mochi

I don't feel called to leave him. However, I feel extremely called to open up communication on our relationship and encourage him to meet my new Christian friends. But I am very new at this, and it could just be my feelings blinding me as well. :/

Your convictions are good. What is it you want to communicate about specifically? Thanks! These are the points I want to hit: 1) I wan to touch base with how he feels about the relationship not that we are not physically intimate. I would like to set boundaries so neither of us will be too tempted to sin. 2) I want to know what he plans for our future, or if he has any plans at all for me or not. 3) I wan to ask him if he's willing to look into Christianity, not so that he will become Christian, but so he could understand what makes me tick, and what I might expect from a marraige and family life later if we were to go forward.

I need some godly and wise advice on this subject, and thought this would be a great place to start. A lot of the advice I am getting in the Christian community has been extremely vague and not very helpful. I'm currently a new Christian who has been dating a non-Christian for 4 and a half years. We started our relationship when we were both non-Christians in college. We have helped each other throughout college, and developed a really awesome friendship. I moved in with him three months after we started the relationship, having sex like it was no big deal. My relationship with him, while good, lacked something deeper that I tried to feel with physical closeness. I didn't know it then, but once I had a worldview change it all came together...but I'm getting ahead of myself. During these past four years I opened a lot of doors that probably should have stayed closed. First of course, was the sexual sin, our relationship seemed to revolve around it to the point where I would get frustrated because the only things we would do together were sexual. Secondly, his brother was a drug dealer before I met him (and my boyfriend would help deal his wares at times) so I was surrounded by lots of free illegal drugs and started to party, drink, and use drugs. THey put me in a really bad head space, and I regret my choice to experiment with them. Thirdly, since I was taking lots of mind altering drugs, I was also getting into witchcraft and the occult. The spirit world I saw during my drug use was extremely enticing to me. I became saved around the time where I wanted to initiate myself into solitary witchcraft. I'm not going to tell my conversion story, but I will say that it challenged my occultism, my partying/substance abuse, and my sexuality. Long story short, God reached into my life and changed me into a new person with new desires. So now I'm a new Christian, figuring out how to do life. I'm part of a church, a small group, and am building relationships with mature Christians. But... I have a non-Christian boyfriend...who I'm living with. He's been extremely positive about my Christian life. SInce I changed, we have gotten rid of all the drugs(and drug paraphernalia), slowed down partying (we will go out with friends for a drink every once in a while), and have completely stopped having sex. He has expressed interest in Christianity because i have, and I recently bought him a bible and have prayed that God work in his life. The sad thing is, I never know if he will ever become a Christian, and I am not going to sin by marrying a non-Christian. We haven't talked about our sex life, I think it's just an unspoken thing (I guess he assumes that Christians don't have pre-marital sex, which is correct in my case). It's now been 5 months since our last sexual encounter(since I became a Christian). We're living like a married couple aside from a lack of spiritual, emotional, and physical intimacy. We are buddies. But he's still me best friend who I love dearly. But I have recently been convicted that I can't let fear make me put my boyfriend before God. I need to open up communication, I need to make a move...but I don't know what to say or what to do. I am paralyzed by fear of conflict in my life. Our lives are so connected and intertwined I cannot comprehend a life apart from him. HELP!!!

I seem to remember Tim Keller in his book, The Reason for God talk about this. Secularism and new atheism are rising, but so are numbers of religious followers.(especially in African and South American cultures) I think what we are seeing is a polarization in the youth of the world today...which I don't think is a good thing.

When I was lost I was a daily marijuana smoker, so the idea of smoking only makes me think about getting high. I have, every once in a while, had a puff of a tobacco pipe. Other than that, I stay away from smoking altogether.