For  as   long  as   I’ve been in  ministry,   one   of  the   major complaints about  anything to  do  with  love  and   sexuality comes from  single  people. To them, it feels  like Church  is a big match-making service  that  treats you like a poxy git if you are  not  married by the  time  you  are  of legal  drinking  age. They feel  like we label  them as  loners, stereotype them as dysfunctional, and  pity them like paupers.
They’re right.
But here is the  good  news:  it’s okay to be  single. It’s okay to be single for a long time. It’s okay to be single for a variety of reasons: There  is nothing you need from  another person in order to be  fully yourself;  the  sense of separation you experience as a single  person is the  same sensation we have  as  married people. Despite the  fact that  we are  two-made-one, we are never fully whole until the  resurrection.
Marrying  someone just to get  married is one  of the most foolish things  anyone can do, and  yet many Christians do precisely that.
Single living affords you  opportunities that  married people have  not  had  for a long  time  and  will likely not  have  again  until  retirement: travel,  disposable income, mobility, career opportunities, etc
Singles  have  a  unique  opportunity, like the   Apostle   Paul, to give themselves wholly into missionary work, pastoral ministry,  or into the  most dangerous avenues of human existence. Married people, and  particularly parents, cannot do this with the  same ease. In fact, sometimes the  very thing that  would  make  you  a great missionary would  actually  be the  thing  that  makes someone else  a disastrous parent and spiritual  leader in their  own home.
Likewise,  it  is  not  good   to  pressure single  people to  get married for a variety of reasons: Singles  may  be  pressured into  marriages they  may not otherwise have chosen for themselves. Singles may be  pressured into marriages that  occur prematurely. Singles may feel unable to speak honestly about their struggles pertaining to singleness because they  feel like you just want to fix them so they can get married. Singles may grow distant and aloof from you because they are tired  of being judged or (only slightly better) being  the  recipient of the  same boring  lecture focusing on the  same single issue  time and  again. Singles  may  grow  distant from   church altogether (and,  often,  from  God  as  well) because it feels  like Church  is just for the married people to get together and  talk about diapers and  mortgages.
There is nothing wrong with being single, and yet being single presents some peculiar challenges for an adult.  You have  to live chastely even  though no  one  expects you  to,  requires you  to,  or  believes you  when  you  do.
Yes, chastity  is hard and  celibacy is worse,  but, if you are  committed to following Jesus, that  is the  path set before you. Yes, to be celibate is to live in incompleteness, unwholeness and  inconsummation, in a loneliness that  God  himself  has  set  to redress through marriage, but getting married won’t automatically (or fully) fix that  anyway.
Moreover, even  once you begin  living chastely, no one  will believe you. Your Christian  friends will stop  asking for fear that you’ll divulge some secret and they’ll feel awkward because of your  sin, and  your  non-Christian friends will just think  you are  being  coy. Because no  one  is likely to believe you,  the  temptation will be  to  let  your  standards  loosen.
Don’t.
So what should you do as a single Christ-follower living in the midst  of all this  absurdity? Whatever you want.  Remember, chastity  is about fully enjoying  every  experience in its appropriate context. As such, you should feel no pressure, no stigma,  no alienation whatsoever, because by living chastely, you are  living exactly as God intended.
Single living affords you many pathways for spiritual formation that  are  unavailable to your  married counterparts: celibacy, holy orders, more time  and  energy to  focus  on  mission,  a secure understanding that  the fire inside of you is not for sex solely but from God to infuse your whole life with his passion.
So  don’t  feel  controlled or  condemned by your  church or your  circumstances. Live well, singly. Live enthusiastically, singly. Live socially, singly.
And most of all: enjoy everything fully in its appropriate context.