Thank you all for your responses. 
In truth, this is something that I've been thinking of for years. I find that our focus is on waiting for marriage. But, not all of us are called to marry...or will choose to marry, even if the opportunity presents itself. I think that we put ourselves and other Christians in a "holding pattern" and many end up frustrated as the years go by and marriage still hasn't become the smallest of possibilities. We need to be doing what Christ has called us to do, spending time with Him, focusing on and knowing Him, and have purity and holiness for Him and for ourselves, not for a spouse.
The purity is, of course, a gift to the spouse and is a wonderful thing. We must consider, though, the frustration and the willingness to settle because the waiting isn't based on our relationship with Christ, but rather in our hopes of marriage. I, as some of you know, have been called to the ministry of radical purity, which isn't even considered normal among believers, and that's okay. The basic call for all of us is to abstain from sexual intimacy until married, which means that should marriage never come, we should never be sexually intimate.
But, can we all stand for that level of abstaining? We can if our reason is our love for Christ and not our desire to marry one day and "give away" our gift of purity to "the one". There are a lot of thoughts bouncing around in my head, so I may be posting more threads regarding these topics in the future.
In truth, this is something that I've been thinking of for years. I find that our focus is on waiting for marriage. But, not all of us are called to marry...or will choose to marry, even if the opportunity presents itself. I think that we put ourselves and other Christians in a "holding pattern" and many end up frustrated as the years go by and marriage still hasn't become the smallest of possibilities. We need to be doing what Christ has called us to do, spending time with Him, focusing on and knowing Him, and have purity and holiness for Him and for ourselves, not for a spouse.The purity is, of course, a gift to the spouse and is a wonderful thing. We must consider, though, the frustration and the willingness to settle because the waiting isn't based on our relationship with Christ, but rather in our hopes of marriage. I, as some of you know, have been called to the ministry of radical purity, which isn't even considered normal among believers, and that's okay. The basic call for all of us is to abstain from sexual intimacy until married, which means that should marriage never come, we should never be sexually intimate.
But, can we all stand for that level of abstaining? We can if our reason is our love for Christ and not our desire to marry one day and "give away" our gift of purity to "the one".
There are a lot of thoughts bouncing around in my head, so I may be posting more threads regarding these topics in the future. 
