*Disclaimer: I always hated that song, even though it was a hit during the peak of my teenage-music-loving days. Read on to see why.
=============
I was just out of high school when I got married. I wouldn’t change that. I come from a family full of young marriages that have lasted and been good. I believe that stringing out an engagement just because you feel it’s bad to get married “too young” can be dangerous.
First of all, if you are engaged then you have this understanding that marriage is in the future. String that out for over a year and you more than likely will end up with the couple “engaging” in premarital sex. Yeah, in case you wondered or hadn’t figured it out yet, I believe premarital sex is wrong. My faith says it’s to be avoided, that it’s a sin.
Now that that’s out of the way…
This is how I see it: intercourse is God’s design. He invented it. So that makes it good. However, it can only be “good” within the confines of His will, which is marriage, a man and a woman. (I’m sorry, if you’ve come here and been shocked by my politically incorrect stance on these things. They are not open for debate on my blog. Thanks for respecting that.)
When we pervert that gift, because sex is a gift to man from a loving God, then we set ourselves up for many heartaches and failures. Intercourse is an intimacy unlike any other. It is a physical joining of two bodies that involves all our senses. In this way, it will also include our spiritual selves. So in esscence, we are mingling our very souls with the person we engage with in a sexual relationship.
I’ll assume you can see how serious an issue that can be. Now, inside a marriage, that is a very good, needful, desired thing. A man and woman SHOULD be “joined at the souls” in a marriage. However, when you have sex with just anyone, whoever currently turns your head, lights your fire, whatever, then you are essentially giving away a piece of yourself…of your very soul.
I’m sure some will disagree with this and that’s fine. That mindset is part of why our society views sex the way it does today. It’s “just sex”, it’s not a joining of two people in the deepest, most holy way two humans can connect. (yes, sex was meant to be holy…didn’t you know?)
I can remember sitting in a room full of 5th-7th graders trying to explain this to them. All you could hear if you walked through the group during free time was talk of who was “dating” who and all that nonsense. I flashed back to my own time during that stage of life. I, too, had had boyfriends back then, however, “going with” or “dating” someone back then had a whole different meaning than it does today or did at the time I taught this class on Wednesday nights. Of course, I didn’t talk directly about sex to them, but tried to explain what it meant for them to invest so fully in another person at such a young age.
I’m pretty sure it all went in one ear and out the other…if it made it into the first ear at all!
It broke my heart to watch them give away bits and pieces of themselves and I felt so powerless to do anything. We had them for an hour every week, if that. Many of them were from broken homes and would only make it to church every so often. They had prime examples at home of how to “date” and what people do to and with each other. I am sure some of them were being abused or at least neglected.
I determined to teach my own sons differently, and even then, the world came along and scarred them anyway.
But I digress…Let me get back to the adultness of the matter. I’m sure that many of you reading this are thinking, “Well this is too little too late. I’ve already been there, done that.” The age when we are introduced to sexual information and material seems to get younger and younger every year. But take heart. If you find any wisdom in my words, if you couple them with what scripture teaches us about this, but you are already engaging in premarital sex, you CAN stop. You can repent. You can ask God’s forgiveness and start over.
Whether you want to do that is another matter, but it IS possible.
I believe that our sexual selves, our virginity, whatever you want to call it at this stage, is a precious, rare gift. It’s meant to be given to the person you commit your life to in marriage. If you view it as such, it becomes much easier to protect it from the damage of casual sex and relationships.
If you see it as the one and only gift you will have to give to your future spouse, and you realize that each time you “give it” to someone else OR EVEN to the person you will eventuall marry, it will be tarnished, torn and worth much less than it would have been if you’d kept it intact.
Now, if you have already gone down that path, if you are currently involved in the sin of fornication/adultery there is hope. God doesn’t look at our pasts or even our current sins and just throw us away because of that. We can repent, which means to turn away from, whatever it is we are doing that’s against God’s will…whether it’s sexual or otherwise. That’s the defining factor in whether or not we’re serious about being right with the Lord in every area of our lives.
So, let’s talk about it. You can disagree with me, but let’s keep it civil and respectful. Let’s learn more about how God sets these boundaries for our protection and to give us that life abundant!
Blessings,
G~
gottagetagrip.wordpress.com 