Singleness: Becoming "The One" | Alex Gallien | "It's Complicated" pt. 1

Over the course of 2026, we have spent every Sunday remembering ancient truths.

Ancient truths about the disciplines that build us in terms of spiritual growth and discipline, ancient truths about all the theology within the Apostles' Creed, ancient truths about the person of the Holy Spirit, and even ancient truths about the teachings of Jesus Himself.

And we're going to continue doing that same thing, but over the course of the next six weeks, we're going to begin remembering some ancient truths about the most ancient gift that God has given humanity, which would be the gift of the relationships that we get to share with one another, and even more specifically, the gift of relationships that are defined by the possibilities and the perplexities of romance and love.

Meaning we are talking about by far the most complicated relationships known to planet Earth if we're talking about love.

And this is why for the next six weeks we're going to be in a series that we're calling It's Complicated.

Because that's what love is.

It's complicated.

And up front, before I say another word, we've already posted the rundown about what's being talked about every single week.

I do not want you to assume that any of these sermons are not for you.

Whether you are single, dating, engaged, happily married, unhappily married, cheating on your spouse, widowed, divorced, or in any other kind of situationship, whatever it is that you're in, every single one of these sermons, all of these different types of relationships affect every single one of us.

And while, yeah, it's true that some topics may not directly affect you, these topics are gonna affect your kids and they're gonna affect your grandkids, and they're gonna affect people in your community and people that you work with, the people you go to school with, and people in your small group.

And check this out they're going to affect the people that you are called to reach and that you are called to disciple, which means that you have got to know how to help people in these relationships.

You've got to have these talking points, and rather than allowing our culture to speak into these conversations with the loudest voice, what we're gonna do for the next six weeks is we're going back to the scriptures in order to remember the conversation that God has been having about these relationships forever, regardless of how complicated they really are.

And since the age-old problems associated with singleness, dating, marriage, communication, arguing, and sex date all the way back to the beginning of humankind.

Well, the only good place to start would be in the very beginning.

And so if you have your Bibles, today we're gonna begin in Genesis chapter number two.

Genesis two, Genesis is the first book of the Bible.

It literally means the beginning.

We're gonna be in chapter two, and this is the only time I'll say this today.

Probably gonna say this about every sermon.

But if you are sincerely interested in ever having like a healthy dating life or getting married, or better yet, staying married, and you're not taking notes during this, you're playing yourself.

You're lying, you don't actually care about that stuff because when you care about stuff, you write it down.

Think about the stuff that you care about the most.

It makes the schedule, it makes the calendar.

You definitely talk about it on Facebook, which is just a form of you writing it down.

And so if you're trying to tell me that all of this, which you would call the most important relationships in your life, are actually important to you, but you're not taking notes, then you need to maybe check and see as to whether or not you're being honest with yourself.

Now, with that in mind, we're gonna begin in Genesis 2.

We're gonna start at verse 7, and just so you know, up to this point, God has essentially created everything, okay?

He's created the land and the sky and the sea and the animals and the plants and oxygen and the planets and all the stuff.

And yet, there's one thing he hasn't created yet.

And what I want you to pay attention to is the slow and very specific process through which God then creates the first human being that we know as Adam or the Adam, which is the Hebrew word for man, and then after creating Adam and putting Adam to work, after that at some point, he creates human number two that we know as Eve.

There's a real specific process that takes place here, and we're gonna begin reading from Genesis 2.7, and then we're gonna skip to verse 15, and then we're gonna skip to 18, and then to 21 and 22, and I just want you to pay attention to the process because it's specific.

So let's look at Genesis 2.7.

It says, Then the Lord God formed a man, this one man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and that single man became a living being.

Now skip to verse 15.

The Lord God took that man and put him in the Garden of Eden to go to work and to take care of it.

Now skip to 18.

It was after this that God says, It's not good for this man to be alone.

I'm gonna make a helper suitable for him.

And even still, if you know the story, God right here makes animals, and he allows Adam to realize, eh, these animals really are still not the helper that I'm looking for.

And then we get to verse 21.

So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and he closed up that place with flesh, and the Lord made a woman from the rib that he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

Today I want to talk about the first step in relationships, which would be the step of singleness.

And if you're taking notes, the title of today's message is gonna be called Singleness, becoming the one.

