you. Yeah. And sometimes you have to be patient, don't we? For sure. Everybody's favorite. Yeah.

It's such my favorite thing to do is just to be patient. You know, I'm not sure if you caught the Thursday and Sunday's message, but I was sharing a story of how I started off right after I became a Christian, I broke off with my non-Christian girlfriend, and what I thought was going to be three years turned into eight years of long, very dry periods of this longing, this waiting to grow and to become the man that I think God wanted me to be.

And eventually, I met my wife, Jenny, after nine years. And now when I play that back, and I often talk to singles all the time, they're like, well, how'd you wait? And was waiting the right thing? And I still am not sure, but this is what I know. I said yes to Jenny. Jenny said yes to me. And when I look back, I'm incredibly glad.

And those eight years, 8.5 years that I've waited, seems like nothing to me. And I would actually do it all over again. So a lot of the singles that feel really impatient, going through this period, looking for the one, you know, I would just encourage them. You could wait. You could pray.

And that, like you're saying, April, God will lead you. God will lead you to the person. And ultimately, as Pastor Britt said, if you say yes to that person, that's the one. And so we said yes to each other, and that made us the one. And now we're celebrating 20 years of very happy now. That's good. And that's a great segue into the number one question that we got, mostly from single women, was, what is your advice for balancing a desire for marriage while still being content in the Lord and where we are currently in life as a single person? So I'd love to hear from you first if you can answer this for so many single women that wrote this in.

Yeah, that's a really tough question. I'll preface my answer with it's taken a lot of work, I think, to get to kind of where I am now and I by no means have it figured out. but a lot of prayer counseling, a lot of hard and honest conversations with friends and family, and really just digging in and kind of doing a lot of reflecting, I think, on myself. But I think where I've ended up is thankfulness and gratitude and focusing more on where I am and when I look around at my life what the Lord has given me now. And just walking that out and just being really grateful for,

what I have in my life and who is around me. And I think that just stirs this gratitude and peace that you can't really explain. Because when you're constantly focusing on what you don't have, you know, that's where you can go to a really dark place. And what do you do when you go to that dark place? Because I know, I mean, you can have seasons of contentment. And then you wake up one morning and there it is. Like there is the whisper again that you're not worthy. You've done something wrong.

You don't deserve this. and what do you do? How do you combat that? That's where it takes the hard work and just really going back and being super rooted in who Jesus is and who I am in him. And it might sound super cliche, but it really, it's prayer and scripture and reading the Bible and having a community around you. I think that's been a huge thing for me is the people around me to help me in those moments remind me whose I am and who I am in him. That's good. If the question is, how do I balance a desire for marriage?

I want to free up the singles and just let our singles know that you shouldn't feel guilty of wanting to be married. You shouldn't. You know, the Bible tells us that marriage is a good thing. It's the institution of the Lord. It is a designed thing by him for his glory and for our good. And so Jesus affirms that by his presence in Canaan, Galilee. Paul affirms that in 1 Corinthians, 7, is speaking into married people. the institution of marriage, even though he himself was not married.

And so I would just say it's not wrong to want to be married. It's a glorious thing. It could be even a godly thing. But like with all good things, when it becomes an idol, when it becomes something greater than what it's supposed to be, when it becomes greater than God, that your desires are greater for that marriage and that your hope is in that person more than finding hope in him,

that's when it gets a little wonky. That's when you get into trouble. So I would just encourage people. It's not bad. You shouldn't beat yourself to say, man, I want to be married. I want to be married. There's nothing wrong with that. For sure.

Jen, what can you, how do you find contentment in the Lord? I mean, honestly, whether you're single, married, divorce, parenting, no matter what season? Like, what do you do to find? Because you have that about you. You have this calm, peaceful contentment in the Lord. And how do you get that? I think just resting in him and knowing that I'm called by him and as it says in Jude 1, I'm called and I'm beloved and I'm kept in him and kind of learning and growing in that,

whether in the times when I was single, not trying to, like April was saying, focus on that and like looking through a straw, but seeing the big picture and the evidence of God's goodness in my life from, you know, from the time I was little to growing up and being out on my own and not having some one, the one, the one. But just resting in that being called and kept and beloved in him. And so like April, so there's work in it. And just kind of really looking for it and seeing him drawing me to him. And so that's what ultimately led us together. We were content in being single. And we both were like, we washed our hands of dating and all that stuff. We just were done with it.

