At about 47 readable pages, it's hard not to read this book in one sitting. At the same time, it's somewhat difficult to get too elaborate in 47 pages. Still, I'm of the opinion that Evans accomplishes a bit more than most on this topic precisely by keeping it simple. The bulk of Evans' material is derived from 1 Corinthians 7 and doesn't stray very far. With that, an excerpt ...

Pg 23-24:

The world - and too often the church - treats singleness as an awkward, in-between statge from adolescence to marriage, a temporary stopover that tends to make singles feel like second-class citizens. But God views both singleness and marriage as divine callings in which we are to work for Him with all the commitment we can give.

To help you see this, I want to back up a bit in 1 Corinthians 7 and look at verses 20 and 24. Verse 20: "Each man must remain in that condition in which he was called." Verse 24: "Each one is to remain with God in that condition in which he was called."

These are two very important verses when it comes to the way your marital status relates to your calling as a Christian. The key in each verse is the word condition. In verse 20, this is actually the same Greek term as the word translated "called."

In other words, God is saying, "Remain in the calling to which you were called." This is significant because it equates our status as singles or marrieds with our calling. Verse 24 has the same idea because the word condition is in italics. That mens it is not in the Greek text but was supplied by the translators. We could just as easily supply the word calling in verse 24 and get the proper sense of the passage.

What I'm saying is that your calling as a single person is not just the current status you happen to be in. It is part of your fivine calling.

The problem today is that many singles have differentiated their status from their calling. This creates trouble because it can lead them to focus their energies on trying to change their marital status while missing their calling as singles.

If you are single, your singleness is not just where you happen to be right now. It's where God has you right now, and there's a world of difference between those two outlooks.

In reading Raunikar's "Choosing God's Best," it strikes me that Raunikar places too much pressure on any relationship to be known as one's calling before going through hoops and ladders of an elaborate courting process. Evans seems to approach the matter from the opposite side of the coin - know your calling first and the rest will fit in around it. Evans doesn't go so far as to suggest anything goes with regard to dating, but he doesn't chide anyone from putting themselves in social situations for the purpose of meeting others.

I'll get back to Raunikar in a later post. His views aren't worth dismissing entirely, so I definitely wanted to hit on some of the more positive aspects I took from his book before I'm all done with these two.

Just a reminder - Compass Classes begin on these two books on July 1.