And up front, married people, I'm coming after you in just a little bit.

I mean, we're coming after you.

And if you do not think everything I'm about to say is going to be just as applicable to you, you are dead wrong, and you need to just go ahead and prepare your tender hearts because over the course of this summer, we have preached some very like God loves you and you've got a purpose messages.

Today ain't that.

God does love you, but we're gonna come after some of y'all.

So I hope that you're ready.

Up front, we're gonna be referring to these verses that we just went through, like repeatedly, time and time again over the course of the next six weeks and every week.

We're gonna look at a different layer of what God's teaching us through them.

But let's start quickly by once again referring back to Genesis 2.7.

This is the first one we read, Genesis 2.7.

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and that man became a living being.

First thing you gotta notice here is that before there was Adam and Eve, there was just Adam, a single human living the hashtag single life.

And for some of you, that is an intimidating reality.

You don't want to talk about the single life, and it makes you nauseous to even have to consider the fact that you might be single for one more week or one more month or one more year.

And to that, let me just say, I get it.

I spent a large portion of my young adult years obsessing over the topic of marriage, asking the same questions that everybody else asks.

Uh, who am I gonna marry?

When am I gonna get married?

Have I already met them?

Is the person that I'm dating right now the person that I'm actually gonna be married to?

Should I download the app?

Should I not download the app?

Should I text them first?

They text me first.

Should I wait three hours to text them back so that I don't look super desperate?

She watched my Instagram story and liked it.

What does that mean?

She watched my Instagram story, but she didn't like it.

What does that mean?

See what I'm saying?

We obsess over this stuff, we think about it all the time, and if we're being honest, church culture hasn't helped.

We talk to singles and we ask them questions like, you know, when are you gonna settle down and finally get married?

As if getting married is the mark of Christian adulthood.

As if marriage is the thing that finally catapults you into a true, meaningful life, which just in case you've never been told this in church, that's not biblical.

That does not come from the Bible anywhere.

We do not find that in God's word.

You are not half a human waiting on God to send you your better half or your other half.

You marriage does not determine your relationship status, it does not determine your spiritual maturity, it doesn't determine your worth to the kingdom of God, and it doesn't determine your value to God Himself.

And you want to know why I can tell you that as an obvious fact?

Well, uh ladies and gentlemen, Christ Jesus never got married.

He was literally single his entire life.

So therefore, if we're saying marriage is the prerequisite to you becoming a whole human being who's finally living a meaningful life, we've got a serious theological problem on our hands because Jesus, the cornerstone of our faith, the founder of the faith, God himself, was never married.

He stayed single.

And the same is true for the Apostle Paul.

Some of you are like, who's the apostle Paul?

Because you're kind of new to church.

That's cool.

The guy who wrote the majority, like a large portion of our New Testament, Romans, first and second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and others, Paul, he was single.

And when Paul talks about his relationship status in 1 Corinthians 7, he doesn't talk about singleness as if it's just this season of life that I'm in right now, where God's trying to teach me things, and one day he's going to alleviate me from this torturous experience and finally level me up into becoming a real Christian and a real man.

He doesn't talk about it like that.

When Paul talks about singleness in 1 Corinthians 7, he talks about it as number one, a gift, and number two, as a high calling, and for himself and others, he even calls it a lifelong calling.

And when he does this, he's not saying that marriage is bad.

He is making the point that single people have the ability to give themselves to the things of God with a kind of flexibility and focus that married people simply do not have.

And it's practical.

And he is very practical.

When he's look at 1 Corinthians 7, 28.

Those who marry will face many troubles in this life.

And I want to spare you of this.

I don't know about you guys, but I feel like maybe that one should be on more wedding invitations than it's on.

Can you imagine?

Alex and Samantha would like to formally request your presence at their marriage ceremony.

Well, they will be stepping into more troubles in this life together.

It's true though, if you've been married, you're like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

And what Paul is saying here is he's saying marriage is beautiful and it is holy, it's a good idea, and it's a God idea.

But if you're married, you also know what he's saying.

Marriage is also the hardest thing you will ever do.

It is demanding, it is frustrating, it is the death of everything that makes you you, which we will talk about in a couple of weeks from now, and your hearts are just not ready for it.

Marriage is wildly complicated.

