believe that Jesus Christ could actually satisfy my heart at the deepest level and actually be my all in all.  The truth was that I didn’t really think that I could be happy, fulfilled and content without having a guy to turn to for comfort.  And I couldn’t imagine feeling confident and secure without having a boyfriend at my side to stroke my ego.

Like most girls my age, I was merely enduring these years as a single young woman.  I spent most of my energy pining for the day when I would finally meet “the one”, walk down the aisle in a white dress, and live happily ever after in a cute little house with a flower garden and white picket fence.  When I finally get married, that’s when I will truly be happy and fulfilled, I told myself subconsciously.  I was convinced that when I finally shed the terrible curse of singleness, my dreams would come true and my life would finally have real meaning and purpose.

I was so repulsed by the thought of spending life alone, of never having my dreams of earthly romance come true, that I was willing to settle for a less-than-Christ-like guy in order to avoid being single.

This is the plight of nearly every single young woman I’ve encountered over the last fourteen years.  We want to be fully set-apart for Christ.  We want Him to be our all in all.  We want to find our fulfillment and satisfaction in Him, even if an earthly romance never comes our way.

But all too often, these desires are nothing more than good Christian sentiments that quickly fall by the wayside as soon as a semi-decent guy comes along.  The moment we see an opportunity to shed the stigma of singleness, we cave. Instead of allowing Jesus Christ to be our first love, we look to earthly guys to meet needs in our heart that only Jesus Christ can fulfill.  And we end up disappointed and dissatisfied…time and time again.

gave her life for the exploited children of India.  Many of the amazing Christian women of history never got married.  When they laid everything down for the Gospel of Christ, they laid everything down – they left home, family, comforts, education, and the hope of getting married. 

And even those who did get married were willing to lay down their husbands and children daily for the sake of the Gospel of Christ.  Viba Perpetua – an early Roman martyr – said goodbye to her husband, family, and infant son in order to give her life for the sake of the Lord who died to save her.  Sabina Wurmbrandt  - the wife of a Romanian pastor during the Communist invasion  - challenged her husband to stand up and defend the name of Jesus, even though it meant ten years of imprisonment, torture, poverty and separation from the man she loved.  Elizabeth Elliot  - who had waited patiently for years to finally be married to her husband Jim – allowed him to give his life as a martyr to the Auca Indians for the cause of Christ, and chose to forgive them and pour out her life for them, even after his death.

This is what Christ meant when he said that we must forsake father, mother, family and houses in order to be His disciple.  Even the most precious gifts He gives us must always be relinquished back to Him with a willing and eager heart.  Our fulfillment cannot be found in marriage, children, or fairy tale dreams come true.  Until He is our all in all, we aren’t truly living the Gospel life. 

Contrary to what most of us believe, our discontentment with singleness can’t be solved by finding a guy and getting a ring on our finger.  Sure, there may be a short-term high that comes from having someone by our side.  But if Jesus Christ is not our all in all, the romance will lose its luster, the temporary fulfillment will fade, and the discontentment will return with even greater force.

Marriage is not the answer to the longings of our feminine heart - Jesus Christ is.

Elizabeth Elliot wrote, “None of us likes pain.  All of us wish at times we did not need to ‘go through all this stuff.’  Let us settle it once and for all:  we cannot know Christ and the power of His resurrection without the fellowship of His suffering.” 

I knew that ending my relationship with Kyle was only the beginning.  My King was calling me to walk a path of radical obedience and sacrifice for Him – at least one that seemed radical compared to most of the other Christians I knew.  This sacred call required me to die daily to my own wants, ambitions, whims and desires.  No longer could I be led by merely my feelings and emotions.  Rather, I must be led by the longing to glorify my Lord, no matter what the cost.

That night, I not only laid down my relationship with Kyle, but my obsession with finding a guy and getting married.  It’s not that the desire to get married magically disappeared the moment I made that commitment.  But by the grace of God, I was no longer discontent with being single, pining for the day when I would finally meet the right guy and live happily ever after with him.  Rather, I began to build my life around my first and most important love story – a daily romance with Jesus Christ.

       Giving up the temporary pleasures of the dating scene and the relentless pursuit of finding the right guy didn’t make my life colorless and miserable.  In fact, I had never felt so vibrant, joyful or alive.  Jesus Christ really became my all in all – and I found that He was more than enough to satisfy the longings and desires of my heart.

    Yes, I still desired to get married and raise a family someday.  But those desires no longer controlled or consumed me like they had before.  I was no longer enslaved to my fairy tale dreams and ideals.  I was able to entrust the desires of my heart

          is name was Kyle. 

