The fact is, if we're not content with what we have, we will never be content with what we think we want. I am always concerned when I meet a single person who has not learned to be content as a single.
Generally, there is an expectation that marriage would make them happy. But marriage can't make anyone happy! In fact, sooner or later, every man or woman who marries so he or she can be happy is bound to be miserable. 

Marriage is not about finding someone to make us happy; it is about learning to make someone else happy. It is not about getting; it is about giving. It is not about finding fulfillment; it is about self-denial and sacrifice. 

The man or woman who does not learn contentment as a single is highly unlikely to be content once married. I have listened to the heart cries of enough miserable married women to be quite sure that there is no man on the face of the earth who can really make a woman happy (and vice versa). 

The deepest needs and longings of our hearts cannot be filled by any human being but only by God Himself.  To expect to find our needs met in marriage is to set ourselves up for certain disappointment. 

The key to joyous living is to embrace the will of God and to receive with gratitude whatever gift He has given us. 

Click here to read Part One.

Excerpted from "Singled Out for Him" by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. Copyright 1998 by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. Used by permission of Life Action Ministries.

Since 1980 Nancy Leigh DeMoss has served as the Director of Publications and Women's Ministries and as the editor of Spirit of Revival magazine, for Life Action Ministries, a revival ministry, based in Niles, Michigan. She is the author of A Place of Quiet Rest: Finding Intimacy with God Through a Daily Devotional Life, Lies Women Believe: And the Truth that Sets Them Free and A 30 Day Walk With God in the Psalms (Moody Press). Nancy also hosts Revive Our Hearts, a daily radio program for women that airs each weekday on over 200 stations nationwide.