And if you are not downright excited for serious sacrifice and for the opportunity to die to yourself and your dreams and your preferences and your wants every single day, you are not ready for marriage because that is literally what marriage is all about.

It's what marriage has always been about.

And so if you're single, I want you to hear me clearly right now.

I'm not gonna make you the cliche, corny, and untrue promise that, well, there's someone out there waiting for you.

God has someone for you.

I'm not gonna tell you that.

This is not in the Bible, this is nowhere to be found in the scriptures.

Genesis 2.18 definitely says it's not good for man to be alone, but that is not a promise that all Christians are gonna find a spouse.

That is a general statement about our need for community.

And so, no, I'm not gonna make you the promise that everyone that's on fire for Jesus is gonna end up with a spouse because even Jesus doesn't say that.

In Matthew 19, Christ Himself says some of us are gonna end up single for the rest of our lives.

We're never going to marry.

So I can't tell you there's a person out there for you, but I can tell you that you're not waiting on marriage to start your real life.

Your real life has already started.

Wake up to the reality, you're not waiting on marriage to finally step into all the things God has for you.

You should be doing that now.

And I'll also tell you that if you want to get married, it's a good desire.

It's not a wrong desire.

If you have something on the inside of you that hopes and prays for an intimate connection that's marked by lifelong friendship and love and sacrifice and sex and children, the scriptures call all of that good.

It's good, it's a God idea, and you should pray for it and you should work for it, and you should keep desiring it and you should keep pursuing it, but as you do, be very, very careful.

Do not waste your single years obsessing over finding the one.

Use your single years to obsess over becoming the one.

Far too many people think that they're supposed to be out there finding the one, and they ain't spend no time becoming the one.

And that couldn't be further from what we see in the biblical narrative.

Let's look at verse 15, Genesis 2:15.

Genesis 2:15

Adam has been formed, and what does God do next?

Notice, step two in this process is the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to take care of it.

And this was long before Eve was ever in the picture.

Adam has work to do before he has a wife to love.

He has responsibility to take care of before he has romance.

He has to walk in purpose before he gets to walk with a partner.

Now, to be clear, the Bible doesn't explicitly say God took Adam and placed him in the garden for five to seven years so that he could continue growing and becoming the kind of person that he needed to be so that he could love and care for a wife whenever she did finally show up one day.

It's not in the Bible, it's not explicitly stated, but the principle still rings true.

If you are single right now, you have a garden to be tending right now.

If you're single right now, you already have responsibility you're supposed to be stewarding over right now.

If you're single right now, you have a life and purpose that you're supposed to be walking in and building right now.

You have a relationship with God that you should be cultivating right now.

You have friendships that you should be building right now.

You have character that needs loads of developing right now.

You got a lot of bad habits that need to be dealt with right now.

You got some money that you haven't saved, that you need to be saving right now.

Some of y'all got some wounds that need to be healed right now.

You got a lot of purpose that you should be walking in right now.

I mean, can I be honest with y'all?

All right.

You say yeah.

If some of y'all got married tomorrow, it would be a catastrophe.

If you can't apologize now, then don't imagine that you're going to become magically humble just because you said I do.

If you can't hold the line on your sexual boundaries as a single person, do not expect to walk in sexual wholeness and health as a married person.

If you can't handle your money when it's just your money, then combining bank accounts and sharing bills isn't going to make you financially wise overnight.

You know what it's gonna make you?

Involved in a ton of arguments, involved in a lot of fighting.

If you can't take your relationship with God in things like church attendance, holiness, Bible reading, and prayer seriously right now when you're single because you're just too busy, then do not think that adding a spouse, a mortgage, two kids, dance lessons, soccer practice, and trying to fix that hot water heater every other week is going to help you find more time in your schedule.

Marriage does not cure immaturity, it exposes it.

Every married person in this room.

Every married person in this room knows this.

Marriage doesn't cure immaturity, it exposes.

Some of you guys think you're the getting married is gonna solve your problems.

Your problems aren't gonna be solved, they're gonna be seen.

You're every day you're gonna have someone that's looking back at you and seeing the worst parts of who you are.

You you're you're gonna be enamored with that person for 17 seconds, and then they're gonna be grossed out by you.

You're you are going to be their the source of all of their anger.

Literally, no, you know, no one can hurt your feelings quite like a spouse can.

