Topic: SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE
luv2roknroll's photo
Wed 02/22/12 08:34 AM
I have read and do understand that intimacy, outside of marriage, is in Gods eyes, a sin.

But this is 2012.

And times have radically changed.

Good luck finding a man, who will not want to engage in an intimate relationship with you, before he marries you.

I honestly, dont think I would want to marry someone, that I had not yet been intimate with.

Intimacy, is a HUGE part, of a relationship.

If the two, are truely in love, but dont want to marry, before having an intimate relationship, do you really feel that we will not be given everlasting life in heaven, for this action?

no photo
Wed 02/22/12 05:26 PM
Luv....The ONLY sin that keeps us out of heaven is

REJECTING JESUS , when He comes knocking on our hearts door....


and then DYING in our sins, STILL UNSAVED.

THAT is the ONLY sin that keeps one out of heaven...

REJECTING JESUS and dying UNSAVED.


ONCE WE ARE BORN AGAIN, then ALLLLLLLL our sins are now

UNDER THE BLOOD....FORGIVEN....WASHED AWAY.

Jessu already bore ALLL ur sins already on the cross...and when

we accept Jesus, ALLLLL our sins are forgiven...and under the blood too.



ALL....past sins, present sins, future sins.



HOWEVER......

just because all our sins are forgiven now, does NOT

give us a ticket to sin.....flowerforyou

and we will NOT willingly sin now....once we are born

again...


because ....

If and when we do sin (and we all will still slip

up and sin ), we will GRIEVE the Holy Spirit Indwelling us

now..and we will NOT want to sin WILLINGLY anymore....

we CAN'T IF we are born again......or stay in that sin.


We DON'T want to willingly sin anymore....because we want to

please God now....because God lives IN us now.....and The LOVE of

God is IN us now.

See?flowerforyou


WHEN WE ARE BORN AGAIN, WE WANT TO PLEASE GOD NOW......

AND THE HOLY SPIRIT INDWELLING US LETS US KNOW WHAT IS PLEASING

TO GOD ..AND WHAT IS NOT PLEASING TO GOD.



ALSO....


if and when we slip up and sin,

God WILL NEVER CONDEMN us... but God will GENTLY CONVICT our

hearts, If what we are doing is NOT pleasing to God.


It is God Who is at work In us and THRU us...

God IN us , is actually The One Who is helping us to live a

life well pleasing to God.....and not us doing it anyway....

we just Yield to God ...

and want to please God .. because we now

LOVE God...

and again.....because we Now Love God,we WILL WANT to PLEASE GOD .

ALWAYS.

Amen?flowerforyou


But while we are growing in God,

God thru the Holy Spirit INDWELLING us believers now,

will NOT CONDEMN us ...but will ALWAYS CONVICT us in our

heart.....if and when we do stray from doing what is pleasing

in God's sight.

Luv.....God will let you know thru His Word..and thru the Holy

Spirit now Indwelling you, if what you do is pleasing to God or not.

You are God's child now...and when you are His child, you will

run from sin, not embrace sin...and will cry out to Abba Father

when you do slip up and sin.sad...and that is because of

the NEW NATURE in you... (and again we all will still slip up

and sin, but we will not STAY in that sin ,once we have

become born again).flowerforyou

But God will not condemn you, if and when you do sin..but will

always gently CONVICT you.


Point being..let no one condemn you because you have not fully arrived yet....

None of us have...yet...

We all are still works in progress.


And GOd thru the Holy Sprit is the One who will let you know if

what you do is right or wrong.

God will let you know.

All believers now,have the Holy Spirit Indwelling us now....to

teach us , lead us , and Guide Us into ALL TRUTH .


Love You Luv.flowerforyou:heart:flowerforyou

(((((:heart:Hugs from the Heart:heart: ))))))))

no photo
Wed 02/22/12 05:48 PM
Luv...God just now put this strongly on my heart for you.

Ask God to FILL YOU with The Holy Spriit...and God Will.


When we are saved, we already have the Holy Spirit INDWELLING us....

but God now wants us now to be FILLED UP with The Holy

Spirit....ALSO.



When God's Holy Spirit FILLS UP our lives, we also are now

EMPOWERED by The Holy Spirit .....and are ENABLED us to walk

in the FULLNESS of our Godly walk.....and Receive AL that

God has in store for our lives !!!


Just pray and ask God to Fill you up with His Holy

Spirit...and God will.


In fact, we all need to be filled and stay filled up , daily.


Be Blessed Now, Luv.
flowerforyou:heart:flowerforyou


luv2roknroll's photo
Wed 02/22/12 06:43 PM

Luv...God just now put this strongly on my heart for you.

Ask God to FILL YOU with The Holy Spriit...and God Will.


