I asked them about
their living situation they said they were going to live together and I
explained that is not God’s will for their lives. They sort of looked at me
with deer in the headlights eyes and so I went on to explain a little bit more
about why this is not a good idea. There
is another path that would lead to marriage and establishing a firm foundation
for their lives together.
This would involve premarital or pre engagement counseling
which they seemed very interested in [especially after they asked how much it
cost and I explained that it was free to those who attend our church regularly]
and they told me the conversation would continue and I’m very glad for that.
But it also highlighted the fact that these two young people
hadn’t had any clear teaching on the problems of living together or they forgot
about it as they began to make plans for the future. This made me wonder if I
had been clear on the biblical understanding of what a solid foundation for
marriage begins with. Contrary to popular opinion and cultural practices it is
not living together before you are married.
In fact that’s exactly the opposite of how you start a good marriage.
Often times living situations are not good and couples
probably think this is a way of helping. While this may appear to help, in the
long run it hurts your relationship with each other, and even hurts relationships with your
family and church.
If you are a member of the church, you committed your life
to following Jesus and his word. The 10 commandments have a clear call in #7-‘You
shall not commit adultery’. I preach it
as “marriage before intimacy” -this is where the struggle with sin comes in. Living
together, even if you are not having sex is putting yourself in a position of
sexual temptation that is not good. Living together leads to sex outside of
marriage. This is the sin of fornication.
The Bible is clear that sex before marriage is sin and sin
is cancer to relationships. Fornication is mentioned as sin 26 time in the New
Testament. Of the 21 lists of sins fornication is included in 13. God wants us
to know this destructive.
The Bible also says
in 1 Thess. 5:22 22 “Abstain from all appearance of evil.” When you live
together it sends a message to everyone that knows you, that you believe this
is a good thing to do. Our bad behavior is contagious even though we often
think it’s none of anybody else’s business. Our bad choices affect everyone who
loves us. Sin splatters.
That’s a lot of Biblical info but the bottom line is being
unmarried and living together is wrong. In light of that, it also calls into question your
commitment to Jesus. This is serious disconnect. Even if we put the Bible aside, as some may not be
following Jesus, secular authorities say this:
“Living with someone before committing to him or her seems
like a good idea. Yet a 2013 survey by Penn State psychologist Catherine Cohan,
which tracked more than 100 studies on cohabitation spanning 25 years, found
that couples who shacked up before getting engaged or married were more likely
to dissolve their marriages, reporting lower levels of marital satisfaction and
commitment.”
“The Houston Chronicle reported that couples who live
together before marriage have an 80 percent greater chance of divorce after
they are married than those who don’t cohabit first. The National Center for
Mental Health revealed that the incidence of depression among cohabiting women
is four times greater than that among married women, and two times greater than
depression among unmarried women."
“In a survey of more than 100 couples who lived together, 71
percent of the women said they would not live-in again. In practice, cohabiting
couples who marry —many of whom already have children —are about 33 percent
more likely to divorce than are couples who don’t live together before their
nuptials. …While test driving a car might be a good idea, “trying out” one’s
future partner is not." (From the book “Sexual Intimacy in Marriage” by Dr
William Cutrer and Sandra Glahn).
Building your family on the sandy land of the shack up will
lead to a crash. Families need to be built on the rock of Jesus, which is a
foundation of purity in marriage. Storms will come, waters of adversity will
rise but relationships built on the rock will stand firm.
Matthew 7:24–27
Build Your House on the Rock
24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does
them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain
fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it
did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who
hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who
built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the
winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of
it.”
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