Living Together Before Marriage Series
July 24, 2008
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Posted by Ray Fowler
Here are links to all four posts in the Living Together Before Marriage series:
- Statistics on Living Together Before Marriage
- Scriptures on Living Together Before Marriage
- Living Together Without Sex
- What If We Already Lived Together Before Marriage?
Categories: Christian Living, Marriage, Sexuality, Singles
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Thanks for this great collection of thoughts on shacking up.
Thank you so much for the wonderful articles Ray. I would like your advice regarding this matter – please bear with me it may be a bit long. My boyfriend and I started on the wrong foot. We became sexually involved at the very beginning of our relationship and as a result I fell pregnant soon after we started dating. We were living in different towns and travelled frequently to be together and in the few months prior to our discovery of the pregnancy we grew very close and felt like we had been together for years. A few months after we found out I was pregnant, he proposed and I accepted but we could not marry immediately as we would’ve liked to because he needed to approach my father and offer to pay dowry as per out traditional requirement in South Africa. This lengthened our wait as his financial stability was starting to experience a bit of a shake. Three months pregnant, I decided to quit my job a move closer to my family and the father of my child. I spent most nights at his place and before we knew it we were living together.We struggled along as his financial situation got worse and I fell inlove with him even more because of his patience and dedication to providing for us with the little that he had even though I had not consulted him before quiting my job. i moved back home just before giving birth and started a new job as soon as I recovered from giving birth. Again when the baby was six months old, we drifted back into living together and things were much better now financially because we had two salaries coming in and he had just started a new business. He’s still financially unstable and I have had three pay increases since and are now the main breadwinner in our household. Last year (two and a half years into our relationship)I accepted Christ and vowed to take my Christian life seriously and have since been feeling guilty about our living together. Abtainance is a huge problem also as we began our relationship with sex. He is still dedicated to being my husband but still cannot afford the cost involed just yet. I have a strong feeling that God is withholding his blessings upon our lives because we are not doing right by Him.How can I make things right with firstly God, and secondly my non-christian father(who will not allow marriage without dowry paymemnt)without making my fiance(who hasn’t accepted christ)feel rejected and abandoned in his time of financial need? You are so right about having to face all these consequences as a result of wrong choices.
Gcina – Thank you for sharing your story with us. I am so glad to hear that you accepted Christ last year and are seeking to follow God’s ways.
Yours is a very difficult situation. As far as making things right with God, the Bible is clear: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9) It sounds like you have already confessed your sin to God and received his forgiveness. Now comes the long hard road of making right choices.
First of all, you should not marry your fiance if he does not make a commitment to Christ. And he should not make a commitment to Christ just to please you. It needs to be the sincere choice of his own heart. Secondly, you should not continue living together. The temptation for sexual involvement is just too great. Thirdly, you should affirm your love for your fiance as a person, but let him know that as a Christian you cannot continue to live this way.
All this means that you may need to back away from this relationship in prayer, asking God to bring the changes in finances and in your fiance’s heart. This will be hard to do, but I believe when you make right choices in faith, God will make his will for your next steps clear to you.
I pray that God will give you the wisdom and strength to make good choices going forward, and I leave you with these verses from Proverbs:
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)