No one can let you down, betray you, and make you feel smaller than your spouse can.

Some of you think that getting married is gonna solve your pornography addiction.

It ain't going to.

It's just gonna expose it.

Some of you think that getting married is gonna solve your loneliness and your anxiety and your depression and your need to be seen and celebrated.

I talk to married people on a regular basis, and they are by and large the least happy, saddest, loneliest, most depressed group of people I've ever met.

Because marriage didn't fix any of that.

That should have been fixed before marriage.

For some people, marriage caused that.

Marriage does not cure your irresponsible decision making or your immaturity.

It exposes it so that someone else just gets to look at it all the time.

The question that you should not be asking is where's the one?

The question you should be asking is, am I becoming the one?

Stop asking, where's the where's the one I'm praying for?

Start asking, am I becoming the one they're praying for?

And I know it comes into some of your minds when you think about the one.

The images that flow through your brain when you think about what marriage material is supposed to look like.

Six pack abs, a good credit score, a clean house, and the ability to cook.

And ain't nothing wrong with any of that.

Shoot for the stars.

You go get you that 10 out of 10.

But as you're looking for, let me be there's just the source of truth in your life.

You do know what it takes to land a 10 out of 10, right?

Being a 10 out of 10.

Or being a good liar.

You know, what of the other?

Either way, some of y'all are in a heap of trouble.

You got ladies in here who, and this is the churchiest language ever.

You got ladies in here that are looking for your bowass.

And you got guys in here that are waiting on God to send you your Proverbs 31 woman.

And you've had dishes sitting in your sink for 10 days.

Because what?

You can't stop watching true crime documentaries.

You don't know how to use a washing machine.

You don't iron your clothes before you go into public.

Your vehicle's disgusting.

You personally smell bad.

No one's told you that, but I'm telling you right now.

The shirt you're currently wearing is two sizes too small.

You don't have any money in your savings account.

You don't brush your hair before you go into professional settings.

You don't have a real job.

The job that you do have, you're making less than$9 an hour.

Which means you have a lot of work to do.

Maybe you should quit worrying about finding the one.

And you should start getting some of that taken care of.

Because that's just the practical surface level stuff.

You start reading the Bible and you start finding out that while that stuff is important, the Holy Spirit wants to do an even deeper work on the inside of you, a much more difficult process.

And he describes it in Galatians 5, 22 through 23.

Let's check that out.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy.

I mean, just stop right there.

Joy.

Like being happy.

It's just the fruit of the spirit.

Peace, which would be the opposite of constant anxiety and stress.

Forbearance, which is another word for patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, being someone who's reliable and comes through, a person of their word who never breaks their promises, gentleness, and self-control.

Even when no one's watching, even when your decision only affects you.

Against such, there is no law.

Some of y'all have been praying for God to change your relationship status, and all he wants to do is change your character.

That's all he's been waiting for.

God send me a boyfriend.

He goes, No, I'm trying to send you patience.

Some of you have been like your prayer has just been, God, send me someone.

And that's not a bad prayer.

It's not a wrong prayer.

It's just maybe that prayer should also be accompanied with God, turn me into someone.

God, turn me into someone who exudes love.

Turn me into someone who constantly models peace.

Turn me into someone who's happy, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and defined by self-control.

Turn me into someone who can serve someone else's needs without always wanting to be rewarded or applauded when I do so.

Turn me into someone who can quickly offer forgiveness to people who do me wrong, and someone who can quickly admit when I am wrong.

God turn me into a person who can steward my time and my money and my sexuality and my singleness responsibly before I invite someone else into the chaos that is my life.

Lord, turn me into someone who looks more and is becoming more and more like Jesus every day.

That is marriage material.

That's a person worth marrying.

And so if you're single right now, meaning you're not married, if you're dating someone, you're still single in the eyes of God.

If you're engaged to someone, that is a step further, but you're still single in the eyes of God.

You can break that engagement off right now.

If you are single, do not waste the opportunity that's in front of you.

Now, I'm saying some of this because I did this.

I am actually not saying this from a place of I didn't do some of this, I wasn't perfect, but I definitely did this stuff and it was worth it, and it has played out true in my marriage.

If you're single right now, create lasting friendships with other people who aren't your spouse, who aren't the person you're dating.

