How Not To Cast Your Pearls Before Time

[Emerald]

My first request is for prayer. Prayer that I and my partner will have the strength to wait until marriage to engage in a sexual relationship.

I am a divorced female minister trying to live my life as close to God's plan as humanly possible who has found myself with an unsatisfied hunger, thirst to engage in sexual relations before re-marriage to a man that I love dearly and he loves me in the same fashion. Its a daily struggle and I am so afraid that I am going to lose the battle and disappoint God and myself. My partner, soulmate, wants to do the right right thing as well and wait until the marriage vows have been spoken but its hard for him as well, probably harder for him than I.

I know clearly what the Word of God says and how we are supposed to conduct ourselves, however as of late I even find it hard to be in his company without thoughts of having sex with him. I afraid to be alone with him because I don't know if I have the strength or the will to not do-it. I don't want to be the cause of him compromising his place with God. These thoughts and feelings keep me up at night and consume way to much of my time

I also almost know what your answer to this quest will be, but please if you have any suggestions to offer they would be greatly apprciated; prayerly from the standpoint of a single person who understands what I am going through.

Thanks & God Bless
Emerald

[diana_holbourn]

It will probably help you if you make a deliberate attempt to re-focus your minds on other things when you're together, for instance, you could involve yourself in some kind of charity work or something that will help others that becomes a big project that you do together. Or you could try thinking of some other type of productive work to keep you both occupied in each other's company. Or you could read together. You could decide to do a study course together, just learn up more about a topic you're both interested in, perhaps at the library or on the Internet, or engage in a hobby together that you both enjoy. Your relationship will be enriched if you manage to think of lots of different things you could do together so you don't think about sex so often. It will also be developed; you'll find out more about each other the more different things you do together. Hopefully what you find out will be agreeable and will strengthen the relationship, but if you discover that you don't have as much in common as you thought you had and start to doubt whether you really are suitable for each other, that too will be a good thing, as it might prevent a marriage that's likely to run out of steam.

You could try reading all the Christian testimonies you can find online together. You can pray together more. You could visit prayer request sites on the Internet and spend some time while in each other's company praying for all the sick and dying and otherwise needy people people post requests for online. If you put the search term prayer requests into Google you'll probably find quite a few.

You could also do things with others more. That will relieve temptation and keep you occupied with other things. You can get to know important things about him in a group situation as well as alone.

You could put something between you like sitting across a table from each other when you're alone, and don't engage in sexually arousing activity with each other like kissing or fondling. You might think you want to express your love for each other that way, but it'll make you want him more.

Finally, you could read accounts of things that have gone wrong when people have indulged in sex before marriage and advice on why it's best not to, to remind yourself, such as that you can find if you follow the link The Wisdom of Biblical Commands. The second little section is the relevant one. Some of the articles there won't be relevant to you, but some might, about unwanted consequences of sex before marriage. You might think that nothing bad could ever happen to you because you love each other, but you must have thought you loved your previous husband and yet the relationship foundered; so if this one happened to do so before the wedding day, you wouldn't want to be left feeling as if your self-respect had been damaged because you engaged in sex with someone you weren't even married to and were no longer with, or more hurt because of the break-up, as you probably would be, because getting physical intensifies feelings people have for each other. Or you wouldn't want to risk a contraceptive failure and then to have to cope with an unwanted pregnancy on your own. God makes these rules for our own protection. So reasoning these things through, building a good case as to why you shouldn't have sex right now, might help. The links are part of a much bigger page of links on answers to critics who challenge the truth of the Bible. Since you say you're a minister and your man's a Christian, You might find something in there to study together, which may aid your ministry as well as helping with your problem now.