Keys For Living Single Order Printed Copy

Author: Myles Munroe
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About the Book

"Keys for Living Single" by Myles Munroe provides practical advice and guidance for individuals who are navigating the challenges of being single. Munroe explores the purpose of singleness, how to find contentment and fulfillment during this season of life, and how to prepare for a future relationship. The book offers insights on personal development, building healthy relationships, and embracing independence. Overall, it encourages readers to embrace their singleness and make the most of this time to grow and thrive.

John Owen

John Owen’s life was incredibly difficult. Born in 1616 and dying in 1683, Owen lived through the deaths of his first wife and all of his children, several of whom died in very early childhood. He supported his last surviving daughter when her marriage broke down. He contributed to a political revolution, watched it fail, saw the monarchy restored and wreak a terrible revenge on republicans, and lived in and around London during the persecution that followed. For twenty years he would have seen the decapitated heads of his friends on display around the city. He died fearing that the dissenting churches had largely abandoned the doctrine of the Trinity and justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone; and, with Charles II about to be replaced by his openly Catholic brother James, believing that the English Reformation was almost over. Owen was one of the most published writers in the seventeenth century. He published around 8 million words. These writings included books on theology and spirituality, politics and economics, and ranged in length from the largest commentary ever published on the epistle to the Hebrews to a short Latin poem that has never been reprinted. For not all of Owen’s works have been kept in print. The most widely circulating nineteenth-century edition, most of which is published by the Banner of Truth, did not include Owen’s sermon manuscripts that are kept in various English libraries, nor the book for children that Owen published in 1652. Owen was one of England’s earliest children’s authors. The catechisms that Owen published (1645) outlined what he expected children in his congregation to know. These catechisms were published before the Westminster Assembly published its better-known examples. But Owen’s catechisms are in many ways simpler. The Primer (1652), which Owen prepared after the death of several of his children during the years of poor harvests and disease at the end of the 1640s, showed what Owen expected of an ideal Christian home. Its routine would be built around Bible reading and prayer, he believed, and his little book included sample prayers that children could learn to pray in mornings, evenings, and at meals. Owen argued that those who led church services should take account of the needs of children. Services that were too long, he believed, did no one any good. Adult believers should not need written prayers, he believed, and these should be banned from public worship. But children were different and needed all the help they could get. Owen enjoyed many warm friendships. His social network included many of the most famous writers in seventeenth-century England. Among his friends and rivals were John Milton, Andrew Marvell, John Bunyan, and Lucy Hutchinson. Owen fell out with Milton and became the subject of one of his sonnets. Owen helped Marvell publish one of his most controversial political pamphlets. He encouraged his publisher, Nathanial Ponder, to publish Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. And he appears to have supported Lucy Hutchinson during her move into London, when she attended and took notes upon his preaching and translated large parts of his Theologoumena Pantodapa (1661)—a translation of which has been published with the title Biblical Theology. Owen’s letters reveal his kindness and care as a pastor, especially to mothers grieving their children’s death. Owen was deeply political. He preached to Members of Parliament on the day after the execution of Charles I, and pinned his hopes for the reformation of church and society on their efforts