December 18, 2025
We hope that you and your family will have a very happy Christmas and New Year!
Check out the series Is Cohabitation a Good Way to Prepare for Marriage?, below.
New Urban Life Training Chapter Launched in Jefferson County, WV
Urban Life Training is happy to announce the formation and chartering of a new Chapter in Jefferson County WV. 
Congratulations to Tamara Thompson, the Chapter Director.
Tamara Thompson is a public affairs coordinator, political advocate, & community relations felicitator. Her primary focus is based on the essential obligation to advance our efficacious relationship with God. Establishing an unwavering connection with the divine nourishes our souls, minds, and bodies. We become pertinacious within our moralistic boundaries. We stand resolute, & confident within our faith. She displays a passion for encouraging, and guiding others by referencing her own lessons and experiences. After many trials, her soul demanded she walk God’s path. She’s a Firm believer that children are sacred with a natural instinct to evolve and advance their personal relationship with God. Sadly so many facets of society are designed to cause adverse consequences with misleading, grooming, and desensitizing our youth. These tactics include objectification and degradation. It’s our responsibility as parents, teachers, neighbors, friends, and community members to support and reinforce our youths self assuredness and worth. We must encourage their innate moral principles over the self deprecating pressures of societal indoctrinations.
She has dedicated a large portion of her life to early childhood education and volunteering within her local educational institutions. She has witnessed the negative impacts of demoralizing our youth, whether intentional or inadvertently, by normalizing overt sexuality. In order to tip the scales for a better tomorrow, she believes we must encourage self awareness, love, and spiritual growth.
Is Cohabitation a Good Way to Prepare for Marriage? Part 2
Chapter 2 of the Unification Principle is The Human Fall. Since God created this beautiful ideal of the family, what went wrong? We know there is this being called Satan, the perpetrator of evil, but where did Satan come from; what was the root of sin? What is the fall of man? Christians traditionally say it is some kind of vague fruit, but the Unification Principle says that it is clearly a symbolic fruit, not the fruit of an actual tree. What would be so tempting that Adam and Eve would be tempted to fall? Just an apple? They had plenty to eat.
We have a clue. After they ate this fruit they covered their lower parts, indicating that this was a sexual sin. You can learn the details by studying The Fall of Man here.
The Fall of Man had to do with perfected Adam, symbolized by the tree of life, and Eve, symbolized by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was not just a snake which tempted them. This snake was symbolic of a spiritual being, because this snake conversed with Adam and Eve. It knew the will of God. It caused the human fall. The angel fell as a result of an illicit sexual relationship. Jesus said in John 8:44 "You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires." How could the devil be our father? The only way that can be true is if there is some kind of blood relationship. Human beings are the descendants of Satan, the ancient serpent who tempted human beings.
Two excellent resources are UrbanLifeTraining.org and UnionStation.love. Urban Life Training raises youth leaders to model and teach about the benefits of sexual abstinence, in preparation for marriage and successful family formation. This mission is carried out by local chapters. You can form a chapter in your own area. You can also become a member of Urban Life Training as a school, a parent, or an individual and gain access to all of the great materials at urbanlifetraining.org.
These materials include Relationship Intelligence slides, videos, activities, video clips for discussion, peer counseling video clips and scripts, presenter training recordings, the STAR Interfaith Leadership Training 10 week program and much more. These are all include in your membership for just $49 per year.
Check out the many article and newsletters at Urban Life Training, too, such as Eight Facts about Forced Vaccination in West Virginia. Find out how you can form a Chapter in your local community, or if you are a college student, on your college campus. Check out back issues of this newsletter, too.
Our sister site is UnionStation.love, the site for finding your eternal match. Be the One. Find the One. Those who are abstinent before marriage can find their eternal match. You will be able to learn from the Blessing Preparation Course and prepare to become a Blessed family. This is for those who are either sexually abstinent or who have returned to sexual abstinence. This is a purpose driven and purposeful way to find your eternal match. All candidates are verified, they are real people; there are no fake profiles. You will have a meaningful process geared toward finding your eternal match.
