Podcast 42: Another Year Single? God Hasn't Forgotten You.

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Transcript

Michelle Joiner (00:01.622)
Hey, hey, sis. It is the close of 2024 at the time of this podcast recording. Another year has gone by and I just wanted to come on today and offer you some encouragement. If you're still single, I want to encourage you that God has not forgotten you. And what I want to share with you today is going to help you be okay with God's timeline for your love life.

have four main themes that I want you to carry into the new year, believing with all your heart so that you can be encouraged on this journey on your way to the altar. Because yes, as you are on your way to the altar and all you need to do is believe that God has not forgotten you and be okay with his timeline and help you get there. The first theme that I want you to remember

is how much God cares for you. There's so many beautiful passages that talk about his love enduring forever, how his love is unfailing. I love the first Peter passage that says that we are to cast all of our anxiety on him because he cares for us. Sometimes we forget that. Sometimes we forget that we think that God is against us, that God is angry at us.

And sis, you are not single because God is angry at you. There is no bonus. There is no reward. There is no special blessing that you are missing. He cares for you. And the fact that you're still single is a part of his beautiful plan, a part of his loving care for you. I'm gonna talk about that a little bit more. But a part of remembering that

He cares for us is knowing that he can truly sympathize with us. There's a beautiful verse in Hebrews, Hebrews 4.15 that says, do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness. Let me put that in the positive. We have a high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses. The verse goes on to say that he was tempted in every way just as we were.

Michelle Joiner (02:25.034)
So you have to remember that the Lord Jesus Christ is fully capable of understanding the pain that you feel that your desire to be married hasn't come true yet. The Lord is able to understand that longing, understand the weakness of your heart and the sadness in your heart. He's fully able to sympathize with that. So when he says to cast your cares on him, it's because he truly understands the pain.

So rather than thinking that the Lord is angry with you or that he's withholding something from you, I want you to think of him holding you in his hand with loving kindness, with loving affection and unfailing love. That's how much he loves and cares for you. Let me talk about the idea that God's plan is still so perfect.

God's plan is still even when it's hard God's plan is the best plan for us

It's a plan that you can't anticipate. It's a plan that you might not have chosen for yourself. But as I said before, God's plan is from his loving kindness. God's plan is truly the best plan for us. And one day we will understand that. For me, I really struggled with that because I was single for such a long time and well into my 30s.

And I truly thought that maybe God had just forgotten me. But when I actually met my husband and I saw all that he was and all that he was so perfect for me. And when I saw that, basically I had to go through things and he told me he had to go through things to become the person that was perfect for me. To become.

Michelle Joiner (04:30.076)
the husband that he was able to be because of all that he had grown and because all that I had grown. I changed so much in the years before I met my husband. If I had met him, let's say in my 20s, we probably wouldn't even be together. And so what we really saw was that God's plan was truly perfect and it was beyond our comprehension and beyond what we could anticipate. But when we looked back on it, we were like, wow.

It had to be this way for you and me to be together. It had to be this way. And the beautiful thing about God's plan is that once you recognize this, realize nothing has gone wrong. Nothing has gone wrong. So for instance, a lot of times we think something's gone wrong. I've done something wrong. You know, the universe, God, you know, something I did something wrong, God's punished me. He's not.

There's a beautiful passage that I love in the Psalms, Psalm 139, 16. It says, all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. God's plan, nothing has gone wrong. Like God literally knows who your future husband is. He knows when you're going to meet him. He knows how you're going to meet him. He knows exactly what he looks like and how exactly perfect he is for you.

You may be coming to the close of 2024 thinking, I'm still single. This is just a nightmare. A mistake has happened. No, no mistake has happened. This is a part of God's plan.

The third concept and theme that I want you to remember, and I am sending this to you with all the love in the world and all of the insight as a woman who has crossed the line that you want to cross. I promise you, sis, the Lord will redeem the years the locusts have stolen. I promise you. When you meet your future husband, when you, if you want to,

Michelle Joiner (06:42.894)
Hold your children in your arms or your adopted children or your stepchildren. They will be your children. And the love and the romance and the affection and the family that you've always wanted is yours. You will absolutely believe that God has redeemed the years the locusts are stolen. What I'm trying to say is it will be so worth it, sis. It will be so worth it.

