Living in Sin

Jer. 50:6 My people hath been lost sheep: their shepherds have caused them to go astray, they have turned them away on the mountains: they have gone from mountain to hill, they have forgotten their restingplace.

People love to read about OTHER people having hard times and struggling with life. Take for example what you read everyday (whether internet or the newspaper) Is the first thing you read about a lost dog whose found its owner? Good things happening in the world? No? You read about the house fire that took lives and a home. You read about all the negative things happening in the world and why? Because humans are wired to relish other people’s pain, it seems to me.

Please don’t give me the bull about it being the only thing that is being reported. That’s just hogwash, it is what you CHOSE to read, isn’t it? Just like my blogging days, you don’t read the Feel-Good posts (some do and I thank you) and my uplifting words, I get amazingly more hits when I talk about everything that goes WRONG in my life. Humans are hard-wired that way.

Now onto me living in sin: Here’s the gist. I am living with a man and am unmarried to this man. Period! Right? WRONG! It is sinful, I know this but it continues? I have been with Steven eleven years now. Sure it would be so easy to just walk away and give up on this friendship entirely but is that what would please Him?

Last year my friend at church encouraged me to get the much needed divorce from my ex to make things right with God. My ex kept saying for years that HE’D file and by last year and still no filing, I took it upon myself and God saw to it that everything went smoothly and the divorce was finalized. My friend also assumed that the divorce would open the door and allow Steven and I to be married, but a proposal never came. Did I weep and stomp my feet demanding marriage? No. Why? Because I really didn’t want ‘marriage’.

I am a female, living with a man. And that’s a sin?  I’m not having adulterated sex, hosting orgies, skipping from man to man, no, I’m a female living with a man who is taking care of me and my son; food, shelter, and the comfort of not being alone. And THAT is a sin? I don’t understand what makes one sin different from any other sin. Sin is sin, I get that.

So my church is against the ‘appearance’ of living as a couple and not being married in a spiritually blessed union. But isn’t judging me by ‘appearance’ a sin also? What makes it okay for them to sin? When mine is wrong ‘in their eyes’.

Last year when we had a ‘meeting’ with the pastor he flat out told me to leave Steven for a few months, date other people, and live life ‘outside of sin’, and if we found our way back to each other, marry, and THEN live together.

WHAT?

First of all, Steven is a caregiver! For eleven years he has taken care of me and we both have struggled through disabilities (his blindness and my arthritis in my back) and yet he STILL takes care of me. He knows I’m not eligible for S.S. or any other means of assistance from the government and yet he STILL takes care of me.

Second of all: Where would I go? No money. No family. Nothing. Just a son who still needs to get his license to get a job and a CAR!

Thirdly: Meet other men? No thank you! I have been with two men in my life and three strikes I’m out! So no, dating another man is not an option for me.

This judgment of ‘living in sin’ has placed enormous guilt on me. I never felt guilty before everyone started saying, “When are you two getting married?” and “Living in sin is a sin not accepted by Christ!”

So are they telling me that if we walked up to Christ, He’d look us in the eye and say, “I can’t help you as long as you are living in sin.”? Really?  Is this the Christ I’m eternally faithful to? Am I disillusioned?

NO I’M NOT!!!

I KNOW what the bible says about marriage. The sanctity of marriage is a spiritual sacred step that two people take in binding themselves together, til death do they part! Steven and I don’t feel that for one another and that is wrong? This is where my confusion creeps in.

I love Steven, he is my best friend who knows every ugly thing about me and I him. We’re roommates and nothing more and I’m being judged for living with my best friend? I have taken this to God and HE doesn’t judge us. HE knows us, our situation and has NEVER put on our hearts to get married so as not to ‘live in sin’. HE knows our sin, sent his Son to DIE for our sin and when people go around judging other people for their sins, I’d like to say, he who is without sin, go ahead, cast the first stone!

When I met my ex, I was 15. I married him at seventeen and we stayed married for twenty years before it fell apart. We knew it was broken and we made the decision to part. He let me down. I was spiritually bound to him for life and he let me down in a big way.

The blossoming friendship online grew to a physical friendship in person with Steven. I knew he didn’t love God the way I did and I thought I could ‘help’ him find God. Not by force, just by happenstance meaning by things that happened, he’d turn to God. And sure enough he did but then this trivial thing with the church happened and he’s giving up on God? How sad to watch his nine years of growth go right down the tubes. I think ego and pride, YouTube, gaming (works of satan) stepped in and snared him.

And now satan wants me to step aside and leave Steven to him? I don’t think so, satan! That is NOT how I roll! I will stay until he tells me to leave. I will be a caring, loving friend for his lifetime if he needs me to be. I will continue to show him how Christ works in MY life and maybe, just maybe one day he’ll be swayed BACK to Christ. Just because he’s giving up on God does NOT mean God is giving up on him!

Prov. 28: 10 Whoso causeth the righteous to go astray in an evil way, he shall fall himself into his own pit: but the upright shall have good things in possession.