This post is based off of a Breakout Session I did at the 2019 Girl Defined conference. Girl Defined exists to help modern girls understand and live out God’s timeless truth for womanhood. To learn more, click here.
I was once obsessed with a guy. I stalked him on social media. I stalked his family on social media. I purposely went places where I knew I would be around him, and whenever I was around him I made sure I was in his line of sight. The thing was, it seemed to be working! He always made a point to talk to me and was so kind to me. I really thought he was as interested in me as I was in him, only to realize he was being nice to me so he could get close to a friend of mine and ask her out!
This is one of many stories I could tell about how absorbed I was with guys in my younger years. For a lot of young girls, boys are the most prominent thing occupying their mind and heart. Many single women who desire to get married also know this struggle well. Some wear this habit on their sleeves, but many girls secretly obsess over guys without even their closest friends knowing. But even if our hearts stay under other people’s radar, they are never under God’s. He sees our hearts. Do we?
When we expose our preoccupation with guys to the light of God’s word, we start to see what’s really going on under the surface. A biblical perspective shows us at least three things at the heart of our guy obsession: sinful desire, an inflated view of marriage and a deflated view singleness, and a low view of God.
Sinful Desire
If girls are honest, we obsess over guys because we want their attention. There is something about the attention of a guy that makes a girl feel she has worth. I recognized this at a young age and tried to stop relying on guys for worth by believing that God deemed me worthy. Therefore, I didn’t need a boy. But this was the wrong approach altogether. The message of the Bible is not that I’m worthy, but that God is worthy. When we seek attention from boys to feel good about ourselves, we are not only seeking the wrong thing, but have wrong motives. We were not created to draw attention to ourselves or be enamored by our own worth, but to draw attention to God and be enthralled with his. And if we look at scripture, we see that this bent toward self-glory is actually the very root of sin.
We see in Genesis that sin begins with wanting to be like God in a way that God didn’t intend. God said he made man “in his image” (Genesis 1:27). Adam and Eve were already like God in the way that God created them to be. But Satan proposed to them that they could be like God in a different way (Genesis 3:5). Adam and Eve fell for the lie that they could grasp attributes that are only true of God: supreme glory and centrality.
When Adam and Eve chose to pursue their own glory over God’s, all of humanity’s relationship with God was broken (Romans 5:12). Instead of living for the glory of God, we now live for our own. We use a thousand ways to do this, and for many girls, seeking the attention of boys is one of them. A girl’s fixation on a guy is often based completely on a self-centered fantasy and springs up before a girl truly knows a guy or his heart. It’s not grounded on biblical love or even genuine interest in the other person, but on self-serving motives. If we are ever going to be free from obsession with boys, we must recognize that guy-obsession is really self-obsession.
For those who trust in the death of Christ for salvation, we have been rescued from sin and given a new heart with new desires – a heart that desires God again (Ezekiel 36:26-27). It is only because of Christ’s death and resurrection that we can be free from the sinful desires that once enslaved us. We must start with the gospel when talking about guy obsession, because it’s a matter of our hearts being freed from sin. Giving tips on how to not think about boys will do no good to a girl whose heart is still dead in sin, unable to desire God’s glory above her own.
But if we do have a new heart, we are able to walk in God’s commands. We are actually capable of genuinely loving God and loving people. Rather than seeking our own glory, we seek God’s. Instead of focusing on being loved by others, we are free to love others, including the guys we have crushes on. Instead of going into a situation scheming about how to elicit the attention of a boy, we can go in thinking, “How can I love and serve people while I’m here?” and “How can I love this guy as a brother in Christ?”
Inflated View of Marriage and Deflated View of Singleness
Another thing at the root of guy obsession is having an inflated view of marriage and a deflated view of singleness. I have desired to get married for as long as I can remember. Because of that strong desire, I attached my purpose in life to getting married without really even realizing it. Then came the summer after I graduated from college. I was in many of my friends’ weddings that May. Meanwhile, I was in the middle of breaking up with a guy. Here I was, with little of hope of getting married anytime soon, witnessing everyone else’s wedded bliss. I had a choice. I could either fall into despair or get a better perspective.
By God’s grace, I started studying scripture and what it says about marriage, singleness, and God’s purpose for both. I had read and understood early on that God created marriage to reflect his relationship with the church (Ephesians 5:31-32), but hadn’t worked out what that meant practically for me. I began to understand that if marriage was created to reflect what God is doing in the story of redemption, then God’s story of redemption is the priority, not marriage. The love story we are all living in is one where God pursues his bride – the church – with self-sacrificial love and wins her heart completely in the end (Revelation 21:1-4). The Bible also tells us that there is no marriage in heaven (Matthew 22:30). There will be no need for it, because the thing marriage was pointing to all along will have arrived: God and his people together forever.