to transform England into a protestant republic. During the 1650s, under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, Owen served on important committees that sought to establish a religious foundation for the new regime. But he grew dismayed by the ways in which the Cromwell family, and the administration they led, seemed to turn away from godly values. In 1658, he worked with leading army officers to create a crisis that, he likely hoped, would call the regime back to its earlier ideals. It failed, and instead created the crisis that was resolved by the restoration of the monarchy, the return of Charles II, and the persecution of dissenters that followed. During the Restoration, Owen kept his head down, and, as persecution slackened in the later 1660s, published pamphlets that argued that dissenters were the economic lifeblood of the English nation. But he was chastened by his attempts at political intervention and came increasingly to realize that his focus should be on things eternal. Owen often changed his mind. As his developing attitudes to political intervention suggest, Owen committed himself to some beliefs and behaviors that he came to regret. In his early years, he changed his churchmanship from Presbyterianism to Congregationalism. He innovated as a Congregationalist, installing as a co-elder and preacher a man who would not be ordained for several years. He argued for the weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper, though it is not clear that he ever persuaded any of his congregations to practice it. He thought carefully about the end times and came to believe that, in the latter days, a large number of Jewish people would be converted to Christianity and would return to live in the Promised Land. He dismissed a great deal of discussion about the millennium, but became convinced that the binding of Satan had yet to be achieved. Owen changed his mind because he kept on studying the Bible. Owen was biblical, through and through, and depended just as much on the Holy Spirit. He certainly believed in a learned ministry–after all, he had taught theology at Oxford and done his best to promote godliness within the student body. But he also trusted the Holy Spirit to guide ordinary Christians in small group Bible studies that did not need to be policed by a formally trained expert. Aside from his own Bible study, which advanced on the serious scholarship represented by the three thousand titles that were included in the catalog of his library published soon after his death, Owen encouraged church members to meet together to study Scripture in private. Owen trusted the Bible and the work of the Spirit after writing about both. Owen was not a philosophically-driven, rationalist theologian. His writing abounds in biblical citations. It is molded and contoured by biblical revelation. But he warned that Christians could approach their study of the Bible with absolutely no spiritual advantage to themselves. Christians who approached the study of the Bible without absolute dependence upon the Spirit who inspired and preserved it would gain no more benefit than Jewish readers did from their Scriptures, he argued. Christians should never choose between entire dependence upon the Bible and the Spirit. Owen believed that the goal of the Christian life was knowing God. Before Owen, no one had ever shown clearly how Christians relate to each person of the Trinity. Owen described the goal of the gospel as revealing the love of the Father, who sent the Son as a redeemer of his people, who would be indwelt, provided with gifts, and united together by the Spirit. Owen’s Communion with God is among his most celebrated achievements—and no wonder. It is the exhalation of his devotion to Father, Son, and Spirit, and the discovery of the limitless love of God. Owen is much easier to read than many people imagine. There is a mystique to Owen—a widespread feeling that his books are too difficult and best left to expert theologians. But Owen’s greatest books were written as sermons for an audience of teenagers. Publishers have begun to modernize Owen’s language in new editions of his works. Now more than ever, it’s time to pick up Owen and find his encouragement for the Christian life.

