Sexual Purity

As a teenager I went to several different conferences. Among them was one called True Love Waits. I cannot tell you word for word what was said, but the gist was to abstain from sex until marriage. Something that I had heard my entire life.

The problem with that being what I took from the conference was that sex is just one physical act between a man and a woman. Being young and innocent and having no concept that there was more than just that one physical act, I decided that I would stand strong and remain a virgin until I was married.

I am so thankful that I made that decision.

BUT.

I wish that I had taken more from that conference. I wish that someone had pulled me aside and told me that God doesn't call us to just be virgins on our wedding day, but He calls us to be sexually pure.

Being sexually pure brings so much more to the equation.

When I got to college, I decided to start studying exactly what the Bible says about not just sex, but purity.

My favorite passage is 1 Corinthians 6:18-20. It says, "Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body."

YOU WERE BOUGHT AT A PRICE.

Christ paid that price with His life. Honor God with your body. What a simple way to bring glory to God.

Hebrews 13:4 says, "Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral."

In no way did I think that what I did would dishonor my marriage. I wasn't married. In my mind, in order to dishonor my marriage, I had to be married. Um no. Everything you do sexually outside of marriage dishonors your marriage. Not only that, but God will judge the sexually immoral. So even if I hadn't gotten married I would still face consequences for my actions.

The last passage I want to share with you is 1 Timothy 4:12. It says, "Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity."

As you can see, apparently I just listened to everyone else on matters of the Bible as a teenager and never really picked it up for myself to read it. If I had, I may have seen that these passages do not simply say "flee from sex", "God will judge those who have sex" or "set an example by not having sex".

Yes, they include sex, but it covers everything sexual.

For some it may even include a first kiss or hand holding. If you can't kiss someone and keep your thoughts pure, you shouldn't be kissing them.

Working with students, I see myself in each girl. Wanting to follow God. Wanting to serve Him. Yet so caught up in wanting a boy to like me. A boy to think that I was beautiful and that I was special.

Sadly, my thoughts of myself were small and I did not set my sights on what God thought of me. It wasn't until I was in my freshmen year of college, my first summer really, that I realized that I did not need a guy in my life to feel beautiful and special.

What I needed was God to fill that void.

I took the end of my first semester, all summer, and a little of that next semester to truly see myself through God's eyes. Satan was there waiting to test me. But I held strong.

During that time is when God started making it very clear to me that He had designed someone special for me. Someone who would compliment my strengths and weaknesses perfectly. Someone better than I ever let myself believe I deserved.

My husband.

I hope that when my girls are older they don't have to struggle with the questions and hurts that I did. That they can know clearly that God has called them to be pure. That they are so deeply in love with Him that they feel special and beautiful because they see themselves the way that God sees them. And that if they are called to get married someday, that God has someone wonderful for them. Someone designed specifically for them, better than they could ever imagine for themselves.