To the Couple Considering Cohabitation...

In the last few decades a shift has been made in the way people in our country and society think about marriage and cohabitation. Cohabitation has become much more socially acceptable and this is evidenced by the fact that the Majority of Americans Now Believe in Cohabitation. Some studies estimate "that the percentage of people living together before tying the knot is now at an all-time high of over 70 percent."* Some believe "that the number of people who will eventually cohabit outside of marriage could reach 80 percent or more."* This is pretty remarkable considering just 20-30 years ago cohabitation was still considered relatively taboo. With so much societal support for cohabitation, what does one say to the couple considering moving in together. Here are a few thoughts from a pastor who wants the very best for you, your significant other, and your future family.

Thought #1

Your faith should affect your relationship.

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, then the relationship you share with Him should take precedence over every other relationship you have with other people. Your relationship with Christ should impact the way you love your family, the way you relate to co-workers, and even your decision-making process when considering cohabitation. God specifically designed our most intimate personal relationships to take place inside of a marriage relationship between a man and a woman (Genesis 2:24). When we put our faith in Christ, we commit ourselves to following His designs and plans for our lives. To live outside of those designs and plans is to willfully sin against Him. When we live in sin we cannot be in perfect fellowship with Him, which ought to be our goal. As a Christian you cannot pick and choose what commands you will follow and which you want to discard. Cohabitation is a sin and goes against God's design for your intimate personal relationships. If you love the person you are considering cohabiting with, then allow your faith to impact your decision and follow God's plan.

If you aren't a follower of Christ, then you don't have a faith-based decision-making process. What I would encourage you to do is to hold off on making any kind of rash decision concerning cohabitation. Speak with a pastor or counselor who can give you some counsel from an outside perspective. I would also encourage you to check out this link to learn more about what it means to put your faith in Jesus Christ.

Thought #2

Cohabitation is a poor option for deciding on marital compatibility.

Several reports show "that those who start cohabiting before deciding to marry report lower average marital quality and are more likely to divorce."* Even though in the past people have believed that "'It is usually a good idea for a couple to live together before getting married in order to find out whether they really get along.' It is worth noting that there is virtually no evidence in support of this belief."* Deciding whether you and your significant other are compatible for marriage should not involve living out a marriage situation without the commitment of marriage. To determine whether your significant other is the one God has planed for you to marry requires more than simply sharing a place to live. You should first seek God's plan for your life. The best way to do this is through prayer. This involves asking God to show you the person you ought to have a relationship with and then being willing to accept what He shows you. This means listening and being patient for His plan to unfold for you. Secondly, you should be mindful that if your significant other is not a follower of Christ like you, then the two of you are incompatible from the start. You both are coming into the relationship from different spiritual perspectives (2 Corinthians 6:14). With different spiritual perspectives you are both literally headed in different spiritual directions, especially when this life is over. The foundation for a strong marital relationship is for both spouses to have a strong personal relationship with Christ.

Thought #3

Don't sell out your faith to pay your bills.

There are plenty of people who will give you one reason for their decision to live together as being it is cheaper to keep up one household than it is two. They very well could be "playing house" at two different houses so why not go ahead and consolidate the bills. Some would say there is logic in that thinking, but it isn't worth selling out your faith to simply save some money. If you are willing to live together and one of your reasons is so you don't have double the bills, then what you're saying is that your financial standing in this life is worth more to you than your spiritual standing with God. You can never save enough money to make it worth the spiritual damage you do to your relationship with God (Matthew 16:26).

A Final Thought...

I'm not naive enough to think that this short blog post fully examines all the nuances of cohabitation. What I do believe is this, from a spiritual perspective cohabitation is a bad idea. It will affect your relationship with God and desensitize you to His voice. For the Christian, it is a blatant slap in the face to the God who sacrificed His Son to give you forgiveness of your sins and eternal life. God has a design for your intimate personal relationships and cohabitation is not it. In my humble opinion, I've seen more damage done to relationships and to people's lives because of cohabitation than I have any positives from it. Before jumping into a cohabitation situation, really think about the unseen spiritual consequences of the decision you are looking to make. The immediate benefits of living together will never outweigh the eternal spiritual harm it causes.

Just a few thoughts from a pastor who wants the very best for you, your significant other, and your future family.

*The study quoted above can be found here:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sliding-vs-deciding/201807/why-moving-in-together-is-so-risky

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Looks Can Be Deceiving

I was driving home from a late night hospital visit a few months ago and could have sworn that I was passed on the highway by Ricky Bobby. For those of you who don't know who Ricky Bobby is, he is the fictional character from the 2006 movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby starring Will Ferrell. In the movie Ferrell's character only wants to race, win, and go fast. As I was on my way home from this particular visit, I was passed by a truck that was driving fast, erratic, and looking like he was trying to win the Daytona 500. What caught my eye, when he was slowed down by traffic in the left lane before swerving in front of me, was the fact that the man had a Disabled Veteran license plate. The man made a few more moves that would have made Dale Earnhardt cringe and then headed on down the highway leaving us in his dust. Now I will be honest about the situation. My first thought was judgmental when I saw the tag and the way the guy was driving. I thought to myself, "This guy isn't driving like a disabled veteran." I don't know who was driving the truck. It could have been the disabled veteran or it could have been a kid, grandkid, or it could've been stolen for all I know. What I do know is that in that moment of being judgmental, I was reminded that looks can be deceiving as God convicted me because I didn't know the whole story.

Being judgmental is extremely easy to do. I would dare say we all normally do this with everyone we meet, basing our judgment of the person on some superficial analysis. We size the person up based on their clothing, their accent, their skin color, their bravado, their timidness, or for any other reason in a mile long list. In the end, being judgmental towards someone does us no good and it can very easily give us the wrong impression of the person. Like the old saying goes, "Don't judge a book by its cover." We never know what is on the inside of a person simply by looking at the outer layers. God is very careful to warn us about this in His Word. When selecting a new king for the nation of Israel from the family of a man named Jesse, God reminded the prophet Samuel about judging a royal candidate based on their outward appearance. God told Samuel (1 Samuel 16:7, NIV), "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." God knew the hearts of the sons of Jesse and only one of them, David, met God's criteria to be the next king. We have to be reminded of the same thing on a daily basis. We can look at the outward appearance of a person all day long, but we will never know what is in their heart.

Jesus famously said in Matthew 7:1-2 (NIV), "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." These few words should give us pause to consider the qualifications with which we make decisions about a person. What if they used the same "measure" on us? Would they come up with the same judgmental decision about us? The next time you make a rash judgment of a person based on their situation, their dress, or some other superficial reason, remember that what you see is not who the person is. What you see is the outer layers of a person who God loves and a person Jesus Christ died to redeem.


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Drive-time Devos

Last year my boys and I started something new. We had previously met at 6:45 each morning to do a devotional together as we prepared for the day. This worked well but it seemed to always cause us problems with them being able to finish getting ready for school. So I decided to try something different. We have a nearly 10 minute drive from home to their school. So now we utilize the time we previously spent in silence or listening to the radio by doing our devotional then. I still read my devotional as I eat my breakfast, but then I relay the same devotional to them in a way they would better understand it. We cover the same topics and stories but in a way that is engaging for them. This definitely makes for some interesting conversations on the way to school. Ultimately I hope it helps them grow in their faith and sends them into school ready for the day ahead of them.

I would like to say I brilliantly came up with this idea of doing our devotionals while riding down the road, but I'm just not that smart. What I am doing is putting into practice something that was wisely commanded nearly 3,500 years ago. In the book of Deuteronomy we find some real wisdom for how to spiritually prepare our children for the day they face and the years to come. The Bible says in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (NIV), "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates." I can't tell you the last time I walked down the road with either off my sons. But I can tell you that every day I spend some amount of time with them in my truck. Most of the time it is spent taking them to school or picking them up from their grandparents' house after school. The best way to avoid wasting this precious time is to spend it on what matters. You don't have to have a seminary degree or be the most educated Christian of all time to be able to discuss spiritual matters with your kids. All you have to do is share with them what God has taught you that day in your own devotional time and help them apply it to their own lives.

