by Lucy | Jul 5, 2016 | biblical counseling, emotions, relationships
Doesn’t purity seems “old-fashioned” and “not relevant” in today’s sexy culture? Many Christian girls and women have given in to peer pressure and media messages that you’re weird if you aren’t sexually active. You remember what it was like to be young, hormones raging, don’t you?
Did you or a someone dear to you have sex before marriage? What did a loss of purity cost them or you?
In this short article, you’ll learn:
- the statistics on purity among young adult Christians
- the pressures to have sex before marriage
- how to reclaim purity
“Our souls crave intimacy”—Erwin Raphael McManus
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Like other Christian women, you may have planned to remain a virgin until your wedding night but then. . .your Christian girlfriends were sexually active and you thought, “What’s the harm,” or. . .your boyfriend pressured you to have sex, or. . .you were drunk and one thing led to the other. . .
The truth is: You can start over from where you are right now.
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You can find hope, help and healing.
Statistics on Purity
Are single Christians having sex?
Eighty percent of unmarried young adults (ages 18-29) who are self-identify as evangelical Christians have had sex, reports a study by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. The same study reported that this percentage is slightly less than the 88 percent for all unmarried young adults.
Yet virginity may be on the rise, suggests a 2011 report from the National Center for Health Statistics. Twelve years ago 22 percent of men and women under age 24 said they were abstinent. Five years later that figure stood at 29 percent for women and 27 percent for men.
TRUTH: Real intimacy is not found just by merging bodies in sex. There’s a high emotional component.
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Pressures Against Purity
including Porn!
MEDIA, CULTURE, MUSIC, PORN: The media markets sex. The culture encourages it. Music celebrates it. Pornography is so widespread that few Christian men and women (and children) have not seen it. Pornography creates a sick misunderstanding of God’s gift of sex. It become extremely selfish.
God designed sex to be selfless and beautiful–and between a husband and wife. In the Song of Solomon, the author Solomon describes the sexual longing of the woman on her wedding night:
Awake, O north wind,
And come, O south!
Blow upon my garden,
That its spices might flow out.
Let my beloved come to his garden
And eat its pleasant fruits (4:16).
LATER FIRST MARRIAGES: The average age for first marriages has increased over several decades. In 1965, the average man first married at age 22.8; the average woman, 20.6. In 2010, the average age was 28.1 for men and 26.1 for women, according the U.S. Bureau of Statistics.
Purity rings and True Love Waits campaigns don’t appeal to 30-something singles.
A college-educated, 27-year-old Christian woman told me, “I didn’t have sex in my teens and early twenties but now I have a boyfriend. I don’t sleep around. I’m careful with whom I have sex. Marriage isn’t what it used to be. It’s a different today.”
BIRTH CONTROL. Before the advent of the birth control control pill in 1960s, getting married and having babies went hand in hand. Now couples could have sex with little concern for pregnancy, removing a main reason for marriage. Says Albert Mohler in We Cannot Be Silent: “So long as sex was predictably related to the potential of pregnancy, a huge biological check on sex outside of marriage functioned as a barrier to sexual immorality. Once that barrier was removed, sex and children became effectively separated and sex became redefined as an activity that did not have any necessary relation to the gift of children. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the separation of sex and babies from the moral equation.”
A Story of Reclaimed Purity
Naomi (a composite of women I have counseled) desires to one day marry a Christian man, but her teens read like read like a Harlequin. As long as she liked the guy, they concluded the date in bed. Most of her friends did the same thing. What’s the cost of lost purity? How does lost purity hurt a Christian woman?
As Naomi and I talked, I learned that her upbringing influenced her view of her sexuality. Her dad was emotionally unavailable, and a family member had touched her inappropriately. She heard the gospel through a campus ministry and became a Christian but old patterns clung like Velcro. She still liked guys’ attention and was tempted to have sex with them. She struggled with feelings of remorse, confusion, and worthlessness.
In counseling she and other singles I’ve counseled discovered three important truths.
- God helps you overcome temptation. 1 Corinthians 10:13 says:
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
To face temptation, why not choose to be confident in the truth of God’s Word? Cultivate a daily walk with Jesus through prayer and Bible reading? Connect with a church? Commit to being thankful?
2. You are complete in Christ. Marriage doesn’t complete a woman, Jesus does. I counseled a woman who deeply desired marriage. Two disappointing relationships with men she met through an online Christian dating service brought her to my office. She felt depressed. She had the wrong belief she’d be happy only in marriage. During our time together she learned that singleness can be a gift (1 Corinthians 7:32-35) and she needed to wait on God’s timing (Psalm 91:2).
