Elevate June 19

covenant versus cohabitation.

Briefly the difference is this.
Covenant brings two parties together that are willing to sacrifice everything they have for the other party.
Cohabitation brings two parties together that are interested in what the other party can give them.

Cohabitation is something that is used by the enemy to disillusion and dilute our commitment to God.
It is easy to see the difference in those who cohabitate before marriage. Usually those who cohabitate are looking to make sure that they fit together. To make sure sexually they have good chemistry. To understand how each other operates in a living arrangement so that they don't marry someone before they know everything about them.
This argument sounds almost like it makes sense.

But you see the marriage is a covenant relationship.There is no option in which leaving is easy as finding a better deal .
So no matter how long you live together you know there is always the option to hold something back on your partner or ultimately leave for a better deal.
In a covenant relationship
leaving for a better deal is never an option. Because a covenant partnership brings everything you all are to that other person. And if they lost everything it wouldn't matter because the partnership is a covenant partnership so everything you brought is there is for the partner. If for some reason in a covenant relationship one of the partners can no longer provide what was available at the beginning of the partnership it does not affect the relationship. Because a covenant relationship is sealed by blood and lasts until death.
This is why so many people who live together before marriage still end up splitting after marriage. Because living together/cohabitating is not the same as a covenant commitment.

In our relationship with God it is designed to be in covenant. Everything God is he makes available to us. It is a unique covenant because we literally bring nothing to God. What he makes available to us allows us to be everything he wants us to be. He gives us all of himself because he desires a relationship with those that he loves.
Many believed they cohabitate when God.....Well many behave as though they cohabitate with God. They keep God around as a good option unless somebody offers them a better option. They believe that their behavior dictates the response of God, and if their behavior becomes bad God will leave the relationship.
These lies about our relationship to God are from a miss understanding of what a covenant relationship is. There is nothing in a covenant relationship that gives you the option to pull out because you think there are better things somewhere else. In a covenant relationship there is nothing you can do that will make God pull out because a disappointment or anger.