*RIGHT & WRONG FOUNDATIONS DURING THE ENGAGEMENT PERIOD**A. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COURTSHIP & ENGAGEMENT 💍 *
Christian courting is the process of a young man seeking out a young woman, under the supervision of the Church, for the purpose of finding a spouse (man) or receiving a spouse (woman).
Courtship is about open and honest exploration of each other’s lives and families leading up to engagement and marriage. Courtship is about marriage - you court in order to see if there is any reason why you shouldn’t get married to that person. During courtship, you should cultivate each other as friends (you MUST become friends); make sure that you share the same passion and commitment to Christ; make sure that you have the same belief systems; inform your parents and then commit to marry each other! This is not a time to be romantically attached to each other.
Courtship is a word that has been adopted to describe a biblical model for the relationship leading up to marriage. In the Bible, the parents were always involved in the marriage process. They did not arrange the marriage without the children’s consent, although they were certainly involved in the arrangements. Sometimes the parents found partners for the children, and then the children were consulted for their opinion. Other times the father of man would approach the woman’s father and make arrangements with him.
Engagement starts after there has been an actual proposal by the brother AND an acceptance by the sister and both are committed to their decision. Being engaged is a relationship recognized by God, that is, as soon as you commit to marry each other, you already move to Holy Ground. Two biblical terms are used for this type of relationship – betrothed and espoused – as seen in the following scriptures Deuteronomy 20:7, 22, Leviticus 19:20, and Matthew 1:18.
Another way of putting it is that there are only two kinds of relationship between Christian brothers and sisters that is recognized by God:
(a) Being engaged
(b) Being married.
Different rules apply to each type however and the rest of this text is devoted to learning about rules that apply to the engagement period.
*B. RIGHT FOUNDATIONS*
_1. Examine your convictions and your motives (Proverbs 4:26; 14:15;
22:3, Psalms 15)_
Convictions are very powerful things. They motivate a man/woman and keep him/her going even when there is opposition. You need to tell yourself the truth in your heart (Psalms 15). Proverbs 4:26, 22:3 & 14:15 all stress the importance of looking well ahead to where you are going. This is a vital part of being careful. You should be able to document your attractions to your fiancée and judge the importance of each of these attractions – 1 Peter 3:3-5. This is in fact an assignment at this stage. You need to answer such things as:
_What are my convictions based on?_
_Am I in this relationship as a response to economic, domestic, societal or sexual pressures?_
_What are the other person’s convictions?_
_Are there incompatibilities of any kind – intellectual, spiritual?_
_If there are, how do we deal with these?_
One important characteristic of convictions is that they are not necessarily right. The fact that someone is strongly convicted about something and even willing to die for it does not make that thing right. Clear examples of this are suicide bombers. The Bible also talks about submitting your convictions regardless of how supernatural/spectacular they came about to the authority of God’s Word. Any conviction that came from an open vision after 40 days of dry fasting that does not line up with the revealed principles of God in the Bible is from the devil. This is why you need to submit such convictions to spiritual authority. The safest and surest way God leads His people is through the Word and by His anointed ministers.
*2. Put all your cards on the table (1 Kings 9:4, Proverbs 11:3; 19:1; 20:7;
14:15)*
You need to be completely honest with your fiancée/fiancé on things like
Health defects
Aspects of your past that have a consequence on your present & future life (e.g. having a child before)
Good aspects of your personality and the ones you are currently working on to improve etc
This also provides an opportunity for both of you to start correcting by the mirror principle the things you want to improve on.
*3. Prayer*
Being engaged automatically means you now have an extra person to pray regularly for. You need to spend time to prayer for the same issues but you do not have to pray in each other’s house together. Set a time in the night to pray for your marriage. Pray about the kind of life you want as a couple, about the children God will give you, about your involvement in Church after marriage, etc.
*4. Start Making Adjustments In Your Finances*
At the very least, you need to start saving for the range of wedding ceremonies you need to have. More importantly however is that since you will have extra responsibilities – spouse and later on children, you need to
be more disciplined with certain expenditure and be more concerned with investments.
*C. WRONG Or WEAK FOUNDATIONS*
*1. Fornication (1 Corinthians 6:15-20; 5:1-5, Hebrews 13:4)*
Sexual intercourse between people who have not been married is fornication. The Bible describes it as a sin against your own body! It can lead to premature physical death as seen in 1 Corinthians 5 if not repented of. Fornication also includes any intimate sexual play such as caressing, fondling or viewing of the nakedness.
*2. Don’t Get into Compromising Situations (1 Thessalonians 5:22, 2
Corinthians 7:1)*
A compromising situation is a situation that causes others to doubt your testimony as a Christian. Anything that will cause people to say things like
‘we thought you people were Christians’ is an appearance of evil and should be avoided. This includes things like being seen coming out of dark places together or been seen in each other company in one party’s house at late hours of the night; or spending the night in each other’s places and saying that ‘nothing happened’. Or you travel together and share the same hotel room, etc
In this category also is calling each other pet names, making clothes from the same material (and co) to wear to occasions like weddings, etc. You should not act as married couples because you are not!
*3. Don’t Start Buying Things Together!*
Avoid having a joint account or buying things together whether they are big things like a car, land or even little things like pots, kettles etc. Wait until you are married. The engagement period is a time to start positioning yourselves to be more relevant to the kingdom. The best way to do this financially is to come together to give for the Kingdom not to buy things for yourselves (Matthew 6:21).
*4. Don’t Live a Lie (Jeremiah 23:14 NIV, Colossians 3:9)*
Don’t do things you do not intend to keep up when you are married e.g. if you do not intend to be following your wife to the market, then do not do it while engaged.
*5. End All ‘Close’ Relationships With The Opposite Sex*
When you are engaged, you must re-define all other relationships with the opposite sex. You must not have any relationship with someone of the opposite sex that gives the impression that you are ‘involved’ with that person. You have made a commitment to your fiancé/fiancée and must burn all your other bridges. You should not flirt as a Christian so tell such a
person in very clear terms that you are engaged. If they gave you gifts because they had a ‘special’ relationship with you before, tell your fiancé/fiancée about it and offer to return the gifts to the person. This is particularly true of sisters; make sure you have not collected gifts under the guise that the brother is ‘chasing’ you and then you go and get engaged to someone else!
*D. WHEN & HOW To BREAK AN ENGAGEMENT*
The engagement period is not a period for trial and error! Just as you do not enter marriage with divorce as an option, so also you do not get engaged to marry with the attitude of coming out if it does not work out! Since God recognizes the relationship, it is Holy Ground and you cannot just back out whenever you feel like nor have issues that are not resolved to your liking. This is one of the reasons why you should get the Church involved even at the courtship stage.
However, it is recognized that some people (who usually did not get adequate counsel in the first place) get into relationships for the wrong reasons/motives and with the wrong person. The Word of God, through texts such as this, convicts such individuals. In these cases, it must be submitted to the Church elders who will treat the case on its individual merit and advise the proper way of coming out of such relationships.
*Two clear cases of engagements that should be broken are:*
_One party is not a Christian (2 Corinthians 6:14-17)_
_Those contracted before either or both parties became Christians (2 Corinthians 5:17)._