I also started getting a biblical perspective on singleness. I found a sermon by John Piper[1] that helped me understand Isaiah 54:1, which says:
“‘Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married,’ says the Lord.”
How is a barren, unmarried woman going to bear more children than a fertile, married woman? The chapter right before helps us understand. Isaiah 53 is a prophecy about Christ’s death on the cross. Amidst this powerful passage about Christ bearing our sin and sorrows, scripture says this about Christ: “when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring” (Isaiah 53:10). His offspring? What offspring? Christ was single and never married. But when Christ came, this is what he told Nicodemus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3, emphasis added). Peter tells us that God “has caused us to be born again to a living hope” (1 Peter 1:3, emphasis added).
God’s family is not grown by physical birth but by hearts reborn through the Spirit of God. Therefore, single people have a major role to play in adding people to God’s family. They may not have physical children that share their blood, but they can tell others about the blood of Jesus and bring them into an eternal family.
We also must broaden our view of how God builds his kingdom. I have found that many women (including myself) who overestimate the importance of marriage tend to underestimate the value of competence and hard work. Here’s what I mean. God has uniquely gifted each of us to serve the church and love our neighbor (1 Corinthians 4:12:4-7, Ephesians 2:10). Getting competent at our gifts will help us serve and love more effectively. So, we should get good at what we’re good at. Leadership, financial savvy and generosity, courage, hospitality, organization, people skills, teaching, wisdom, persuasion, success in the workplace, and skilled craftsmanship are all gifts we see women utilizing for God’s glory throughout scripture (Judges 4:4-10, 17-21, 1 Samuel 25: 32-33, Proverbs 31:10-31, Acts 16:14-16, Acts 18:26, Romans 16:1-2). Marriage and children are absolutely one way that God grows his kingdom, but they are not the only way. Understanding that God also builds his kingdom through industriousness will keep single women from wasting time obsessing over finding a husband and instead, help them get to work.
Low View of God
Lastly, underlying our absorption with guys is a low view of God. When I was 25, I started dating a guy who was a good friend of mine. Things got serious, and eight months into dating he proposed and I said yes. Long story short, we had a lot of conflict during our engagement. I hoped it would get better and we sought help, but things didn’t improve. Three weeks before what was supposed to be our wedding day, I realized that things weren’t changing. We postponed the wedding, and in the end we broke up. It was so painful. I felt like God was dangling one of my dreams in front of me and then snatched it away at the last minute.
During that time, I struggled to trust the Lord with my desire for marriage. Calling off an engagement at 26 felt like a one-way ticket to Spinsterville. I doubted God’s sovereignty, wisdom, and goodness. I was asking questions like: Is God really going to work this out? Could I really trust God’s wisdom and walk away from a relationship that I thought would end in marriage? Did God really have good in store for me?
In my pain and disappointment, I sought the Lord. He showed me that I had a clenched fist around marriage and a loose grip on him. I was somewhat aware of my over-desire for marriage in my teen and college years, but now that a tangible marriage possibility was slipping through my fingers, I had to come face to face with my idolatry.
“I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgression to the Lord,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin” (Psalm 32:5).
As I confessed my sin to the Lord, he healed my heart. Not only did the Lord forgive me, he helped me cling to him instead of marriage, or a career, or anything else. I still desire to get married, but that desire is overshadowed by a desire for God.
I began to trust that God is sovereign and can provide a husband for me whenever he wants to. The Bible says that God calls stars by name, knows every bird on the mountains, watches over deer and mountain goats giving birth, doesn’t let a single bird fall from the sky unless he wants them to, orchestrates all things for his people’s good, and sits in the heavens and does whatever he pleases (Isaiah 40:26, Psalm 50:11, Matthew 10:29, Job 39:1-3, Romans 8:28, Psalm 115:3).
I also began to trust that God is wise and knows exactly what he is doing with my marital status. He is the one who laid the foundations of the earth, not me. His ways are not my ways, his thoughts are not my thoughts, and there are secret things that belong only to him (Job 38:4, Isaiah 55:8, Deuteronomy 29:29).
I also realized, and am still learning, that God really is good and that whatever he gives me is in fact nourishment and not poison. He is the one who satisfies the longing soul and fills the hungry soul with good things. He is a good father who gives good things to his children. In His presence is fullness of joy. He is good to all and his mercy is over all that he has made (Psalm 107:9, Psalm 16:11, Matthew 7:9-11, Psalm 145:8).
Devoted to Christ
Instead of being obsessed with guys, women who follow the Lord are called to something much bigger. We are called to devote ourselves to Christ and expand his kingdom, whether single or married.
In Christ, we desire God’s glory above our own. In Christ, we become spiritual mothers, making and nurturing disciples. In Christ, we do full-hearted work unto the Lord for the good of our neighbor. And in Christ, we see the God who did not withhold his own Son from us, and place our trust in him.
[1]John Piper. “Single in Christ.” 27 Apr 2007. Sermon.