He was a perfectly nice guy.  Attractive, clean-cut, polite, moral.  An upstanding “Christian” guy who went to church and believed in saving sex until marriage.  The kind of guy my youth pastors and parents approved of. 

Kyle liked me.  I wasn’t really enamored with him.  But I was lonely.  I hadn’t had boyfriend in about a year, and was beginning to feel insecure and impatient.  I loathed being single.  I hated the stigma of not having someone in my life.  It made me feel ugly and second-rate.  Not having a guy in my life was like being the kid on the playground that didn’t get picked for the dodge ball team – alone, rejected, and overlooked.

So after three rather shallow conversations, Kyle became my boyfriend. We started talking on the phone every night, going out to dinner a few times a week, meeting for coffee on weekends, holding hands, sweetly kissing each other goodnight.  It was all very innocent.  We even talked about God.  We went to church and Bible studies together and discussed what we were learning. 

On the outside, it looked like a great Christian relationship – healthy, pure, and Christ-centered.  But in reality, the only reason Kyle was in my life was because of my loneliness and insecurity. 

I knew that a romance with Kyle wasn’t God’s highest for me.  Kyle didn’t lead me closer to Jesus Christ.  Sure, he talked about God and did all the right “Christian” activities.  He didn’t smoke, cuss, drink, or have pre-marital sex.  But selfishness was at the core of Kyle’s existence.  He didn’t live for God’s glory – he lived for his own agenda.  Christianity was just an afterthought to him – not the primary purpose of his existence.  He wasn’t a bond-slave of Jesus Christ.  He was simply a church-goer, enslaved to his own whims and desires.  Kyle didn’t wake up each morning thinking, “how can I love, serve, and honor Jesus Christ today?”  Rather, his attitude was, “how can I serve my own selfish agenda today, and still somehow stay within proper Christian boundaries?” 

Truth be told, I didn’t want to end up with a guy like Kyle.  I longed for a valiant and noble hero – a gallant knight who would sweep me off my feet and cherish me as his princess forever.  I wanted a truly Christ-like man; a man who was intensely passionate for God; a man who was willing even to spill his own blood to bring glory to the name of Jesus.  I had read about great men – men like Jim Elliot, Hudson Taylor, and John Wesley.  Their version of masculinity caused my feminine heart to stand and applaud.  I desired to be with a man who would go to all lengths for His Lord; a man who’s life would inspire others to take up their cross daily for the sake of the Gospel.

The problem was, it didn’t seem that men like this existed anymore.  Moral-but-mediocre guys like Kyle seemed to be the cream of the crop.  His version of manhood looked pretty good next to the scores of perverted, debased, and arrogant males that I met on a daily basis.  After years of encountering the warped masculinity of my generation, I had come to believe that finding a semi-decent guy like Kyle was probably the best that I could hope for.  True, he wasn’t the heroic Christ-like gentleman I’d always dreamed of.  But at least he was nice, went to church, and didn’t pressure me to have sex with him.

So I settled. 

The longer Kyle was in my life, the more I began to feel a pressure upon my soul.  It was as if God was whispering, “This relationship isn’t My best for your life, Leslie.  Are you willing to let Me become your all in all, instead of always trying to cure your loneliness with a guy?”

The question terrified me.

I had grown up in church singing songs about Jesus being my all in all – how He was everything I needed, the one who fulfilled the cry of my heart everyday.  But if I were to be honest, I had to admit that it was all just good-sounding Christian jargon to say those things.  I didn’t really

into the hands of my faithful King and, for the first time in my life, to leave them there instead of immediately taking them back out of impatience.

    It wasn’t easy.  There were many lonely nights, wondering if I had made the right choice, wondering if a life of such extreme consecration to Christ was really necessary.  But in those moments I would call out to the One who faced the most intense loneliness of all time.  He would gently remind me of the struggle He faced in the Garden of Gethsemane.  He, too, had asked His Father if there was any other way – but there was not.  And so willingly, joyfully, He had endured the greatest test of all time . . .  all because of His love for me.   

That season of surrender was the foundation of everything I have now – from my love story with Eric to my daily intimate walk with Jesus Christ to my message for today’s young women.  When I laid everything down at the feet of my King, that’s when I discovered the beauty and romance of the Christ-life.  The moment I died to self’s agenda was the moment I truly began to live for the first time.

Obedience, when it flows out of genuine love for Jesus Christ, is never wasted, and never regretted.  As Corrie ten Boom said:

Self is a tight lock.  I see many decent sinners who are in spiritual prison because their self is on the throne of their hearts, and Jesus is on the cross.  What liberation comes when Jesus cleanses their hearts with His blood and comes to the throne, and self goes on the cross! *