Marshall Segal > Quotes

“Learn to love the life you have with God, even if it is the life you never wanted.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“We were formed and made on purpose, for a purpose. The most important thing we could accomplish here on earth, then, is to give ourselves completely to telling the world with our whole life that God is truer, greater, and more satisfying than our wildest imagination—than the most successful career, the biggest platform, or the happiest marriage.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“If we want to have and enjoy such Christ-centered intimacy, we need to get married. And if we want to get married, we need to pursue clarity about whom to marry. We don’t pursue clarity by diving into intimacy. The right kind of clarity is a means to the right kind of intimacy, not the other way around. Careful, prayerful, thoughtful clarity will produce healthy, lasting, passionate intimacy. Any other road to intimacy will sabotage it, leaving it shallow, fragile, and unreliable.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“He didn't die for us because he finally found the love of his life. We were not marriage material when he met us. No, he died to make us the love of his life despite how little we deserved him.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“Phones were once attached to walls; now we're attached to them.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“We become miserable not because we're not married, but because many of us think marriage might finally make us happy.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“Before we begin dating, we have to develop a vision for what makes marriage worth having. Why do we even want to be married in the first place?...Marriage is worth having because you get God in your lifelong commitment to one another. Marriage is about knowing God, worshiping God, depending on God, displaying God, and being made like God....What makes marriage worth having is that you, your spouse, and those around you see more of God and his love in Jesus.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“Independence can be depressing at times because it can feel disconnected and lonely, but independence can also be exhilarating because we start to realize what we’re capable of and develop our own sense of autonomy.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“The great prize in dating is Christ-centered clarity. Intimacy is safest in the context of marriage and marriage is safest in the context of clarity. The purpose of our dating is to determine whether the two of us should get married, so we should focus our effort there.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“A lot of the heartache and confusion we feel in dating stems from treating dating mainly as practice for marriage (clarity through intimacy), instead of as discernment toward marriage (clarity and then intimacy).”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“Our love affairs with sin are not just a matter of morality, though, but of joy. This is not just about faithfulness to God, but about finding our deepest, most satisfying fulfillment. Many people think following Jesus means surrendering our happiness. You can either enjoy a fun, passionate, and exciting life here for a short time or live a bland, boring, but safe life forever with God. That lie is a quiet, but violent concentration camp, fencing men and women in, keeping them away from God, and torturing them with lesser pleasures that only lead to a swift and yet never-ending death. If you want to be truly happy—even in this life, surrounded by everything beautiful, fun, and exciting in this world—you want to be found with Jesus.”
― Marshall Segal, Killjoys

“One of your greatest spiritual gifts as a single person is your yes. Yes to a random phone conversation. Yes to coffee. Yes to help with the move. Yes to stepping in when someone’s sick. Yes to a late-night movie or the special event downtown. You have the unbelievable freedom to say yes when married people can’t even ask the question. When”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“Life is short. You and everyone around you will live, on average, a little more than seventy years. That will feel like less than a bathroom break compared with the eternity ahead of us. Everything in the world is teaching you to stretch out every moment as long as possible, to soak up every last drop from your time here on earth. But you weren’t made for this, and you won’t be here long. We have to stop believing the lie that everything we have here is all we have, and start thinking of everything we have here as something to invest in what’s to come. If the whole world passed away today, would we love what’s left? We develop those spiritual muscles now by saying, with everything we have and do now, that Jesus is our greatest treasure. Life is short, and everything we have and see here is passing away. Everything but Jesus.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“Pain becomes proud because it believes no one else understands.”
― Marshall Segal

“When we are disappointed or afflicted, God is calling us to war. He is lovingly and violently shaking us out of our complacency and entitlement to awaken us to the realities of life deeper and more important than our circumstances.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“Finally, on this side of heaven we are all not yet married. Every wedding day is only a small and inadequate picture of a wedding day to come, when we are given again forever to our Savior and King.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“Therefore, the search for a spouse isn't a pursuit of perfection but a mutually flawed pursuit of Jesus.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“A season of singleness is not the minor leagues of marriage. It”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“No one was made to be truly single—to live for God’s glory solo. Proverbs”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“Cheap intimacy feels real for the moment, but you get what you pay for.”
― Marshall Segal, Good: The Joy of Christian Manhood and Womanhood

“The emotional roller coaster of that Christmas morning is a lighthearted and fun picture of a hard reality. God often withholds, or even takes away, something from us in order to give us something far greater. Our Father in heaven knows all our needs, has plans for us we never could have imagined for ourselves, and wields the whole universe for our good. But doing what’s best for us often requires causing us some pain or discomfort first, like drilling a cavity or resetting a bone. God’s love can be unpleasant, even excruciating in the moment, but it always steers us through every dark valley to unparalleled life and joy. It also saves us all kinds of grief and pain in the future.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“Wedding vows are not a declaration of present love but a mutually binding promise of future love.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“While marriage may bring joy, help and relief in certain areas, it immediately multiplies our distractions, because we're responsible for this other person, his or her needs, dreams and growth.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“La vida es corta, y el infierno es real. Algunos verán a Dios y nunca más necesitarán nada. Otros vivirán toda su vida sin conocer a Dios, algunos de ellos siendo expuestos al evangelio y rechazándolo, y otros nunca escucharán el nombre de Jesús.”
― Marshall Segal, Soltero por ahora: La búsqueda del gozo en la soltería y el noviazgo

“Look for opportunities to be a regular part of a married person’s life and family. If”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“Pain is never evidence that God forgot about us or doesn’t care anymore. He promises, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isa. 41:10). If he allows us to walk through something hard or painful, like a breakup, he walks with us every step and waits on the other side to give us a gift that dwarfs all our suffering—like trading an uncool cell phone for a new car.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“A Secret Garden of Pride One key to walking through pain and disappointment is the people you keep close to you. Suffering may be Satan’s favorite way to isolate us. Pain can become a secret garden of pride. We don’t talk about it often, because it’s so sensitive, so vulnerable—​​​so painful. As touchy as the topic of pain is though, it’s equally dangerous to tiptoe around it. At its worst, it can cause us to doubt God’s goodness, to wallow in self-pity, and to isolate ourselves from him and from others. Pain becomes proud because it believes no one else understands. No one feels what I feel. And so pain distances itself from anyone who might try to speak into its suffering. But God has given us himself, his Word, and each other to bring faith, comfort, and strength in the midst of our pain, even the most severe and unique pain.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating

“Before we begin dating, we have to develop a vision for what makes marriage worth having. Why do we even want to be married in the first place?”
― Marshall Segal, Happily Ever After: Finding Grace in the Messes of Marriage

“Y, aun así, los obreros son muy pocos. ¿Por qué? Porque tratamos la increíble autoridad de Jesucristo como si fuera la autoridad de un maestro de deportes en un colegio o de un guarda de seguridad en un centro comercial. Porque tratamos este evangelio transformador como si ofreciera solo algunas sugerencias para una vida más saludable y exitosa, y no como lo único que puede salvar vidas. Porque tomamos la simple instrucción de enseñar a otros lo que Jesús dice y, en lugar de ello, hacemos de nuestra misión cristiana el ser buenos vecinos, buenos empleados y, Dios mediante, buenos esposos y padres algún día.”
― Marshall Segal, Soltero por ahora: La búsqueda del gozo en la soltería y el noviazgo

“When worth and identity are being measured in society by who likes us and how many like us, he reminds us we’re already worth far more than we know and defined by a love higher than any human love.”
― Marshall Segal, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating