Faith in Focus #14
A reflection from Connection Church and other spiritual events from the week
Faith in Focus is a weekly reflection on what God has been teaching me throughout the week regarding my faith. Whether it’s personal interactions, reading, or the Sunday sermon, God speaks through it all, and I hope this helps you focus on His mission.
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Sermon Reflection: Called Where You Are: Paul’s Radical Reframing of Marriage, Singleness, and Faithfulness
Based on the sermon by James Swanson, Connection Church Sioux Falls, February 1, 2026.
In 1 Corinthians 7:25-40, Paul reframes marriage, singleness, and every season of life around a deeper question. Where does true contentment come from when everything else is temporary?
Every sermon has a moment when the room goes quiet, not because the preacher raised their voice, but because the question landed too close to home.
This week, as elder candidate James Swanson continued Connection Church’s journey through 1 Corinthians, he placed that kind of question before us. “What do you place your contentment in?”
It’s a deceptively simple question. We rarely answer it out loud, but we answer it every day with our time, our attention, our energy, and our anxiety. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 7:25-40 confront the assumptions we carry about marriage, singleness, and life stages, but underneath them all is a deeper diagnostic. What do you believe will finally satisfy you?
James didn’t leave the answer ambiguous. Contentment, he said plainly, belongs to Christ alone.
The World Behind the Text
Paul’s counsel about the unmarried and widowed often feels strange to modern readers. His tone can sound cautious, even pessimistic, about marriage. But that reaction usually misses the urgency shaping his words.
Writing to the church in Corinth, Paul is addressing a community living in tension. Social pressure, persecution, and moral confusion press in from every side. Into that moment, Paul introduces a perspective-altering truth:
“For the present form of this world is passing away” (1 Corinthians 7:31, ESV).
Paul isn’t dismissing creation. He’s naming reality. The structures we organize our lives around, status, relationships, security, comfort, are temporary. They matter, but they do not last. And when temporary things become ultimate things, they inevitably fail us.
This is why Paul speaks the way he does about marriage here. Marriage is a gift, not a necessity. Singleness is a calling, not a curse. Neither state provides the permanence our hearts are tempted to demand from them.
Walking the Passage
James centered the sermon on verse 31 because it supplies the theological spine of the passage. If the world’s current form is fading, then wisdom looks different.
Contentment, Paul implies, cannot be rooted in circumstances that change. Marriage changes. Seasons change. Desires change. Even our best-laid plans eventually loosen their grip.
James connected this truth to the wider witness of Scripture. James 1:2–3 calls believers to “count it all joy” when trials come. Not because suffering is good, but because God uses it to form something enduring. Likewise, Colossians 3:2 urges believers to set their minds “on things above, not on earthly things.”
Contentment, then, is not achieved by fixing everything that feels unfinished in our lives. It is found by anchoring ourselves to someone who does not move. Paul is not commanding emotional detachment from life. He is calling for spiritual clarity about what deserves our ultimate devotion.
A Fair Counter-Reading
Some readers have taken this passage to suggest that Paul undervalues marriage or expects the imminent end of the world. Others worry that this teaching minimizes real struggles, loneliness, grief, or longing that unmarried or widowed people experience.
Those concerns deserve to be taken seriously.
Paul affirms marriage elsewhere (Ephesians 5). Scripture consistently honors the goodness of embodied life. What Paul resists here is not intimacy, but idolatry. The quiet belief that a relationship, role, or resolution will finally make us whole.
James echoed this pastoral balance. Seasons still involve pain. Problems still need addressing. Longings are not sinful. But they are not meant to carry the weight of ultimate hope.
The Turn
One of the sermon’s most arresting moments came when James asked another diagnostic question: “What in your life has a relentless attention pull on you?”
For him, it was screen time. For others, it may be work, relationships, achievement, or addiction in its many forms. In a world built on monetizing attention, distraction is not accidental. It is strategic.
Paul names the alternative in 1 Corinthians 7:35, his instruction aims to “promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.”
Undivided devotion does not mean withdrawal from life. It means alignment. Attention reveals affection. What consistently captures us quietly shapes us. This is why Paul’s warning resonates with 1 Timothy 6:7, “For we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.” Jesus teaches the same reality in Matthew 6:19–21, where treasure and heart are inseparably linked.
Only one object of devotion does not depreciate. Jesus.
Song of the week: Beautiful Life - Pat Barrett
The opening line of Pat Barrett’s song lands with the kind of clarity that stops you mid-thought. “Every day is a gift from God. Even ones that have left their scars.” That final phrase, even ones that have left their scars, is what lingers. It reframes hardship not as wasted time, but as something still held within God’s purpose.
Scripture echoes this idea repeatedly. In Genesis 50:20, Joseph looks back on betrayal, injustice, and imprisonment and names a hard truth plainly, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” It’s not a denial of harm or pain, but a declaration that suffering does not get the final word. Even on the worst days, days marked by loss, confusion, or failure, breath itself is evidence that God is not finished with you.
Again, James reinforces this reality in the New Testament with a sobering reminder as stated in the Sermon Reflection above, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.” Not if trials come, but when. Faith, James argues, does not exempt believers from hardship; it forms them through it. Following Jesus does not remove adversity from life, but it does provide meaning, endurance, and hope within it.
Taken together, these passages point to a difficult but grounding truth. God does not waste suffering. Scars do not disqualify a day from being called a gift. The invitation, then, is not to minimize pain, but to trust that even what was meant for harm can be reshaped for good. Every day, including the hard ones, still carries purpose.
Carry It Into the Week
James offered a reframing to think on. The seasons of our lives are callings to steward, not problems to solve.
That doesn’t deny pain or dismiss change. It refuses to treat God’s providence as an interruption. Marriage, singleness, grief, stability, uncertainty, all are contexts in which devotion is practiced.
Jesus stands as the living proof that a life fully given to the Father is never wasted. His attention was undivided. His obedience was costly. His contentment was rooted beyond circumstances.
If Christ is eternal, then devotion to Him is the only investment that cannot be lost.
Week in Reflection
The new semester of Gospel Community (GC) began this week, marking a fresh start for a group centered on shared faith, honest conversation, and life together. While rooted in Scripture, GC extends beyond traditional Bible study, creating space for those attending to reflect not only on the Word of God but also on the ways it intersects with their everyday lives.
At its core, Gospel Community functions as more than a weekly meeting. It is a spiritual family. One that walks through seasons of struggle and celebration together, with Christ at the center. The regular rhythm of gathering fosters consistency, vulnerability, and mutual support, allowing attenders to both share their own stories and stand alongside others in moments of need or joy.
For those not currently involved in a small group or larger community shaped around faith, the value of such connection is hard to overstate. Christianity was never meant to be lived in isolation. Seeing the same people regularly, growing in trust, and carrying one another’s burdens reflects the kind of life Christ calls us into.
As this new semester begins, there is a sense of anticipation about what lies ahead. New conversations, deeper relationships, and continued growth in faith. If the early days are any indication, this season of Gospel Community promises to be both meaningful and transformative.
And remember, God loves you, and so do I.
