The Best Thing Out There on Singleness

Lydia Brownback shares what she thinks is the "absolute best resource on the topic of Christian singleness, bar none. "

[I'm delighted to introduce you to Lydia Brownback, an author, editor and friend of CBMW.  She has written Fine China Is for Single Women Too and Legacy of Faith: From Women of the Bible to Women of Today, and we're looking forward to the forthcoming On-the-Go Devotional series.  Miss Brownback presently serves as associate editor at Crossway Books in Wheaton, Illinois.  Her complementarian passion to help single men and women live for the glory of God is evident in the following post that we have reproduced from her blog The Purple Cellar. —David Kotter]

Last week I posted ten among the top, a list of authors whose books are well worth collecting. In keeping, this week I want to name what I think is the absolute best resource on the topic of Christian singleness, bar none. It is John Piper's foreword to Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Few people know about it because it's buried within the larger volume. I hope that Piper's material will soon become a stand-alone publication. In the mean time, you will have to get hold of it by purchasing RBMW; but that's okay—it's an excellent investment. Here is the beginning of John Piper's foreword, which is called "For Single Men and Women (and the Rest of Us)":

We know you are there—almost sixty million of you in America. And we are listening. One of the most important things we have learned is that we do not know what it is like to be single in America today—at least not the way you know it. Margaret Clarkson made this very plain to us: "Because married people were all single once, they tend to think that they know all there is to know about singleness. I suggest that this is not so. . . . Singleness has a cumulative effect on the human spirit which is entirely different at 50 than at 30!" What I would like to do in this foreword is try to let single people do as much of the talking as possible—people like Jesus and the Apostle Paul and some contemporary men and women who serve in the single life.

Piper goes on and highlights eight important theses on singleness that we can find from tuning into Jesus and his contemporary single followers, eight things that offer more encouragement about being single, what to do with unwanted singleness, and how to find blessing in it than anything I have ever read. Whether you are single and love it or single and hate it—you will find this so helpful.