Being physical while engaged?

[Dave-W]

I would encourage you to begin pre-marital counseling now.

YES! THIS! The sooner the better.

Please tell me that your counselor is NOT a close family member of either of you! If that is the case, find another counselor.

 

[Natalie+]

what's a year?
Jacob worked 7 years for Rachel. Rachel waited 7 years.
Not sure what the big deal is..you follow God or you fall into sin. God's commandments are not grievous. If you engaged its not like you going to date other people.

What you do is you ask Jesus to be at the centre of your engagement and you wait till the time is right to awaken love (see Song of Solomon). Just as trees fruits ripen, and there are seasons, wait until the appropriate time. If you pick too early, its not going to be good. You as the female just say its not good for a man to touch a woman! See corinthians.. Don't let him touch you...WAIT.

If you just can't wait then bring forward the marriage, as happened with one of my friends sons, he's getting married this feb instead of May. But he already has a house.
It looks like you don't.

So. Sorry, as 1 corinthians chapter 13 says, Love is patient.
If you lack patience, ask the holy spirit to cultivate this fruit in you.

If I were getting married if there were any impediments and my husband to be waited for the right time to marry me, after setting a date, that meant I could REALLY trust him.

You want your own home right, and to be truly married not to be living like heathens in someone else's place or renting a room like prostitutes do. ugh.

Yes, we talked about it today, we discussed getting married sooner and see that the best option is for us to wait. And yeah when we are thinking it's going to be one more year it seems really long but then we look back at last year and see that it feels like a flash... so we think we'll be okay lol. We also agreed to start working on our solo/together prayers lives more. I will be praying for patience for us.

Thank you for your response, Natalie. Just to clarify, I wasn't suggesting getting married secretly, but raising the possibility of doing so openly and quickly on the cheap, and then having the bigger celebration later on. I will confess to not understanding your financial situation and options very well. But whatever the best course forward proves to be, I hope you place your spiritual and moral wellbeing, and the need to lay a solid foundation for the marriage, ahead of all other considerations. Compromise now will have costs later on.

I would encourage you to begin pre-marital counseling now. I say that as a pastor who has worked with hundreds of couples over the years. Making good decisions now is the best gift you can give each other and sorting through your situation with a wise, objective counselor may prevent some bad decisions that you will later regret.

I admire your desire to honor God in your relationship. You have my prayers for wisdom.

Chaplain Steve

Thank you, I appreciate it. I will talk to him about getting to premarital counseling sooner than later. I am not sure how our church does it, if they only do at specific times, an acquaintance of ours told us about their church's marital counseling and was raving about it so we can look into doing it there too.

Hmmm...You sounded fairly ambivalent about your sexual sin, which is why I stated things as strongly as I did. You wrote:


Can you see why I'd want to emphasize that what you've been doing sexually with the man who is not yet your husband is sin? I wasn't just trying to be obnoxious but wanted to remind you of the seriousness of your moral compromise.



No, this is an excuse you're using to remain in a situation that "makes provision for the flesh to fulfill its lusts." You don't have to be married and live on your own. Either go to the courthouse and get married or stop putting yourselves in situations that allow you to sin with each other. It really is no more complicated than this. As we all tend to do, it sounds like you've talked yourself out of doing what needs to be done. There's no real, physical barrier stopping you from getting a justice of the peace to marry you and then having a larger wedding affair later on when its more financially feasible. Your parents may not like it, but they aren't the ones who are having the sexual temptations and failure.

I would also echo drstevej's advice. Marriage counselling for the two of you is a very good idea! Preferably before you're married rather than after.

Selah.

I did feel it was obnoxious the other day, but I see why you said it like that, I'm sorry I got rude/sassy in my reply. Like I say above, we have agreed on waiting and I'm thinking we will do better this time. We talked a lot more in depth about it than we have before, and the reasons why we need to wait and why it's important. We want to be honoring God and achieving the full plans He has for us, and we talked a lot about how we need to really focus on how we can't achieve that if we cut corners.

Thank you all for your replies, I really didn't have anyone to talk to about this

 

[Natalie+]

YES! THIS! The sooner the better.

Please tell me that your counselor is NOT a close family member of either of you! If that is the case, find another counselor.

lol no it would be someone in our church who does the counselings regularly probably, or at our acquantince's church