You need friends in your life.

If you're single right now, travel.

Go places before you start having kids that you can't take on that airplane because you're not gonna want to.

If you're single right now, start serving in church now.

Decide that you're gonna become generous now.

Don't wait till you're 45 and you struggle giving 2% of your income, thinking that that's what God has asked for when he's asked for a tithe.

Start becoming generous now.

Develop hobbies now.

So many married people, man.

It's like you ask what they do for fun and they have nothing.

They can't tell you anything they do for fun because they don't have any hobbies.

Start developing hobbies now.

Build good habits now.

Go to the gym, work on your eating, go to bed early, get up early, get outside, like develop some of those healthy habits now.

Deal with your wounds now.

Don't overload someone with unnecessary baggage that you could be dealing with right now.

You know what I beg you to do?

When you're single, take risks for the kingdom of God now.

Because there's gonna come a time period where you can't it taking the risk, getting the different job that doesn't pay as much, it's a lot harder when you got three kids and you have a mortgage and your family's closer to you.

So start taking some of those risks now.

Go all in right now.

Give everything right now.

Start building rapport with God right now.

Learn how to pray right now.

Learn how to read your Bible right now.

Start doing that stuff right now.

Don't, I mean, and it looks different.

Like maybe for some of you, it's steward, it's it's like practical and it's learning how to, I don't know, we'll get to that in a second.

Let me just say, like, don't sit in the waiting room of your life hoping that someone's gonna walk through the door.

Tend the garden that is your life right now, so that if someone does walk through that door, what they find when they walk into that garden is beauty and it looks great and it's impressive and it's flourishing.

That's what it means to actively become the one while you are waiting for the one or pursuing the one or praying for the one.

Just don't waste that opportunity.

I now before we roll out, this is a quick sermon today, to be fair, but before we roll out today, we do have a lot of married people in this room.

If you're married, if you're married and you're happy, make some noise.

That's good.

I bet at 9 45 they won't make that much noise.

We got some work to do, and that's okay, we'll get there.

My guess is that if you're married, if you're in this room, you heard this sermon, you've enjoyed it.

And my presupposition is that what's going through your mind is I hope these singles are listening.

I hope they're taking this seriously.

I really hope they're paying attention.

And what I want to say is, on behalf of your spouse, and on behalf of your friends and your family members and your coworkers and your kids and the people in your small group, I hope you're paying attention.

I hope you've taken notes.

This sermon is not just for them.

This sermon is for you.

You need this stuff because you did not graduate from the God-given expectation of consistently becoming the one just because you got married.

The older I get in ministry, the more time I spend talking to married people and married couples who are struggling.

And the more I do that, the more I talk to these people, the more I listen, and the more I even try to lead a healthy marriage myself, the more I am realizing most relationships are not struggling because someone married the wrong person.

99% of relationships that are struggling are struggling because one or both of those people simply stopped becoming the right person.

You still have the expectation to be becoming the one.

And so if I could give married people or realistically any people in the room, just three quick challenges that you can take with you this week, knowing that we're gonna be talking about marriage in more detail and in more depth in the weeks to come.

If I could give you three challenges that you could just get you through the week, here's number one.

And it's not like creative, but it's important.

Don't stop growing.

Don't stop growing.

Some of you got married, and you immediately pressed pause on your personal passion for growth.

You have no goals.

You have gotten better at nothing since you got married.

You have stopped.

Why?

At what point is that even cool?

Just not even as a married person, as a Christian.

Let's look real quick at 2 Corinthians 3.18.

And we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, we are being transformed into the same image, the image of Christ from one degree to another.

For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Now I love this language, and I use the ESV here because it describes transformation as something that's happening to us continually.

You're not transformed, you are being transformed, meaning there is at no point in your relationship with God, if you are actually following Jesus, there is at no point where you will ever get to say, I've arrived.

Look at me.

I have grown so much.

And I mean, it's very likely I've got it all figured out.

At no point do you ever get to get there, especially, this is especially important to realize if you are married.

Hear me clearly.

You are the only person responsible for allowing the Holy Spirit to continually challenge you, to continually change you and convict you and transform you.

You are the only person responsible for that.

Meaning, could you do me a favor and for the next five minutes quit wasting all of your time thinking about your spouse?

I am not talking to your spouse.

