Boy Meets Girl - Say Hello to Courtship (17 page)

Is the Bible exaggerating? No, it's not. Ask Michelle, a girl I met at a Christian bookstore in Phoenix. For twenty-two years she saved her virginity for her future husband. She was working as a model when she met an attractive man who was determined to deflower her. She toyed with him, loving the attention. Then one day on his apartment couch she gave in to his advances. Only once. Less than an hour of stolen pleasure. Now he's gone, and she's a single mom struggling to care for her fatherless two-year-old daughter.

The Bible isn't just being dramatic when it says that you'll "groan in anguish when disease consumes your body" Just ask the missionary in Asia that a pastor told me about. He was a virgin in his early thirties and two months away from getting married. One night, inflamed by lust and tired of resisting temptation, he made his way to the red-light district of the city and the bed of a prostitute. Only once. Just fifteen minutes in a dark, dingy room-a moment of indulgence in years of work for God. But he left infected with AIDS. Two months later he unwittingly infected the bride who had waited so patiently for him. He groans in anguish at the disease that now wracks both of their bodies.

If these examples seem extreme, just look into the eyes of the countless men and women who have neither illegitimate children nor disease, but who are scarred with shame and regret. Writer Deborah Belonick knows too many women who once "regarded sexual liberation as good, clean fun," but who are now reaping-bitter results. She describes women who, now married with children, "could not have their husbands touch them or hold them in certain ways because it reminded them of drunken orgies they'd participated in in college or high school.

And if all this isn't enough to make the option of sexual immorality vile, look into the eyes of Jesus Christ. He's the only one who knows the depth of God's unmitigated wrath against sexual sin-He bore it all when He hung on the cross, cursed and forsaken by His Father (2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 3:13).

No Excuses

Part of the motivation we need in order to hold out for the pleasure of pure sex is a sober acknowledgment that God is serious about punishing sin. Let's not kid ourselves. God is talking to us. "God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral" Hebrews 13:4 tells us. And in 1 Thessalonians 4:6, we read, "The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you." We can't be flippant about this. It has to sink in.

God doesn't excuse sin because of who we are or how good we've been in the past.
It doesn't matter if you've lived a sexually pure life for forty years and then have one night of sin-God still hates that act of fornication. Read the story of King David's adulterous affair with Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11. Even though God called David "a man after his own heart" (1 Samuel 13:14), He hated David's sin and He punished it. David was forgiven when he repented, but the consequences of his sin marred the remainder of his life. The lesson for us is that God's

God doesn't overlook our sin because it's not as bad as someone else's.
We can always find someone else or some other couple who are more disobedient than we are, but that doesn't change the reality of our own disobedience. God doesn't grade on a curve. He doesn't base His judgments on the popular standards of the day-His standards are unchanging (Psalm 102:27; Hebrews 13:8).

God doesn't excuse our sin because we're in love and "no one is being hurt."
You've heard the argument; maybe you've even used it yourself. "We're two consenting adults. We love each other! We both want this!" But do you see who's being forgotten in the equation of "two consenting adults"? The almighty Creator of their two bodies.

The apostle Paul explains:

In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for "becoming one" with another. Or didn't you
realize
that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don't you see that you can't live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? (1 Corinthians 6:18-20,
The Message)

The warnings are serious and there are no exceptions. Sure, some people seemingly escape them, but there will be a reckoning beyond this life-"they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead" (1 Peter 4:5). Every man and woman who refuses to turn from sexual sin and trust in Christ forgiveness will one day look into the eyes of a Holy Judge-the short-lived pleasure of sin will be forgotten, and it will be too late for mercy

"Okay," you're thinking, "I agree that sex in marriage sounds great, and I believe that sexual sin leads to death. But none of this deals with my raging sex desire right now! Did God make me like this just to torment me?"

No, He did not. Even though our sexual desire can seem like a curse, and even though we have to restrain it for our own good, we need to keep in mind that these desires are natural, God given, and wonderful. In fact, they're a blessing even when we can't satisfy them.

Let me explain what I mean. If God had made sex so undesirable that we were never tempted to steal it before marriage, it wouldn't be much of a gift, would it? Every time we long for sexual intimacy before marriage, we should quickly thank God for making us sexual beings and for making sex so desirable. The Bible says, "Guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband" (Hebrews 13:4,
The Message).
It's because God has made sex a precious treasure that He's commanded us to guard it.

And not only did God make sex good, but He also increased our enjoyment by reserving it for marriage. If we didn't have to wait for it, there'd be no anticipation, no buildup, no excitement.

When I was young, I read the story of a boy who was granted his wish that every day would be Christmas. For a while it was paradise-every morning he dashed downstairs to newly stuffed stockings and dozens of presents under the tree. But in a very short time, the celebration lost its joy. There was no longer anything special about it. He began to despise the presents. He had thought that he would find happiness in boundless Christmases but instead he gutted the holiday of its meaning and pleasure.

Why does God ask single Christians to face the daily struggle of controlling their sexual appetites until marriage? One answer is that He's committed to great sex! I've read that honeymoon resorts are having to provide more and more activities for newlyeds who, since they didn't wait, are bored with sex by the time they get married. While many sexually promiscuous couples greet the marriage bed with a yawn, the chaste fall into it with cries of delight. On our honeymoon, Shannon and I didn't need a schedule packed with activities. We rarely left our hotel room! We had stored up passion; we were full of anticipation and pure desire. Everything was new, fresh, and intoxicating.

There's another reason the struggle of waiting for marriage is a blessing. God not only wants to maximize a couple's enjoyment of sex in marriage, He also wants them to learn to trust Him
together.
When a Christian man and woman systematically deny their own physical desires as an expression of mutual faith and submission to Jesus Christ, they are laying a solid spiritual foundation for their marriage. They're learning to fight sin as a team. They're learning to care for each other, pray for each other, and challenge each other. In the most practical of ways, they are submitting to Jesus Christ as the Lord of their relationship.

Demonstrating the Depth of Your Love

Far from being a curse, God's call to chastity is a blessing. Of course it rarely feels like one, and when we're in the thick of it, it's never easy That's why it's so important that we have a clear

Let me share a few of the principles that helped Shannon and me during our courtship and engagement. The first is this:

During
courtship, guarding each other's purity and refraining from sexual intimacy are the acts of lovemaking.

A Christian man and woman in love have to redefine what true lovemaking is before they're married. They have to agree that sexual intimacy before marriage is most
unloving.
They have to renew their thinking so that they both see that not violating their future marriage bed is a true expression of love.

Do you want to be romantic with the person you're courting? Do you want to demonstrate your passion for them with more than words? Then guard against sin, fight lust, and refuse to arouse them sexually-this is the only God-sanctioned form of lovemaking in courtship and engagement.

I opened this chapter with the story of my temptation in the hammock. Walking away from Shannon that summer day was the real way for me to demonstrate my love for her. I wasn't denying the reality of my love or my sexual desire for her; I was increasing it and purifying it by submitting it to God. She appreciated that. Even though there was part of her heart that wanted me to stay, she felt my love for her as I turned my back on temptation.

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers" (1 John 3:16). Before marriage two friends who are not yet lovers can prove their love by laying down their own sexual desires and protecting each other's purity

Learning to recognize true affection can be difficult, especially if you've learned to equate sex with love. Sonya was three when her father left her mom. She grew up searching for love in the arms of different boyfriends. She never found it because she mistook physical involvement for true affection. After becoming a Christian, she brought her old perceptions into her relationship with Zachary Though Zachary deeply cared about her, she began doubting it because he hadn't tried to sleep with her. "It was really twisted thinking," she says. "I'd finally found a guy who really loved me, and I didn't feel his love because he hadn't tried to use me like all my old boyfriends had."

It took lots of communication, prayer, and humble leadership on Zachary's part to help Sonya change her thinking. She came to see that the absence of a physical relationship was not a lack of love, but a sign of it. She also had to work through the deeply rooted pattern of looking to men instead of to her heavenly Father for comfort and confidence.

It's important in your relationship that neither of you try to test each other's convictions or tempt the other person to violate his or her standards. Motivated by a sinful desire to test her own power of allurement and her fiance's willpower, Becky would do little things to stir up his desire for her. Once she greeted him at her apartment door wearing skimpy shorts and a thin T-shirt with no bra.

Brad continually tried to wear down his girlfriend, Allison, with requests for "just one kiss," even though they had agreed to save that for engagement. We should never expect the other person to be the strong one and force them to bear the weight of temptation. How unloving! Both Becky and Brad were being selfish. They forgot that before marriage true love is expressed through guarding and refraining.

An essential part of planning for pure sex in courtship and engagement is understanding the lie of lust. The following principle can give you an edge against it:

Lust
is never satisfied.

Lust would like us to believe that it can make us happy. If we just give it what it wants, it will stop pestering us and be satisfied. Don't buy it. Lust is never satisfied. You can't bargain with it and come out a winner. Lust hijacks sex. It wants to train your desires to delight in the thrill of the forbidden so that you lose your godly appetite for what is good.

Ray and Angelina slept with each other during their nine-month engagement. It felt so right, how could it be wrong? "It was incredible. There was this animal passion between us," Ray says. They justified their fornication by saying that their "electric" sex confirmed that they were supposed to be married. And they assumed that the extra practice in bed would only benefit them in the future. They were wrong. They bargained with lust, and they got ripped off.

A year and a half after their wedding, the sizzle had vanished from their sex life. Sadly, they went back to the bargaining table with lust. They started renting pornographic movies to "enhance" their passion. It didn't work. The more inflamed they became with lust, the less satisfied they felt. Now Ray is starting to view pornography on the Internet and cast a longing eye at women at work. Once again lust is telling him that "what he really needs" is something that he doesn't have.

Is Ray and Angelina's story proof that marriage ruins sex? No, it's another sad example of lust ruining sex. During their engagement they learned to delight in what was off-limits. They weren't being driven by a passion for the goodness of pure sex; their passion was fueled by the sinful thrill of lust. When they