God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
Children are born into God’s family and receive their inheritance not by marriage and procreation but by faith and regeneration. Which means that single people in Christ have zero disadvantage in bearing children for God and may, in some ways, have great advantage. The apostle Paul was single in Christ, and he said of his converts, “Though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your Father in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (1 Cor. 4:15). Paul was a great father and never married. And does he not speak beautifully for single women in Christ in 1 Thessalonians 2:7 when he writes, “We were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children?” So it will be said of many single women in Christ, “She was a great mother and never married.”
[The effectual call of God] is issued by the Father and made effective by the work of the Holy Spirit as He illuminates and enables the individual to understand and respond positively to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus as contained in the Word of God.