I am talking to you.

This is about you.

We are talking about your problems.

Some of you could preach a six-week sermon series on all of your spouse's problems.

You have sermon titles and illustrations and Greek word studies and more photo and video content than Greg Bosch had last week.

But I want you to look at Matthew 7 with me real quick.

Don't turn there, just write it down and follow along on the screen.

This is Matthew 7, 3 through 5.

This is Jesus speaking.

Why do you see the speck that's in your husband's eye, but you don't notice the log that's in your own?

Or how can you say to your wife, let me take the speck out of your eye when there's a log in yours?

You hypocrite.

Your mother-in-law's eye, your father-in-law's eye, that person in your small group's eye.

Now, obviously, you know, I like, I took some liberty, some creative liberty, and inserted some different words into that passage that exists.

I think we can all agree that it works.

And I think we can all agree that the prayer you should never pray as a married person is that God fixed them, God changed them, God man, heal them.

You want to know you can be sure of if you pray like that?

You are selfish and totally unaware.

You're unaware.

The prayer you should be praying is God fix me, change me, transform me.

God turn me into someone that's worth being married to.

And that transformation, it could look practical.

Your physical health.

Okay, some of you, you gotta remember, the one thing we all share in common is that we're all gonna die.

And like tragedies happen, but some of you are in route to missing out on some years of your life because you're not taking care of your physical health right now.

And if I don't tell you, I mean, who's going to?

You're not listening.

So, like, for some of you, it's practical, you need to start working on your physical health.

What are you eating?

Are you walking?

Are you sleeping?

Are you exercising?

Can you do 10 squats?

Can you do 10 push-ups?

You need to be working on this stuff.

Practically, it looks like going to bed earlier, getting up earlier, setting goals, fixing your tone, stewarding your money, maybe going to therapy.

And on a more spiritual level, it could look like learning how to actually read your Bible, learn the words of your Bible, pray during the day, admit your sins, serve at church, go to church, get in a small group, offer forgiveness.

Either way, whatever that looks like for you, don't stop growing.

Number two, keep pursuing each other.

Keep pursuing each other.

Some of y'all were great to date.

You're awesome to date.

You told stories and you made memories and you laughed and you took pictures and you got dressed up and you smelled nice and you brushed your hair and you went out to dinners every now and then, and you listened intently, and you asked good questions, and you made that other person feel great about themselves, and you gave yourself to making sure that they could fulfill their dreams.

And some of you, when you were dating, you even did that one thing that you're not supposed to do when you're dating because it's only reserved for marriage and it's a sin against God when you're dating, and you did that, anyways.

And then you got married and you had kids, and you gained some new responsibilities and some new bills and some new uh work and some new time constraints, and suddenly you stopped doing all of that.

You stopped listening to one another, you stopped asking questions, you stopped learning about each other, you stopped being inquisitive, you stopped going on dates, you stopped smelling good, you stopped wearing your nice clothes, and you stopped doing that thing that you're not supposed to do whenever you're dating, and you are supposed to do when you're married, and now that you're married, you don't do that thing at all.

And if you were actually honest, which most of you are not, some people are, if you're actually honest, if someone asked you to give an assessment of your marriage and you were honest, you would say, I'm bored, and I'm unhappy, and I'm unfulfilled, and sometimes I wonder does everyone else feel like this?

And is this how it's supposed to feel?

And am I crazy?

And do they feel this way?

Did my parents feel this way?

Did I marry the wrong person?

And my only question is, what did you think was gonna happen?

What did you think was gonna happen?

You quit doing literally everything that caused you to fall in love.

So, what'd you think was gonna happen?

You thought something was just you're gonna quit doing the things that made you fall in love and you were gonna stay in love?

So here's here's a thought.

Before you cheat on them, before you get that divorce, and before you sleep on the couch again, what if you just started pursuing each other again?

It's not rocket science, but uh it worked once.

I bet it would work again.

Here's an idea.

Put your stupid phone down, quit watching TV three hours a night and look at each other.

That's the starting point for some of you.

If you watch three and a half hours of TV every night, stop doing that right now.

I won't even I won't even see you for marriage counseling if you're doing that.

I won't do it.

Telling you right now, that's gonna be the first new assessment.

Okay, how much TV do you watch with this?

Oh, four hours?

