Silas
Faithful Servant
What you just described is not love. It is sin, and it is a crime. That man violated you. He assaulted you, and forcing himself on you while pinning your hands was an act of violence, not intimacy. The fact that he is now being pushy about you moving in shows the fruit of this relationship. He is not seeking your good; he is seeking his own desires, and the pressure you feel is the anguish of being pressed into a narrow place, not the freedom of a loving covenant.
The deepest issue here is not whether to move in. The deepest issue is your relationship with God. The first four commandments deal with that vertical axis, because until that axis is right, every other relationship will twist out of balance. You can spend all your energy trying to fix this one broken, dangerous dynamic, but while you focus there, the rest of your life will continue to spin into chaos. The only lasting way to correct the horizontal is to return to the vertical. If your relationship with God is corrected through trusting in Jesus Christ, your relationship with this man will become clear. You will see that you cannot be unequally yoked together with him, for what fellowship does the temple of God have with idols of selfish lust?
Do not mistake strong desire for a sign that you belong together. The fact that he is a slave to his sexual passions and is destroying what is precious is the very evidence that this relationship is not built on the foundation God established. A true, loving relationship with the Lord is not a ritual checklist or a legal bond of obligation. It is a living communion where you know Him as a Father who protects His children. When your relationship with God is right, you have a right relationship with the devil, too, and you will not let him steal your safety and dignity through a man who claims to care for you but uses your body against your will.
What he did last month still matters. The boots he has not returned are a sign that he retains control, but you do not need his permission to break free. Come out from among him; be separate. Do not touch the unclean thing. The path he is pushing you toward follows the pattern that Scripture lays bare: aroused passions lead to inordinate relationships, which lead to deep harm and the sacrifice of your well-being on the altar of his appetite. God wants you to have a marriage that reflects a beautiful, sacred intimacy, not a living situation born of compulsion and past violence.
Turn your heart back to that first love, the love of Jesus, who gave His life to bring you into a relationship with the Father. In that relationship, you are not squeezed by pressure but enlarged by grace. Let Him bring your whole being back into balance. The fruit of a right relationship with God is not being forced onto a path of sin, but being led beside still waters. Seek that face today, and let Him show you the way out.
The deepest issue here is not whether to move in. The deepest issue is your relationship with God. The first four commandments deal with that vertical axis, because until that axis is right, every other relationship will twist out of balance. You can spend all your energy trying to fix this one broken, dangerous dynamic, but while you focus there, the rest of your life will continue to spin into chaos. The only lasting way to correct the horizontal is to return to the vertical. If your relationship with God is corrected through trusting in Jesus Christ, your relationship with this man will become clear. You will see that you cannot be unequally yoked together with him, for what fellowship does the temple of God have with idols of selfish lust?
Do not mistake strong desire for a sign that you belong together. The fact that he is a slave to his sexual passions and is destroying what is precious is the very evidence that this relationship is not built on the foundation God established. A true, loving relationship with the Lord is not a ritual checklist or a legal bond of obligation. It is a living communion where you know Him as a Father who protects His children. When your relationship with God is right, you have a right relationship with the devil, too, and you will not let him steal your safety and dignity through a man who claims to care for you but uses your body against your will.
What he did last month still matters. The boots he has not returned are a sign that he retains control, but you do not need his permission to break free. Come out from among him; be separate. Do not touch the unclean thing. The path he is pushing you toward follows the pattern that Scripture lays bare: aroused passions lead to inordinate relationships, which lead to deep harm and the sacrifice of your well-being on the altar of his appetite. God wants you to have a marriage that reflects a beautiful, sacred intimacy, not a living situation born of compulsion and past violence.
Turn your heart back to that first love, the love of Jesus, who gave His life to bring you into a relationship with the Father. In that relationship, you are not squeezed by pressure but enlarged by grace. Let Him bring your whole being back into balance. The fruit of a right relationship with God is not being forced onto a path of sin, but being led beside still waters. Seek that face today, and let Him show you the way out.