How to Start a Conversation About Jesus

A friend of mine likes to say, “The best gospel presentation is the one given.” That’s true. And convicting. Many good books, sermons, and seminars can help us prepare to share our faith. But none of these resources can do for us what we often find the hardest thing to do: just start the conversation. We often feel helpless when it comes to our friends and their eternities. We justify the self-centeredness that ignores our neighbors. We subtly, maybe even subconsciously, question the truths that would loose our tongues and break other peoples’ chains — all in favor of maintaining a more comfortable silence. If we’re brutally honest with ourselves, we’re content to avoid our fears, accept our obstacles, and nurture our self-centeredness. So, we tell ourselves that someone else will share the gospel; or that the potential awkwardness, rejection, or persecution are not worth it; or that God is not likely to save those people anyway. God help us. “When we focus on what’s really real, then evangelism becomes utterly exciting.” Thankfully, he does help us! We need God’s help to lift our eyes and see we are surrounded by dead people who desperately need us to preach the gospel and live out the life of Christ in their midst. When we focus on what’s really real — the facts that God exists, his wrath against sin is coming, his gospel is the only way to eternal joy, souls are precious and perishing, and the lost sheep will hear their Shepherd’s voice — then evangelism becomes utterly exciting. Your Forever Neighbor Evangelism will not happen forever. It is a means to one great end. Human beings — every single one of us in history — are created in God’s image for eternal purposes and one immense goal: to bring glory to God. When we read C.S. Lewis’s words about the eternal significance and destiny of our neighbors, we get a sense of the weightiness and joy that come from sharing the gospel: It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. (The Weight of Glory, 45–46) History, and everyone in it, is going somewhere. That means that, while no two conversations, no two train rides, no two lunch breaks, and no two walks at the park are the same, they are all filled with infinite potential. And time is literally running out. Like the wind, we do not know where the Spirit might blow on our ordinary days (John 3:8) — and that is exciting. Vertically-challenged Zacchaeus climbed a tree because he felt he needed to see Jesus for some reason (Luke 19:1–8); the Ethiopian eunuch was “randomly” pondering Isaiah 53 during his commute (Acts 8:26–40); Sergius Paulus, a highly educated official, asked Paul to bring him God’s word (Acts 13:7–8); and a Roman jailer was set free after he begged Paul to tell him what he must do to be saved (Acts 16:25–34). How would these people call on him in whom they have not believed unless someone tells them (Romans 10:14)? Could it be that the Spirit is already at work in the lives of the people around us in ways we haven’t noticed yet? Embrace the Awkwardness If we want to take advantage of opportunities to share our faith, we have to learn to embrace the so-called awkwardness. In some cultures, it is deemed awkward to raise the issue of spiritual matters in conversation. But take heart: in whatever culture you live, God has already raised the issue. If he has raised your soul from the dead, the conversation has begun. “No two conversations are the same, but they are all filled with infinite potential.” You sit next to your coworker as the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. You stand among other travelers in the queue as a sojourner whose citizenship is in heaven. You interact with people in this age of intolerance and virtue signaling as one who is humble and contrite in spirit, and who trembles at God’s word alone. You supervise children at the park as one who has been born again to a living hope. You drink water with your hiking club as one whose heart overflows with rivers of living water. You lay on a bed in the hospital as the recipient of a spiritual heart transplant — your stony, dead heart for a living heart of flesh. Your family members watch you live out a thousand deaths to self (and eventually death itself) as a new creation in Christ. If our chief concerns are about avoiding awkwardness, it would be more awkward not to talk about eternal things. You and I never know those who have been, who are, and who will soon be wrestling with these weighty spiritual issues, waiting for someone to bring them God’s word. Believe that God is both willing and able to give you what you need in order that you might joyfully spread the word about his Son in any and every cultural scenario — however seemingly awkward it may feel at first. Everyday Examples God governs the cosmos in such a way that your everyday life shines the light of the gospel in all the strategic places and relationships in which he places you. “The earth is the Lord’s” (Psalm 24:1), and Jesus is with you as you go and make disciples in his world (Matthew 28:18–20). A coworker of mine has a practice of sharing what she read that morning in her Bible with the people she encounters as she goes about her day. This is intentional on her part, but I also think she can’t help herself — she simply overflows. Another coworker pays for her lattes and chocolate croissants at the cafe she frequents, sits down at a table, and then, when the server brings out her order, explains that she is about to pray for her meal and asks, “What can I pray for you?” “How was your weekend?” is a question that another friend asks at work every week. And when the person returns the question, they talk about the sermon they heard at church. Another friend asks people to listen to her Scripture memory recitation for the day to help double-check her memory (and spread the word!). Talking about the word that is our very lives (Deuteronomy 32:47) is, naturally, something the Spirit leads word-dependent, word-filled people to do. The Most Effective Place to Start Perhaps you are praying that God would open for you a door for the word, so that you can “declare the mystery of Christ” (Colossians 4:3). And you unashamedly believe the gospel is indeed God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes (Romans 1:16). But you’re still not sure where to start when God puts someone in your path. “‘Hello’ is a small word, but it says to someone, ‘I see you.’” My friend led a training session about how to share the Christian faith. In one especially valuable lesson, the group has some volunteers don a traditional outfit of someone from a different cultural background. They acknowledge how it might feel intimidating to talk with people who look different, eat different foods, speak different languages, and believe different things. But beyond all of the potential hurdles, there is one thing you could say to start a conversation (and friendship) with anyone from anywhere. Across the globe, this is the most effective thing you can say in order to start a conversation: Hello. In whatever language you speak, your hello could initiate the first conversation among many that God uses to draw someone to himself. Maybe the first conversation becomes the conversation. “Hello” is a small word, but it says to someone, “I see you.” And that means something to everyone, no matter where they’re from in the world. For hello to pass over your vocal cords, it requires only a mustard seed of faith in our great God. In addition to your faithful prayers that God would open a door for his word, the gospel, also ask him to give you everything you need to greet people in his name and be a blessing to whomever he puts in your path. Article by Gloria Furman