(Knowing the Rules of Engagement)
For every societal engagement, there are some underlying rules. In part 3 and 4 of these series, I seek to outline some five basic rules that one may have to look at when engaging the subject of premarital relationship.
The First Rule – Love the Lord, your God
The first rule in premarital relationships is what Jesus referred to as the greatest of all the commandments: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mk 12:30). For one to consistently offer genuine love to someone else, that person must love God first. And no one will truly love you if they do not love God more than they love you.
I have always taught that you are not ready for a premarital relationship as a Christian if you are not first of all well-grounded in your relationship with God. This is because it is your spirituality that anchors the relationship in a manner that will keep it veering off into the world. And again, we cannot give what we don’t have. The Bible talks about the Holy Spirit filling our hearts with the love of God (Rom. 5:5). Which presupposes that the more one is rooted in God, the more of the love of God in him or her, and the more he or she can offer this love to others. Our love for others springs from our love for God. In effect, we offer what we have and not what we lack.
This is the reason why one of the critical issues to consider in a premarital relationship as stated earlier is to seek to find whether the other party is a committed believer in Christ.
Persons who love the Lord have their heart captured by the Lord to the extent that they love what the Lord loves and hates what He hates. The truth is that, if your heart is not committed to God, you can easily be distracted by the things of this world and your choices in the premarital relationship will not bring glory to God and such will in turn have an adverse effect on the foundation of your intended marriage. Remember, the process determines the quality of the product.
In his book, Waiting and Dating, Myles Monroe takes this understanding to a whole new level. He states that one of the prerequisites for dating readiness, for that matter premarital relationship, is a good understanding of God’s standard for relationships. He says, you need to learn to work out a clear set of guidelines for behaviour based on God’s word, or you are not ready to date. You see it takes one who loves God to do this. A lot of times, some young men go into a premarital relationship just to sexually exploit young ladies, fueled by their lustful passion which is misconstrued as love. True love does not exploit others. If you are a young man, one way you can know that what you are experiencing is not genuine love is when you seem to be interested in any lady you meet. Such people end up proposing to any lady they come across whenever the opportunity to do comes up. To genuinely love others, you must love God first for the motivation to genuinely love is divine.
Second Rule – Open up for Godly Counsel
When you are in a premarital relationship or you intend to enter into one, you must be open to people you look up to – your parents, mentors or church leaders. In our first rule we indicated that if you are not really connected to the Lord by way of your love for Him, you don’t have a chance of having a truly healthy Christian relationship with someone else. But on another dimension, even if you are a committed Christian, there are still many more ways to subtly fall into sin. The key will be to lean on other Christians or persons of authority that you look up to and are telling you when you are making a mistake or wandering away from God’s will for your life.
This is to say that, avoid keeping secret relationships. I have been teaching young people who want to enter into a premarital relationship that, you are simply not ready to enter into a relationship if you are not ready to share such with your parents or your mentors. Why will you want to keep your “love” life from those who care about you? It is either the relationship is unhealthy (sexually exploitive) or you are simply not at the ideal stage of your life to take such a step. In my counselling young people, I have come across countless teens who are in sexually exploitive relationships and when you quiz them, you come to realize that no person of authority knows about such steps they have taken in life.
It is important to note that when it comes to relationship, the truth is that we won’t have trouble finding an answer (or a dozen answers) to any of our questions in relationships, especially in today’s technological world. The scary reality is that we can find an answer somewhere to justify what we want to do — right or wrong, safe or unsafe, wise or unwise. For many of us, if we’re honest, it really doesn’t matter who’s offering the advice as long as it confirms what we thought or wanted in the first place.
It is always good to open up your intention to your parents, your church leaders, friends who share a common Christ-centred interest with you to guide you in this critical decision-making process so as to become a victor and not a victim – because it can be a very slippery road to travel on. Therefore fight the impulse to pursue a relationship in a corner by yourself, and instead draw others into this important relationship. Such people step in when we are losing focus and spending too much time with your intended partner and begin to neglect other important areas of your life. They raise red flags when a relationship seems to be travelling on an unhealthy pathway. They will ask questions to protect you so as to keep you in sexual purity. They will continually remind you not to put your hope in any relationship, to pursue patience and purity, and to communicate and lead well.
We shall continue the three other rules in Part 4 of this series.
