This is for all my single sisters out there...

This is a message that God put on my heart for my single lady friends in the church recently...You might look at me and think, "What do you know about my life? You have been dating your husband since you were 22!" That's true...I am not sitting here pretending that I know what you are going through...but God does. He knows you and He deeply cares for you.

One thing I would love my single sisters to know is that they are loved, treasured, and beautiful. You are NOT, other than, or less than just because you aren't married. There is an insidious lie that has crept into some of your minds that God has forgotten you or that you aren't as valuable to Him, otherwise you would be married already. But I want to expose that lie. Do you know that my value and worth existed even before I was born? Even before I was married? Even before I became a mother? I am precious to the Father. I was precious to Him in my mother's womb, when I was a child, when I was a teen, when I was in my 20's, and even now, in my late 30's.

Psalm 139: 14-16 says, 

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

I don't have the answers of why you aren't married yet, even though many of you have been longing for marriage for years...But I do know that God sees you.

He loves you.

He values you.

You are not forgotten.

I feel like there are women out there who fear to step out into all that God has called you to because you are scared to show your true strength, because you fear you will never get married because of it. I used to feel this way. When I was single, I was a leader in my church. I used to think that if I could be different, less intense, less strong in my leadership, less whatever, that I would have had more marriage prospects.

But when I finally stopped rejecting myself for these gifts and strengths that the Lord has given me, when I stopped feeling the need to apologize for them, when I stopped trying to shove them away, that is when the Lord gave me a new freedom. I am not talking about a man-made strength, I am talking about the strengths and gifts that God has placed inside of you. The strengths and gifts that HE wants to cultivate and refine so that you can truly be His salt and light to this world.

When my husband came along, he saw the free me. He was not intimidated by me. The strengths he saw in me fascinated him. On our first date, when my husband was asking me to be in an intentional dating relationship with him, one of the things he said to me was, "You have a great call of God on your life, it could be greater than mine, and I want to see you fulfill it." (Anyone who knows my husband knows that he is gifted in many things, an amazing, and humble man of God. He daily walks out what the Father calls him to do). You cannot know how healing those words were to me. After wasting years despising myself, my husband called me forth to be something greater, to embrace the woman who God called me to be. He still does this for me, 15+ years later.

If you are single and are meant to be married, whoever your husband is, he will love you because of your strength. As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17) I want to encourage anyone struggling with fear in this area to lay it down and renounce it today. Step out into faith and stop hiding the gifts that the Father has given you.I cannot promise that if you do this, you will get married. But I do believe that there is a promise that if you renounce the fear, you will find freedom and that unnecessary burden that has been weighing you down can be lifted off of you.