The Plight of Single Women in the Church

Arthur Burk, a pastor from Anaheim, CA, came out with an intriguing article about "why many single Christian women can't get married." He sees it as a demonic strategy.

Arthur Burk released this on Father's day.

Arthur asks if the desire for marriage is from God, why hasn't there been any fulfillment? Why aren't dreams, visions, prophetic words coming to pass?

This article doesn't give the answer, instead it's a call to BIND THE MESMERIZING SPIRIT CORPORATELY for the next 3 MONTHS and to receive the answer from God. Here's his article:


The Surface Problem

For the last five years, I have been talking to women across the Western world who are of marriageable age but who have not been able to find a husband. What has drawn my attention is the fact that there are so many of them. Women who could not marry have always existed, but there have generally been only a very few of them in any culture, unless it was in a post-war situation where there were no men available.

The present situation represents a massive number of women compared to any historical baseline I can find. This clearly is abnormal and spiritual, not a natural function of social upheaval.

The Deeper Problem

We do not generally get involved in issues just because there is pain. Rather, we are called to speak into the vacant niches in the theology of the Church. It became very evident that the Church as a whole is militantly ignoring this issue. The denial factor of church leadership is simply astounding. By and large, church leaders are treating the single women as though it is their issue, just an individual matter, and not part of a massive pattern in the Body of Christ.

This disconnect from reality on the part of spiritual leaders is cause for deep concern. Further, the overwhelming response of church leaders is to distance themselves from any responsibility for the problem. I know there must be some churches out there that have overtly owned their responsibility to find answers for the single women in their midst, but I have not found them yet. Most of the time, pastors are overt in shoving all the responsibility for singleness back on the women, while they loudly pursue answers for all sorts of other issues in the church body.

This is not right.

A Bigger Perspective

It is my opinion that both the singleness and the denial by leaders is part of a demonic strategy. The church has broadly been willing to address rampant adultery, pornography, divorce, marital abuse, child abuse, child abandonment, and fatherlessness in general as part of the devil’s assault on the institution of marriage. There are hundreds of voices that are speaking to those issues.

I believe that the issue of single women is just another facet of the devil’s assault on godly marriages, and that the church’s silence on the issue is also part of the devil’s premeditated strategy. This issue deserves just as much prominence as any of the other demonic strategies against marriage.

What about the Men?

From time to time a single man will write and ask why I focus all my work on the women, when there are in fact single men who have not been able to find a bride.

My answer is simple: the shame factor. While I acknowledge that there are single men, by and large in the church today there is no stigma attached to a single man of any age. It is considered his choice. On the other hand, the shame factor that women feel -- and that many believers project viciously onto single women -- suggests strongly to me that the women are the major spiritual battlefield. Hence my focus there.

What Has Been Done?

The short answer is, “a whole lot of everything.” Individually, many of the ladies I have talked to have invested deeply in personal healing, deliverance, growth in maturity, serving God, waiting in faith, seeing godly counsel, staying under authority, hearing from the prophetic movement, fasting and prayer, praying for their future spouses by faith, making proclamation, etc.

I personally pulled together a group of single women and walked with them for a couple of years, using all of the tools I have and we had no movement with them. They benefitted from the exercises we did, but it did not produce marriages.

The Double Bind

Historically the advice for single women has been to accept that as being from the hand of God and to learn to live a full life in relationship with Jesus, without an earthly husband. Historically, this advice has been embraced by many women, and they have indeed experienced deep fulfillment.

This grace is still available today. I know some women who would very much like to be married, but they have a deep relationship with God, and are finding fulfillment in the work He has called them to do.

The reality, however, is that you cannot go down to Wal-Mart and by three units of that grace and go home to fix the problem of your desires. Today, there are a huge number of women who are caught in a vicious double bind.

On the one hand, they have a craving for marriage and family that is beyond intense – it is consuming. And the longer they go without marriage, the more driven they become with this focus. It becomes a toxic passion which erodes spirit, soul and body all at the same time.

In light of the fact that hope deferred makes the heart sick, many of the ladies have made the decision to lay down their vision, only to find out they cannot. Some have gone through personal exercises in renouncing their right to marriage and making deep proclamations about Jesus being their utter fulfillment. Others have gone so far as to attempt deliverance and inner healing with all of the different flavors of tools out there.

The result is uniformly, no change. They are in anguish if they hold the dream and in double anguish if they try to renounce the dream and go forward.

What About the Prophetic?

