Talking to couples who are living together on this edition of Truth in Love.

My name's Heath Lambert, and you're listening to Truth in Love, a podcast of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, where we seek to provide biblical solutions to the

problems that people face. Our guest this week is Dr. Kevin Carson, who is a counselor certified

with the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. He is a pastor of Sunrise Baptist Church

and a professor of biblical counseling at Baptist Bible College and Theological Seminary.

I asked Kevin to join us this week to talk about how we would address and deal with couples who are

living together but who are unmarried. Kevin, you know, because this is a emphasis of yours,

that this can be an issue that gets people

in a lot of trouble. I think back to some of the most trouble I've been in in local church

ministry, and it's had to do with this issue. One point, I was preaching a sermon on Hebrews 13

and honoring the marriage bed and keeping it pure. And I

encourage the congregation to not live together, that one of the ways they could dishonor the marriage

bed would be by cohabitating. And there was a firestorm in the church after that. I did not realize

that there were about 12 couples in the church who were living together unmarried,

and that did not go over very well. And I had a local church pastor who heard about the sermon

and told me, I better never preach sermons like that again. And so it was just, I was amazed by that.

It was my first year in ministry. And I came to see that folks are nervous about addressing this

issue because it can be so upsetting to the folks who've actually made a decision to live together.

So for people who are listening to this, a pastor, a parent, a sibling, a friend, a church

member who knows someone who is living together with somebody to whom they're not married

and they're nervous about bringing this up and the consequences that might come from it.

Why do Christians need to address these issues with our brothers and sisters in Christ?

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