In conclusion, is cohabitation a good way to prepare for marriage? The answer is a resounding "No". Don't do it. If you are cohabiting and you are serious about getting married, then move out. The only exception that I would suggest is that if you already have children, you effectively are a married couple. In that case, you can apply for our Blessing Preparation Course. You will at some point go through a period of 40 days of sexual abstinence with your mate. Then you can become a Blessed couple. And, of course, you should get legally married as part of that whole process. In general, though, if you don't have children, I would highly urge you to move out. If that breaks your relationship, so be it. It wasn't a very good one anyway.
It is the most mind bending thing when so many people think it is good to live together when it is absolutely not a good thing to live together without marriage.
Urban Life Training emphasizes the success formula for youth of graduating from high school, not having children until you are married and at least 21 years old, and getting a full time job. If you follow all of these rules, there is a two percent chance that your family will live in poverty. If you don't follow any of these rules, there is an 74 percent chance that your family will live in poverty. It's really simple, but our whole society is emphasizing the wrong thing. Finding your eternal match is really about you preparing yourself. It will help a lot if you take some practical steps, like joining UnionStation.love and practicing abstinence yourself, or returning to abstinence.
Is Cohabitation a Good Way to Prepare for Marriage? Part 1
An estimated 70% of couples today will cohabit before marrying. Is this a good idea? As pointed out in an article by Brad Wilcox and Alysse ElHage, Taylor Swift and her boyfriend Joe Alwyn broke up after six years of living together. Living together before marriage does not help you odds of having a successful marriage. In fact, it hurts your odds of having a successful marriage.
Fifty percent of white evangelicals believe that cohabitation is morally acceptable if a couple plans to marry, according to Pew research! A lot of people think that you should 'try before you buy'. People who would consider themselves 'well educated' still think that they should cohabit before marriage. In fact, jointly committed love is the foundation for a good marriage, and for many cohabiting couples, this is lacking. Cohabiting increases your chance of divorce from 20% to 25%. There is very little taboo now about living with someone before marriage and practicing sex outside of marriage. And that really is a shame.
Pastors, parents and schools should emphasize that cohabiting is a bad idea, and that it does not work toward building a stable marriage. Steve Harvey, the radio and television personality has had three marriages. But what is he telling his own daughters? He is telling them to get married first, based on his own experiences in cohabiting. Maybe Taylor Swift will give her own daughters and sons the same advice in the future; get married first before having sex, we hope.
Let's now look at a more internal perspective on why not to have sex before marriage. In this show (The Richard Urban Show) we emphasize the Unification Principle point of view. Paramount is that we follow God's plan for marriage. Anyone who created themselves, please raise your hand! You were 'created' by your parents, but really, you are created by God, working through the sexual union of your parents. In Genesis 1:28, we are told to 'be fruitful, multiply and have dominion over creation'. To be fruitful means to unite your mind and body, centered on God to become a perfected individual. In light of this direction from God, at the sister site to Urban Life Training, UnionStation.love the motto is "Be the one to find the one".
The current environment of dating sites has allowed psychopathic men to take advantage of women, who are the biggest losers in this culture of hook-up. God's first blessing is individual perfection, and sexual abstinence before marriage is a big part of that. The second blessing is family perfection; a God-centered family consisting of a God-centered husband, wife and children. In the Unification Principle this is called the four-position foundation. A family or society that has formed the four-position foundation in line with God's ideal is patterned after the image of a perfect individual. It this becomes the substantial object partner to the individual who lives in oneness with God, and consequently, it also becomes the substantial object partner to God.
The third blessing is the perfection of a human being's dominion over the natural world; to fulfill this blessing, human beings and the natural world should become completely one, thereby establishing a God-centered four-position foundation of dominion. By fulfilling the three great blessings, we return joy to God.
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We highly encourage you to form a Chapter of Urban Life Training in your local area. Apply to be a Chapter here.
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Are you telling your children to abstain from sex before marriage? Abstinence before marriage is the most crucial part of the success formula for your child's life.
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