And we did not know each other. And then we met doing ministry. And that's how we met. And we were both like, no, we're not dating anybody right now. But here we are. Did you wave goodbye? And so we kissed her. Yeah, we kissed it. No, we did not. But that's just because we were more content

and focused on our relationship of the Lord and what his calling was in our life. And then that ultimately brought us together. So good. Oh, go ahead. Could I just say one thing about being content is that the very thing, the very thing, if I could just say one thing that robs you

from contentment is comparison. Yeah. And it's so easy. to compare with one another our friends. I remember when I was dating Jenny, I mean, think about it, nine years of nothing, right? And then finally I get a date with her. It was amazing. I over did it, but that's okay.

That's another story. Did you wear sweatpants? Yes. Yes, maybe. But they were cool in California. I'm sure they were cool. You know what? She's not here to say, but so what ended up happening is I started dating her at the same time as one of our other pastors

started dating one of our single adults. And, you know, we're doing fine. We're just actually growing together. Everything was good until the other pastor proposed to that his girlfriend, and they became engaged. And immediately something happened to our relationship. And I remember Jenny, and I'm sure, I'm certain that she'd be glad for me to share this with our single adult's audience because this is a real struggle for women.

They're like, well, when is it my turn? Well, how come you don't love me as much as she loves him or he loves her? And you start playing this comparison game. And I remember telling her on that day, I said, if God has not called me to you yet, you don't want that version of me. You just don't want that. And I have to be called for that. And, you know, God did call me to marry her about six months later.

But it took that time. And now we look back and say, that was a good thing. That was a healthy thing. And so when we compare with one another, it could really not only rock, our joy, but could really rob the presence of what we could do or what we should be doing because we're constantly dreaming about tomorrow. It's good. It's really good.

What did you just say? The thing that robs contentment is comparison. Yeah. It's good. Yeah. I think the interesting thing, I would just offer two encouragements quickly on contentment. One is that contentment is a choice. You choose it.

And it's not always an easy choice, but it is. you choose to, as April said, practice gratitude and to focus on the things that you're thankful for and to practice contentment. That is a choice that we make and we have to make it over and over and over again. Beauty in life is most often recognized through the things that we have to do on repeat.

Yeah. You know, the cultivating of a thing and growing of a thing over time. But I would just talk to the singles, the people who are watching that, you know, they may not know some of the words that we would use. Like, you know, contentment may not be a word,

in their common language or they know a lot, some of the more churchy words, you know, that we could talk about. And they're like, all right, well, what about me? What am I supposed to do? And I would just encourage you to do two things. One, devote yourself to the church. Find your place inside the body of Christ. Inside the 1122, you're welcome. We'd love for you to be a part of this body for sure. But if it's not us, a body where you can belong and devote yourself as a person among a people. And you can be known and you can be loved and you can be challenged. So devote yourself to the church. And then the second thing I would say is invest in yourself

and your self-awareness. You know? So take care of yourself, learn about yourself, learn about your strengths and your weaknesses and your lights and your shadows. Because trust me, if and when God chooses to lead you into marriage, the more you know about you, the better it's going to be. Because marriage is just a big mirror.

and as a lot of relationships are, but devote and invest, and I think by devoting and investing, then contentment will begin to grow, and it's a great way to cultivate that. It's really good. So two notes, if you're at home, comparison, Rob's contentment,

and contentment is a choice. Those are so good. Thank you. Okay, one more question. Pastor Ryan, I love, you talked about this in your sermon, and I would just love to hear some more. The question is,

sometimes it feels like singleness is punishment. How do I leverage my singleness for the glory of God? So really there's two questions there. One is my singleness punishment and two, how do I leverage my singleness for the glory of God? Yeah, so I would love to speak into that. I know our panel has a ton of things to say with that. But first, again, I'm addressing punishment. Well, that is a significant indictment that we're making to the Lord when we say that God is punishing me. And that is minimizing the work of Jesus for us when we say we are being punished by God. Because then we're robbing Christ the glory of actually taking all the punishment for us. And we know that through the gospel that what we should have received, he received at all, and that we were treated