Get out of here.

I'm not even talking to you.

Put your phones down, stop watching TV, look at each other.

Ask questions.

Go on a walk, get coffee, get your hair cut, put on a nice shirt, go out to dinner.

I'm not saying every night, I'm not even saying every week.

I ain't got the budget to do that.

That's okay.

Once a month.

Make some memories.

Take some pictures.

Have some fun.

Ask the same things you asked 15 years ago.

What are your dreams?

What's God doing in your life right now?

What are things that make you sad?

What are you grieving?

Is there anything that you've missed out on that I can maybe come alongside you and push you toward?

Flirt with each other.

Send a spicy text message every now and then.

Baby lock the door and turn the lights down low.

Do whatever you gotta do, but keep pursuing each other.

Number three, stay in love with Jesus.

Stay in love with Jesus.

Maybe for some of you you should reword this fall in love with Jesus.

Because it's not that you need to stay in love, it's that you've never been in love with Jesus.

It does not matter what season of life or love that you find yourself in.

Whether you are single and hoping to be married, single and content, unhappily married, happily married, cheating on your spouse, divorced, widowed, or something in between, the most important relationship in your life is still your relationship with God.

And your spouse's relationship with God, your boyfriend's relationship with God, your girlfriend's relationship with God, your mom's relationship with God, your friend's relationship with God, your pastor's relationship with God cannot substitute for your relationship with God.

You cannot outsource discipleship to your husband.

You can't outsource spiritual maturity to your wife.

Your marriage cannot stand on one person's prayer life or one person's church involvement.

If you are not both connected to the vine that is Christ, at some point one of you will wither, and at some point the marriage will.

Wither.

Look with me.

This is our last verse today.

This is John 15, 5.

Jesus says, I am the vine, you are the branches.

If you remain in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit.

But apart from me, you can do nothing.

This is true for general life.

It has got to be a hundred times more true when it comes to marriage.

Apart from Jesus, I cannot love Samantha the way that I am supposed to love her.

I desperately need the Holy Spirit to convict me when I am full of myself.

I need the Holy Spirit to step in and say, Don't you talk to my daughter that way?

I need the Holy Spirit to correct my tone when it needs correcting.

I need him to confront my selfishness.

I need the Holy Spirit to some of y'all, please hear me.

I need him to produce joy within me when she is not at a place where she can produce joy within me.

I need him to produce gentleness within me when all I want to do is win the argument.

I need the Holy Spirit to help me.

You know sometimes what you need?

Sometimes I just need the Holy Spirit to remind me that the woman that I'm looking at is not my enemy.

Oh yeah, some of y'all have been viewing your wives and your husbands like they're they're the enemy.

Like they are Lucifer himself.

I need the Holy Spirit sometimes to remind me, hey.

She's not the enemy.

She is your best friend.

She's your wife.

She's your lover.

She's the one whom your soul delights in.

I need him to remind me of that stuff.

Probably more often than I'm willing to admit.

I just say this to remind you that like becoming the one is largely just about you becoming more and more like Jesus.

That's what it all boils down to.

Becoming the one is just you becoming more and more like Jesus over time.

Think about it.

Before Eve ever appears in the garden in Genesis chapter 2, Adam already knows God.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Before Adam knows and experiences the love of a spouse, he knows and experiences the love of God.

And before you are ever going to become the kind of person who can love someone else in the way that you're supposed to love someone else, you too have to know and experience and receive the love of God.

And if you feel too inconsistent, too messy, too sinful, too broken, too unimpressive, too addicted, too lazy, too mean, too angry, too full of lust.

If you feel like you're not holy enough and not good enough to actually experience and receive the love of God, then you're in a better position than you even realize you're in.

Because the good news of Jesus, the gospel, that's what gospel message means.

It means good news.

The good news of Jesus is that he didn't show up for people who had it all together.

He showed up for broken people and lazy people and mean people and selfish people and people who who didn't have sex before they got married and people who did.

He showed up for addicted people and married people and single people and divorced people and dating people.

He showed up for people who drink too much and people who don't drink at all.

He showed up for people who spend way too much time on social media and on TV and people who have a conviction and they don't watch any of it.

He showed up for all of us.

What are we talking about?

This is Jesus showed up for broken people.