The time we have with our children from birth to age 18 slips by so quickly. It is only 6,570 days. Counting the time they are sleeping or at school and you are at work, the time you have to impact your children spiritually is drastically reduced. The best way to make the most of the time you have to impact them spiritually is to spend those times that seem to be unimportant doing something important. If you don't personally have a time where you do a devotional, then start making time today and find a good devotional to feed you spiritually. You can't give your kids what you don't already have. Start spending time doing a devotional today so you can pour into your kids what they will need to face the day ahead of them.


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Unhappily Married

A few months ago our family went to eat at a local restaurant. This particular restaurant has booths divided by a glass divider and of course we were seated in one of those booths. While we waited on my wife to arrive, I noticed a couple sitting in the booth just on the other side of the glass divider from our booth. Being a tall person you can't help but look over dividers and walls when seated in a restaurant. This couple, seated within an arm's length of me, was eating their meal in silence. They were probably in their late 50's or maybe early 60's and simply ate their meal in silence. After I noticed they weren't talking to each other, I tried my best to watch out of the corner of my eye if they ever talked to each other. They didn't look particularly pleased to be eating a meal together, so I tried my best to observe them without being that weird guy staring at them from the next booth. For what seemed like forever, they never talked other than to the waitress when she brought them their bill. After that it was silence. They got up from their meal without saying anything and headed to pay their bill.

Now I know I'm making some assumptions from my limited observation of this couple I don't know, but they seemed to be unhappy about spending time together as a couple. We all know about couples who pour themselves into their kids or careers or hobbies for years and then when those things are gone, all they can do is stare at each other across the table because they no longer know the person to which they're married. I'm making a big assumption, but I think this couple I observed was experiencing this kind of marriage relationship.

Marriage is the second hardest job you'll ever have with raising kids being the first. You are two imperfect people attempting God's perfect plan for human relationships. Our baggage, failures, and selfish desires can make for a challenging marriage relationship. When we don't put the necessary time into caring for our marriage relationship, then we can expect it to suffer. Eventually what we find is that we are unhappily married to a person we barely know. Marriage is sort of like a vegetable garden you and your spouse plant. If you till the soil, plant the seeds, water the plants, dig out the weeds, and fertilize the plants, then you will reap an abundance of good fruits and vegetables. But if you don't put the work in and all you do is plant seeds, then you'll find yourself staring at your spouse from across the garden wondering what happened. Marriage is the same way. Marriage requires work, lots of work. When you put in the time you'll have a healthy thriving relationship. When you don't, then you find yourself with a withered, weed-filled relationship that doesn't feed you or your spouse.

To avoid being the couple who doesn't know each other and is unhappily married, start putting the work into your marriage relationship now. Whether its been 20 or 30 months of marriage or 20 or 30 years, you can still start caring for you marriage in a way that will help you avoid an unhappy marriage. Spend time together doing things you both enjoy doing individually and spend time together doing things you both enjoy doing together. Remember the little things your spouse likes and then do them or give them or celebrate them. If you're forgetful, make a list of your spouses favorite things and then find ways to surprise them with something from time to time. Probably the most helpful counsel I'd give you is to talk to each other. Communication is the life blood of relationships and without it, relationships can wither and die. When you talk, don't simply talk about work and the kids, also talk about those things that are happening in your spouse's life that matters to them. Work will one day be over and the kids will be out of the house. If they are your only conversation pieces, then you will find yourself staring across the table with nothing to talk about.

I'll close with this. Marriage is a wonderful gift from God. It is a perfectly designed and sometimes poorly executed personal relationship. Do what you can today to pour into your marriage all that is needed to make it the best and healthiest relationship it can be. When you do, you can avoid being that unhappily married couple that eats in silence.


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