An article written back in the September/October 2011 issue of Relevant Magazine entitled “(Almost) Everyone’s Doing It” states that eighty percent of young, unmarried Christians have had sex, and two-thirds have had sex within the past year.
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| Photo Credit: Creative Commons: Konrad Forstner |
I’m not at all surprised.
My lack of disbelief is not at all because I am cynical or refute the power of the Holy Spirit or think that single people are just plain immoral.
It’s because . . .
I was single for a long time.
At that time I lived in a large, metropolitan city and served in a large, very well-known church where, if I had to guess, over half of the regular attenders were single, too.
There were single Christians all around me. I was a Christian. And I’m not just talking about the “let’s go to church once a week” kind of Christians. I’m talking about the serving-kind. The go-on-mission-trips-kind. The Bible-reading kind. The praying-kind.
And unfortunately premarital sex was there too. Our church walls did not serve as a vacuum to keep everything holy in and all of culture’s lies and sexual inundation out. Satan knows where to go looking.
We could discuss in depth many reasons why Christian singles have fallen prey to the bondage of premarital sex. But there’s one reason that I think is often overlooked, and yet is true for everyone regardless of how many times or how often or how many people.
We don’t truly believe that sex outside of marriage will hurt us.
Not might hurt us. Not may hurt us. Not will only hurt us if.
No, it will hurt us. There will be consequences.
We often just focus on the BIG consequences of sex outside of marriage: unwanted pregnancy and disease.
But for most people the consequences are so very subtle. Isn’t that how Satan likes to work? He doesn’t want it to be obvious so that you can immediately pinpoint the culprit. No, he wants to make you doubt that it was really the premarital sex in the first place.
And most of the time these subtle consequences come when the stakes are the highest. When you’re with the person you love more than anything, in marriage, and you can’t fully experience what that love was supposed to be like.
Subtle consequences such as:
- distrust
- intimacy issues
- insecurity
- jealousy
- flashbacks to the past
- infertility
- unforgiveness
- anger
- disharmony
- lack of unity
- disrespect
- controlling each other
While living out these issues do we ever attribute them to maybe, just maybe, the consequence of sexual sin?
Obviously not all of them or all the time, but sometimes? Yes. Because there are always consequences. Ever so subtle, they are there.
One of our gifts is free-will. It is a God-given gift. And we, as Christians, have free-will to have sex outside of marriage. But just know that it will cost you something, somewhere, at sometime. Most likely with the person you love more than life itself.
Is premarital sex worth it? Of course not. Is abstaining easy? Absolutely not. Staying sexually pure is a work of the Holy Spirit.
We know that our God is a God of redemption. He forgives and makes all things new. And yes, he can redeem past sexual sin and make a marriage new. But there are still the consequences.
Know the price it costs. Weigh it heavily. And think about that future man who you are going to spend your life with.
If you have already been involved premarital sex, confess, repent, and tell God that even though you know there will be consequences you are asking him redeem you and make all things new.
Our God is a good God. He has good things in store for you. Accept his gifts.
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