For me, I met Caleb when I turned 35, like a month before I turned 35. And then we got married about a month before I turned 37. So we were married when I was 37 and we didn't wanna try having kids right away, so we waited one year. And in the end, I actually didn't have my children until I was 40 and 42.

Well, I would say 39 like 39 and 11 months So I almost 40 and then in the middle of my 42nd year So in my 40s, I had my children in my 40s And when I say that the Lord redeemed the years that the locust has stolen. I mean it says Looking at my beautiful children holding them in my arms Having given birth to them in my 40s. I know that there's no way that I would have had these children

If I had started in my 20s, there's no way that like my children's names are Julius, Augustus and November. I wouldn't have them. I wouldn't have a Julius and an Augustus and a November if I hadn't waited until my 40s to have children. And when I say that the Lord redeems the years that the locust has stolen, that's what I mean. When I look at my husband, I'm actually looking at a picture of him right now holding our newborn November.

When I look at him and I say, listen, God ordained this. God made this come about and all the years of the loneliness and the sadness and the frustration are truly redeemed in the family that I have right now. And he's gonna do the same thing for you. He's gonna do the same thing for you, sis. One day you're gonna look back and you're gonna be like, wow, I'm so glad I waited.

Michelle Joiner (09:08.117)
I'm so glad I didn't give up. I'm so glad that God's plan was the way it was because I wouldn't trade this for the world. That's what I mean about God redeeming the years the locusts have stolen. And then the last concept to that or the theme that I want you to take into the new year and truly allow your heart to be okay with the fact that you're still single, even though it's the close of another year. I want you to do this.

I want you to know that the Lord will help you find a husband. The Lord will help you find a husband. You need to be committed to taking action to find a husband and the Lord will help you. The Lord will empower you. The Lord will give you insight. The Lord will give you discernment to know who to choose, to know who to invest in, to know, to know.

When I say who to invest in, mean to know which guys to pursue, know which guys to be interested in. He will help you with all of that. He will help you be captivating and alluring and magnetic. He will work in you so that the spirit, the fruits of the spirit are rich in you so that you're as attractive as you can be. The Lord will help you find your person. And what you need to do is to be committed to that process.

There are opportunities. There are opportunities and things that God is putting in front of you that you just need to walk down. You just need to walk down the path and take responsibility and take ownership. I like to think of this part of your life. I remember one time my dad said to me, anything worth having is worth sacrificing for. And I want you to think about all of the things in your life that you sacrifice for.

you know, a lot of the women that followed me have amazing careers and they had to sacrifice for them. They had to work hard for them. They had to take advantage of mentorship and help and schooling and practicing and getting better and honing their craft. And a lot of that didn't come naturally. A lot of that took hard work. And I want you to think, have I been giving that kind of attention?

Michelle Joiner (11:33.554)
to this part of my life, the part of my life where I get married and have kids or I just get married and live with my husband and live out our dreams together, have I been putting the kind of effort into this part of my life, into this dream as I have in other areas of my life? Because I promise you sis, putting effort and attention into this part of your life is important. It's not gonna come to you on a silver platter.

It's important to realize that this part of your life takes effort too. It's worth the work. It's worth the effort. It's worth the attention. And the more attention you give to it, the more you allow God to help you in this area, the faster you will get married. I want you to think about getting a job and how you graduate from college and no one guarantees you that you'll get a job.

but you, you guarantee yourself that you will not quit until you got a job because getting a job is a non-negotiable. Getting a job is a non-negotiable. You must get a job. So you guarantee yourself you will get a job. I want you to have that same tenacity here. I must get a husband, so I guarantee myself I will get a husband. I thought that way when I was single.

