4 Reasons God Is Allowing You to Feel Lonely in Singleness

Here are 4 possible reasons God is allowing you to feel lonely in singleness.

1. God Could Be Allowing You to Feel Lonely Now So You Will Be More Emotionally Stable in Marriage One Day

One of the biggest misconceptions in the church is that married people are all happy and single people are all sad. Nothing could be further from the truth.

True and lasting happiness is not ultimately dependent on your relationship status. Rather, true happiness is found when your heart become stable in the Lord first and foremost. For as Psalm 84:10 states, “For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.”

If you do not reject this lie in singleness that only marriage will make you happy, then this lie will actually infect the happiness you could have in your future marriage. Don’t get me wrong, marriage is a huge blessing that can make you feel connected to your spouse. But when you are not emotionally stable individually first, your spouse will not be able to make you feel loved and stable either.

2. God Could Be Allowing You to Feel Lonely to Motivate You to Meet Someone

One way God directs us down the paths he wants us on is by giving us strong and powerful negative feelings so we will take the necessary and hard steps needed to stop feeling a certain way.

This principle can be seen when we sin and then feel a strong conviction and healthy guilt. This negative feeling causes us to turn the other direction from our sins and towards the Lord. As Psalm 32:3-5 explains:

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”

While I am certainly not saying that being lonely in singleness is a sin, I am saying that God often gives us strong emotional feelings to direct us towards his will for us. One sign that you are called to a life of singleness is when you are truly content and happy to be unmarried. On the flipside, one sign that God may be calling you to be married is if you have a strong desire to be married. You can see this principle in 1 Corinthians 7.

In short, if you are lonely and long to be married, God could be giving you these feelings to motivate you to be more proactive in your search for the one God has for you.

3. God Could Be Allowing You to Feel Lonely to Deepen Other Important Relationships in Your Life

In 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12, we are given the analogy that the church is like a human body. The body’s many parts come together to form a whole. This means that as Christians we are built to live within a community of other believers.

In the Bible you will never find a verse that says a Christian can remove themselves from the church and find the community they were designed for in marriage alone. Marriage is important for those God calls to it. If your relationship with your spouse is off, it will negatively affect you in serious ways. But we must remember that even if you get married, God has designed you to need other important relationships in your life as well – you need Christian friends of the same gender, older mentors, pastors, family, and people who are like family.

4. God Allows Us to Be Discontent in Life So We Will Find Our Ultimate Contentment in Him

Unlike what many churches say to singles, the Bible does not say it is wrong to be discontent with singleness. To wish you were married and to feel lonely in singleness is not a sin. It’s not wrong to have desires for things besides God himself.

What the Bible does say, however, is that God must always be far and above our greatest desire. When we crave something more than we crave God, that’s when we enter into idolatry. God does not want us to deny our feelings and longings, but he does want us to find our ultimate satisfaction in him even when we have unmet desires in life. For as Paul said in Philippians 4:12-13,

I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”