Emphasis Preaching Journal

If you avoid marriage, you avoid encumbrances, and you can devote yourself to the Lord's work without incurring problems, difficulties and anxieties, as married people may incur. Paul writes this looking at the end of the age, and the return of Christ, or so he thought. How may people best live out the days until that time came? With a sense of holiness. Paul suggests simplicity, not taking on those relationships which may be a burden to one's response to God. In American culture, it has been assumed that the best state in which people may live is in the midst of a marriage and family. The nuclear family defines for many the highest type of Christian lifestyle, to the extent that those who deviate from that in any way may be thought odd. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church, had spent many years as a preacher and teacher in his new movement before he seriously considered marriage. He was 47 years of age, and his intended was the widow of a London merchant. He married in the first place because it seemed to him that this was an important step at that stage of life. But Molly, his wife, proved uncompromising in her expectations of her husband, and his itinerant preaching schedule kept him away from home for weeks at a time. And she was not sufficiently dedicated to the cause herself to travel with him. The marriage ended after 10 years, Wesley bitterly regretting the "experiment in domestic tranquility." As it was for Paul and apparently for John Wesley, there may still be those who would best stay unmarried, in order to do their work for Christ. -- Johnson-Hoy