And the best part of the gospel message is that it's not like clean yourself up and get your act together, and then you can be a part of the family.

You want to know the simple request, the simple beckoning message of the gospel message?

Come follow me.

Come follow me.

And whoa, it all that works itself out in time.

You just follow me.

You don't know how to love someone right now?

Let's go.

I'll teach you how to do that.

I'll teach you how to love because of the way that I first loved you.

You don't know how to sacrifice your needs and your desires and your wants for someone else?

Not a problem.

I'll teach you how to do that through showing you what sacrifice looks like via the cross.

You don't know how to forgive right now, you hold grudges, you're petty.

It's okay.

We've all been there.

I'll teach you exactly what forgiveness looks like in the way that I forgive you over and over and over every day.

Every time you say you're not going to do something, then you do it again, I'll forgive you.

I'll teach you what that's supposed to look like.

That, right there, that's how you become the one.

It's real simple.

You surrender your life to Jesus.

You go all in.

You don't just give your life to Jesus so that you don't have to go to hell.

You give your life to Jesus because you're ready to make him king and master and leader of every word, every decision, every dollar, every moment of your life.

He gets to be in charge of that.

Now that's what it looks like becoming the one.

And whether you're single or married or something in between.

For you to become the one looks like you becoming more and more like Jesus.

For some of you, that looks like you saying yes to him for the very first time.

For others, it looks like you starting fresh with him for the first time in a long time.

Either way, I want to give you that opportunity.

So without exiting out the back of the room, without getting all of your stuff together for 10 minutes before you pay attention, I want to invite you to stand up right where you're at.

If you need to make a fresh start with God today, whether that's for the first time or for the first time in a long time, whether you're single or dating or married, or whether you can't believe that you just sat through an entire sermon about singleness and you're like, what are we gonna talk about in the rest of this series?

If you know though, that's your step is you receiving the love of God and the forgiveness of God and finally getting a step into becoming the person that God's always wanted to turn you into, then I want to give you that chance today.

And we are gonna pray a prayer that we're gonna repeat out loud and all together, but I'm not having you repeat this because I think this is some magical phrase that if you say this just right, that you're gonna die and go to heaven one day.

I'm helping you through this prayer because I don't want you to always have to fumble your way through these moments.

We want to help you start somewhere.

This prayer is not supposed to be the climax of your relationship with God.

It's supposed to be the beginning of your relationship with God.

You're gonna need more prayers and you're gonna need more time and more conversation.

You get a lot of growing to do, you get a lot more yeses, but you gotta have that first yes.

And we just want to help you through that.

And the reason we're gonna pray all together is because if we're gonna be here with you throughout the rest of your time following Jesus, then we want to support you the day you decide to start following Jesus.

So if you would be willing, close your eyes all over the room.

If I'm talking to you and you know I've never given my life to Jesus, I've never placed my faith in Jesus as a son of God, I've never repented of my sins, I've never experienced any lasting transformation, and I'm ready to do that, then this prayer is for you.

But also, if you're in here and you're like, you know, I have a moment where that happened.

I believe that Jesus is the Son of God who died on the cross and rose from the grave, but I'll be honest, I I feel far from God right now, and a lot of that's due to my own bad decision making.

Maybe you've had a couple weeks, months, or even years where you've been far from God and you're ready to re-establish that relationship and recommit yourself to following Christ.

Then I want to give you a chance to do that.

In whatever camp you fall in, the Holy Spirit's gonna meet you right now.

He may already be there.

You may already feel his love and his mercy.

And he's gonna meet you, God's gonna forgive you of your sins, he's gonna receive you back into the family, and you you are gonna start fresh, and today you're gonna get to start moving forward again.

And so, for the sake of everybody in the room who is actually doing that today, as we pray this, we haven't done this in a while, but I want to invite you guys to pray this with me, but with just a little bit of passion, as if you actually believe this is the most important moment in someone's life.

So if you're willing, let's pray this together.

Jesus, today, I give you everything.

My whole life, every word, every dollar, every minute, every moment.

It all belongs to you.

I believe you're the Son of God who died on the cross for my sin and that you rose from the grave to forgive me and set me free.

Right this moment, I receive your forgiveness, your mercy, your love.

Today, I say yes to the rest of my life.

It's all yours.

I'm allowed.

In Jesus' name, amen.