I didn't want to be single. I knew there is no way I want to go through my life without being married. And so I guaranteed myself I would get married. And the same way you can guarantee yourself you'll get a job because it's a non-negotiable that you get a job, the same way you can guarantee yourself here that you will get a husband. I want to tell you a statistic that I heard from the US Census Bureau. Actually, I found this document.

from the US Census Bureau that 91 % of American adults get married. 91 % of American adults get married at least once in their life. And if their marriage ends from divorce or death, 75 % will remarry. Those are huge odds, sis. The odds are in your favor. You're gonna get married. The question is when. The question is how long will you have to wait? The question is

Michelle Joiner (13:54.885)
How much pain do you have to be in waiting? I want you to get serious about committing to yourself and giving attention to this part of your life. So many people just kind of go through life hoping that this will just come and arrive and it just doesn't. I want you to think about like the pride and prejudice era or the area where they had balls and that kind of time period centuries ago.

how much work the mothers and the fathers and the daughters put into getting their daughters married, put into getting their sons married. And the reason why is because it was a non-negotiable, the same way it is for us having a job. That's the way marriage used to be, that you had to get married for independence to stay out of poverty. It was a non-negotiable. was an essential tenant of society.

that you put work and effort into getting married. And I encourage you to do the same. Just because we live in 2024 and you don't need marriage for independence and material things doesn't mean that it's not important. I want you to take the desires of your heart and allow the Lord to work so that you can get them. So what I want you to remember is like all the concepts that I taught you today.

that God cares for you and sympathizes with your weaknesses, that he has a plan that you can't anticipate, a plan from before you were born and nothing has gone wrong. I want you to remember that he will redeem the years that the locusts have stolen and that lastly, he will help you if you are committed to getting this desire of your heart. He will help you achieve this desire of your heart. And there's no other way.

There's no other way. These truths that I'm sharing with you are truths that I can share because I'm a Christian, because I love the Lord, because I love the Bible, and because I've been coaching for years. And I know all these things to be true. The Lord has proven them in my life, and he's proven them in the women that I coach. The Lord is faithful. And even though you're still single at the close of this year, he is still faithful.

Michelle Joiner (16:17.303)
Nothing has gone wrong. This is according to a sovereign plan and thank him. Thank him for this. He does it because he loves you. Now next week, I'm going to be talking about what I would do if I was single in 2025. What I would do if I was single, if I woke up single in 2025 and I was just like you and I was wanting a husband, what would I do?

What steps would I take? What websites would I go on? What dating apps would I use? Where would I go? What would I do if I were single in 2025? Because we're gonna make 2025 the year you get married, sis, or the year that you get engaged, find your forever person, right? 2025 is your year. So we thank God for his timeline. We thank God for everything that he has given us in 2024. And then we're gonna go get married in 2025, yeah?

So I want you to come back next week. This episode's gonna be amazing. And for now, hold onto your horses because I have something totally amazing for you. I am very excited. Yes, one of the things, I'll give you a little hint. One of the things I would do if I woke up single in 2025 is get myself a Christian dating coach. Just like I did when I was single in 2016, I got myself a dating coach. Yes, I would get myself a dating coach.

And I'm really excited because we are starting a new sisterhood cohort in the new year. There's bonus calls, ask a guy calls, there's style bonus calls. All of that is starting in January. So what do I want you to do? I want you to go to my website, thechristiandatingcoach.com and book a call. Book a call to talk to me.

I do console calls, they're free. There's not tons of them. So if you are wanting to get on a call and talk to me about your love life and get my expert brain on your love life, book a call now because there are not a ton of them. And we will talk about your love life. We will talk about the sisterhood. The sisterhood is my small group coaching program.

Michelle Joiner (18:32.286)
where I teach people how to have more confidence, how to find men, how to find compatible men. I literally give you a list of places to go in your zip code of where you can find men that are likely to be men who love the Lord, men who love the things you love. I teach you how to flirt. I teach you how to build chemistry. I teach you how to communicate and talk to men so that they're inspired to commit to you.

So if you're just getting friend zoned all the time or having guys just like drag on for months and not actually, you know, pull the but pull the whistle and take you on a date. If all of that is what's going on, then you just need to know how to talk to men to inspire them to commit to you, to inspire them to take you off the market. And the way you do that is by creating chemistry and learning how to flirt. I teach you how to do that in a way that is in alignment with God's standards.

I am the Christian dating coach and I will teach you how to be sexy and sanctified. If all of that sounds amazing to you, again, go to my website, thechristiandatingcoach.com, sign up for a console call, and let's get you married, sis.