3. Choose to embrace “renewed abstinence.”
Renewed abstinence is obeying God’s Word to wait for sex until marriage. It’s reclaimed purity. God promises to help you as you build godly relationships with with fellow believers, both men and women.
Do you struggle with purity? Do you have questions about choices you made in your past? Do you want contentment? Please send me a message and will can talk and/or set up a counseling appointment by Skype or in person (in Chicago area).
Sharing Hope with Your Heart,
by Lucy | Sep 29, 2015 | biblical counseling, emotions, relationships |
Do you know how to help a woman with sexual stain? She may have had many partners before age 25 or had been sexually active in junior high, or earlier. Perhaps she was abused as a child then later chose a promiscuous lifestyle?
Do you know what to say? What not to say?
Do you know how to listen? How to guide her? Please know there’s hope. Jesus did not condemn the woman caught in adultery; he doesn’t condemn your friend or you. He has compassion for the broken-hearted. Listen:
The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” John 8:3-11
(If you have a sexually stained past, do you want help? Feel free to send me a message. Click HERE.)
Sexual Stain Is No Surprise
What you have seen in movies — and movie trailers, and prime time TV, and daytime TV, and DVDs, and video games, and billboards — is in your church. Many women in your church carry pain caused by sexual sin.
Are you surprised? Don’t be. The Bible predicted increasing sexual perversity.
But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God (2 Timothy 3:1-4, NIV).
Abusive? Yeah. Without love? That too. Rash? You’ve heard of hookups no doubt; even girls in junior high boast which guy they “slept” with the previous night — and she may not know his name! Without self-control? Ditto. Lovers of pleasure? A counterfeit pleasure.
A while back, my then teenaged daughter told me an eighth-grader at her school was pregnant. She was bothered but not upset. It seems every other young movie star or singer is carrying some guy’s baby. Like, whatever.
Many of our daughters and sons may have a blase attitude toward promiscuity. So do adults, many of them believers. Satan has deceived them. Sex is wonderful in the confines of biblical commands: one man, one woman, married. The enemy has had a field day. Let’s refuse to believe lies and help our hurting sisters.
Empowered by the Holy Spirit, as is every believer (who, by definition, has a saving faith in Jesus), I have counseled women who used to lead a promiscuous lifestyle. The Lord has healed them. Are there consequences from bad choices? Of, course. Some STDs cannot be treated. Some bad memories refuse to die. Virginity cannot be reclaimed. Marriage is more difficult due to previous sexual relationships (including intimate touch and oral sex, the latter being the “new” third base).
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows (Galatians 6:7, NIV).
At least half of the women I’ve counseled — all believers — were sexually or physically abused by a family member or a family friend as a young girl. This abuse put the wheels in motion for her poor decisions regarding sex as a preteen or teen. A commonality: They felt a deep sense of self-worthlessness and looked to guys for affirmation using sex to please him and feel desired, compounding the sense of self-worthlessness.
How to Help Prevent Sexual Stain
Since sexual stain often begins in high school or earlier — I’ve talked with third graders who regularly participated in sex “play” — here are a few ideas to help your own kids.
Communicate.
Promote open communication in your home so your kids (or grandkids, nieces or nephews) will tell you the tough stuff. Know who their friends are. Know where they are. Tell them to check in regularly. For school-age kids, ask the parents what DVDs are in the home. Years ago, a friend allowed her young boy attend a sleep-over where the parents showed an PG-13 movie. Oh man, did he get an eyeful! (Remember, PG-13 today would have received an R a decade or two ago.)
Trust your gut.
The Holy Spirit promises to help protect you and yours; follow the insight he gives you. One of my children used to play at a friend’s house where the dad wrestled with the kids on a bed in his son’s bedroom. I was uncomfortable beyond words when I learned of this “play” and forbid my child to go into the house.
Believe your child.
If your child tells you that another kid or an adult said something sexually suggestive to him or her or touched him or her improperly, choose first to believe and engage in a gentle conversation to draw out the details. As you hear the details, you may find out that a boy called your daughter a “fagot” — this happened to one of my children — but that was all. No need to get overly concerned. Or, you may learn that the older boy or girl across the street has suggested a game. A touching game. And he or she has threatened to kill her (or little sister) if she said anything. Serious! Time to call in the authorities and get help for your child.
Prevention is best. Keep your daughters and sons safe as best you can. Terrible things can happen despite your efforts and prayers. Just make them less likely.
And if your child — or a friend at church — chooses promiscuity, love them unconditionally and seek God. Jesus showed compassion toward the woman caught in adultery … shouldn’t we?