The data is indisputable: the prophetic has been hugely discredited in this situation. There have been globally circulated prophecies about “this” (a few years ago) being THE year when the bondage would be broken and thousands of women would be married. There have been endless individual prophecies from the big name prophets and from low profile individuals about this man or that one being absolutely THE man who would propose marriage, this date or that date would bring about an engagement, and they have, almost entirely, been utterly wrong. Measurably, verifiably, wrong!

What About Dreams and Visions?

They too have been discredited. Many women have had clear pictures of the man they would marry. The pictures are so detailed that they would recognize the person on the street in a heartbeat. Others have had visions of a place, or event, or conference where the connection would happen. Again, there have been wholesale verifiable failures of those dreams and visions.

My Conclusion

The short version: this cannot be simply women who can’t get it together. The pattern is consistent in dozens of different streams of faith and different cultures in the Western world. The drive is too intense and too alike from lady to lady to simply be an individual issue. The fact that the demonic realm has co-opted the prophetic movement so massively in this area is another reason to say it is not an individual issue. Given the torment involved, I simply cannot believe this is the way God intended it to be.

As far as I can see, there are only two options.

1) The whole thing is a demonic delusion and we need to find the strategy to break through this and set women free to be able to go on with life, without this consuming, destructive drive gnawing at them day and night.

2) The whole thing is from God since He wants to raise up a new generation of spectacular marriages to defy the devil, and we need to find the strategy to break through the barriers that the devil has erected to keep those marriages from happening.

Either way, the bottom line is that our strategies so far have not worked. I have worked very hard to release some women from the drive for marriage and been totally ineffective. I have worked equally hard with some women to bring about courtship and commitment and I have equally failed there.

As someone once said, “There HAS to be a better way.”

The Visible Culprit

While I am sure that this issue has layers and layers and layers of dynamics, the obvious problem is the mesmerizing spirit.

1. This entity has completely bamboozled the prophetic and corrupted the other revelatory gifts.
2. If the whole thing is a delusion, then this too points to the mesmerizing spirit.
3. And finally, if it is just a demonic strategy to block us, the mesmerizing spirit is being effective at keeping us from seeing what we need to do differently than we have already done.

Again, I don’t think this is the sole culprit, but I do believe it is the beginning place.

A Call to Arms

Therefore, since everything we know how to do has not worked yet, it is time to pursue new strategy. I am inviting all of you who have a vested interest in this battle to join me in a unified prayer strategy for the months of July, August and September, crying out to God to bind the mesmerizing spirit and to shine His light on the truths He wants us to see. God absolutely knows the way out of this double bind.

If you are not familiar with my teaching on the mesmerizing spirit and how it comes into our lives, I suggest you get the album “Life, Dominion and Honor. ” Also, there are more recent discoveries about the mesmerizing spirit in the video library including information about how we can be controlled by this entity. It will do little good to pray about this demon if you are controlled by it because you have not closed the open door.

So join me in daily crying out to God for His light to shine. We absolutely have to have clarity on which way to go with the battle, and what tools to use. There is no demonic strategy that is greater than God’s dominion. We simply need to see a bigger picture.

Arthur Burk
June 21, 2009

Here's Lou's two cents here:

I feel that Satan has intensified his attack on marriages and on prospective marriages, if only to thwart the work that two joined together as one will have against the kingdom of darkness.

I believe that God desires to have end-time marriages so powerful in anointing that they do major damage to Satan's kingdom. And that knowledge is causing Satan to tremble and to bring an all-out-war against the church. But as the church today comes to better understand that Jesus has given all authority and power to his bride (but still Jesus is the Head in this relationship); so should Spirit-filled women come to their rightful place alongside Spirit-filled men in a marriage-ministry that will be the absolute physical pattern of Christ and the Church.

These end-time marriages will not be like what we see patterned after the world’s ways. These Holy-Spirit-filled marriages will openly represent the physical pattern of the love and respect between Jesus and the church. Even secular people will marvel over the way these spouses treat each other and they will declare, "I want what you have. I want a relationship like that!"

And, we’ll be able to say, “Let Jesus take part in your relationships. Let Him be the one who directs you to him or her. And, when God finds him or her, get yourself out of the way. Treat him or her at least equal or better than yourselves and you’ll have a heavenly relationship – one that everyone has always wanted but we’ve gotten ourselves too much in the way to make it work.”

But again, I say that the potential is great in this hour for true Christians to stop patterning their ways after the world (divorce is as bad in the church today as out!) and to become as Jesus would have us become. The onus is on the church now to really cultivate relationships the way Jesus intended: husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church; and wives, respect your husbands as you do the Lord.