as if we had lived his life. And so if that is true, we should be absolutely and completely and utterly set free to know that whatever is happening to us, we don't have to like make it glossy. We don't have to put glitter on it. We could say, yeah, it sucks. It's hard. But we cannot say that he's punishing us because all of our punishment went to Christ. That's right. Therefore, freeing us from the knowledge and even the freedom that our God who loves us all the time perfectly cannot now because he's a just God, make two people pay because he made Jesus pay at all.

So I would say that first, so it will never be punishment. But secondly, when you say, how do I leverage my singleness for the glory of God? I think what you said was really, really insightful. If you want to really leverage the glory of God, I would say, be happy. That's right. You know, be happy. You know, in John 15, there's a section, it's an amazing section from abiding and following Christ and obeying, abiding God and being the branch, all that. In later section, it says, I want you to glorify God.

In the bottom, it says that your joy may be made full. And the question I want to ask is, what is that passage about? God's glory or being made joyfully full? The answer is yes. They're both. They're intertwined in the sense that when we are joyful in our situation, therefore God is glorified. And that when we're not satisfied in Him, then that's when God is not glorified. And so to find a place where you could actually make a choice to say, I'm going to be content.

I'm not going to lose out on the opportunities that God has given to me now. And I love what you said about just even being self-aware. My goodness, there can be this season where we could forge the kind of friendships, where there's such grace with one another that you would choose to speak truth to me in love. Those things just don't come. You know, you have to build that. And there's no better time than when you have all the freedom, undistracted devotion unto the Lord and to a community, where you could actually invite that kind of thing into your life so that you may be self-aware.

And it just really helps, you know. And so I feel like glorifying God is to find joy in the moment, not for the things that are to come, but that are here now. Yeah, for sure. April, can you, how are you leveraging your singleness for the glory of God? I get to see it all the time, but I would love for you to share with us what you do. Yeah, so I love what you're saying about being in the now. And I think that's a big thing I had to learn was it was kind of a mindset shift. And so often we refer to singleness as a period of waiting.

And when I think of waiting, it's a forward thinking mentality. You know, you're in a waiting room and you're waiting in traffic. Like there's something you're anticipating. And so when you stop thinking of singleness as this period of waiting and you just live in the moment and you live in the now, you're able to look around and say, okay, Lord, how can you use me now? And so some of the amazing opportunities and experiences I've had through this season is I have the freedom to nanny. There's a family that I've nannied for for, you know, the last three, three and a half years. And I get to be a part of those kids' lives. and so I don't have to wait until motherhood to make a difference in the next generation.

And, you know, I have a few different very close friends who all have kids, and I get to do the same thing in those kids' lives. And I get to coach middle school cheerleading and, you know, tapping to that kind of, yeah. Can you show us a cheer right now? No. So, yeah, it's just, you know, the Lord gave me the opportunity to buy a house a few years ago, and I was able to have a disciple group in my house for a couple years. And my sister just had twins.

And so I'm able to be helpful and be there for her. And so, you know, it's just seeing where the Lord can use you. And it's just really amazing to be able to walk that out. You guys, we are out of time for today. Sadly, I feel like we could continue talking. I feel like we just scratched the surface. But we are out of time. Thank you so much for being here.

Pastor Ryan, thank you for flying all the way from California to Florida to be here with us. And to all of you at home, thank you for joining us too. I know we are all taking so much away from these conversations. And to all the single guys who are already trying to Instagram stock April right now, she doesn't have social media. So you'll have to talk to her in person like a real man see last week on being a godly name. Amen. Next week, Pastor Dobie and Gretchen will be back.

We're going to be talking about what it means to be a godly woman. and we are still gathering questions for the rest of the series. So if you have anything you'd like to ask on future topics, you can go to co-e-22.com slash Song of Solomon and fill out the forum there. Don't be shy. Thanks again for joining us for Relate, a conversation about our love lives.

We'll see you soon, church.