For Those Starved for Love and Commitment Stories
Photo image courtesy Pixabay
Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. – 1 Corinthians 13:7 (NLT)
Marriage is a popular sermon theme at churches. As the Fuller Youth Institute discovered through over a decade of listening to young adults, churches tend to focus on practices and programs that nurture Christian faith during seasons of stability—when life is consistent, resourced, and predictable. Hence the marriage stage.
Meanwhile nearly half of the population is now single. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 46.4% of U.S. adults aged 18 and over are unmarried. This includes people who are never married, divorced, or widowed. When marriage and other predictable life stages dominate church teaching, a lot of single people aren’t actually being formed, they’re just present.
So this is for you, the other half of the church, on the theme of marriage.
As a pastor, the research from the Fuller Youth Institute has been echoing in me mixed with the insights of Freya India, a Gen Z writer I follow, who reflects on the challenges her generation faces with love and commitment. She observes that many young people today have never experienced falling in love or staying in love the way earlier generations did. Exposure to online pornography, dating apps, and social media has shaped their understanding of connection before even a first kiss. Flirting has been replaced by DMs and emojis, and genuine relationship-building can feel transactional. Freya notes that this environment fosters chronic doubt—not only of ourselves, but of the world, love, and each other. Many young people avoid commitment because they feel doubtful, when in reality, their doubt exists precisely because they haven’t practiced staying, sacrificing, and loving through difficulty. She concludes that her generation is starved for love stories—or commitment stories—and longs to hear about the compromises, sacrifices, and realities that come with real love.
This is what I want to “talk” about when it comes to this subject of marriage. Because marriage is not a reward for finally getting life stable enough. It’s a formation story. And formation is everyone’s business. And that begins now.
Marriage is about becoming the kind of person who can love when love costs something. It’s about learning how to stay when leaving would be easier, how to tell the truth without burning the house down, how to repair instead of replace. Those skills are not unlocked by a wedding license. They are practiced long before it, or never at all.
And here’s the quiet truth the church doesn’t say out loud enough: Singles are often the most practiced people in the room when it comes to faith. You already know what it means to live without guarantees. You already know what it means to build a meaningful life without a script handed to you. You already know how to sit with longing and unanswered prayers. That is not a deficit. That is spiritual muscle. As a pastor, I don’t think you get recognized enough for how wonderful you really are.
Jesus knew this. He didn’t teach marriage as an idealized escape from loneliness or as the step of completion to be a Christ follower. He taught about faithfulness, reconciliation, humility, and self-giving love to crowds full of people who were single, married, widowed, divorced, faithful, and failing. His parables weren’t instructions for a perfect life stage. They were invitations into a different way of being human together.
And the Church is meant to be the place where we practice that way of being human—before vows, after vows, and without them. Where singles don’t just wait, but lead. Where married people don’t just model success but tell the truth. Where love stories aren’t reduced to how it started, but honored for how it’s sustained, repaired, and sometimes bravely ended. May we all hear more of these stories, please!
Questions for Reflection:
1. Find a church. Be a part of a church. Where else will you find such stories?
2. Don’t you also want to hear such stories?