When we are saved, we already have the Holy Spirit INDWELLING us....

but God now wants us now to be FILLED UP with The Holy

Spirit....ALSO.



When God's Holy Spirit FILLS UP our lives, we also are now

EMPOWERED by The Holy Spirit .....and are ENABLED us to walk

in the FULLNESS of our Godly walk.....and Receive AL that

God has in store for our lives !!!


Just pray and ask God to Fill you up with His Holy

Spirit...and God will.


In fact, we all need to be filled and stay filled up , daily.


Be Blessed Now, Luv.
flowerforyou:heart:flowerforyou


I will do as you say Morning Song, as you are, for me, as close to a representation of Jesus, as I have ever known. Your words are wise, and I will do all that you ask of me, because just like the father, I know you speak to me, from the love in your heart for me, and my well being.

I am blessed by you, and I love you,:heart:
Kitten

RainbowTrout's photo
Thu 02/23/12 08:49 AM
The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is a great fix for that emptiness feeling. If you have watched the movie, "The Neverending Story" it talks about the nonethingness and the emptiness.

Revelation 3:20

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.:smile:

luv2roknroll's photo
Thu 02/23/12 09:22 AM

The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is a great fix for that emptiness feeling. If you have watched the movie, "The Neverending Story" it talks about the nonethingness and the emptiness.

Revelation 3:20

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.:smile:

I dont feel empty without a man, because I have Jesus with me all the time, and ive gotton use to not having a man beside me. So its really not a question of feeling nothingness, or empty. I have my life, and im filling it up with more everyday.

RainbowTrout's photo
Thu 02/23/12 09:32 AM
Matthew 18:12

How think you? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, does he not leave the ninety and nine, and goes into the mountains, and seeks that which is gone astray?

Jesus didn't have that emptiness feeling, either.:smile:

no photo
Thu 02/23/12 10:41 AM


The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is a great fix for that emptiness feeling. If you have watched the movie, "The Neverending Story" it talks about the nonethingness and the emptiness.

Revelation 3:20

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.:smile:

I dont feel empty without a man, because I have Jesus with me all the time, and ive gotton use to not having a man beside me. So its really not a question of feeling nothingness, or empty. I have my life, and im filling it up with more everyday.


even if you feel empty without a man , it is normal and not bad, it is God that created it, for a man to leave his father and mother and join his wife. so every man without a woman is empty, like wise a woman without a man is empty,

but that will not give a ticket to have sex before marriage,
sin is sin before God,
and every sin has it's penality.
he that is born of God does not commit sin, because the seed of God dwelleth in him or her.
so but if you mistakenly fall into sin, the blood of Jesus is there to wash every dirtiness and reconcile us back to our maker, while the Holyghost will leave you immidiatly , untill you reconcile with God, then he comes back to his temple, because fornication defiles the temple [which your body]


GuitarGuy49's photo
Fri 02/24/12 07:24 PM
Edited by GuitarGuy49 on Fri 02/24/12 08:18 PM
There is much more important things two people can learn to connect with besides sex. I have given this a lot of thought in my own life. One thing I came up with is that once you engage sex it also engages hormones and body chemicals designed to bring people together for the purpose of reproducing the human race. These chemicals in the body are very strong, and can be confused as "love." They can also blur the judgment and can be as strong as a narcotic.

What is more important is the ability to learn to love one another. What, if for some reason, your partner is in an accident and cannot make love anymore, do you just dump them and go find the next catch that can satisfy your urges? That's kind of a blunt way to put it, but I am trying to make the point that there is much more to life and love than sex. The marriage vows of "for better, for worse...in sickness and in health" DO NOT state... "if they can't have sex with me any more, I'm going to drop them like a hot potato..." That's probably NOT going to be in the marriage vows, for good reason...

I think one of the reasons the divorce rate is so high in our country is because people have this pre-conceived notion that you have to sleep together in order to be in love. They have to do a "quick fix" to their lust and jump into bed on the first or second date. I think what happens in these instances is that the sexual hormones and powerful narcotic-like chemistry engages at the "infatuation" level of a couple's relationship, and once sex is engaged any meeting or thought of the person is confused as "love" when it is actually and many times in the mind and through these powerful hormones and chemicals, just lust of the flesh.

What I have learned is that there are different levels of a man/woman relationship. There is the inital meeting, then it can grow into an infatuation (a.k.a "puppy love"), you can begin to like many things about the person, you enjoy their company, you build a meaningful friendship, you realize you are falling in love (beginning stages) but deep, life-long-love comes later, after much hard work, attentiveness to values and decisons, but does not need to be connected to sex. Deep, meaningful love does not come overnight. And I think many people get married during the infatuation ("puppy love") stage, having engaged their sexual drives, and through decision making blurred by the chemistry engaged way too early by going to bed with each before you even really know each other. One day you wake up and relaize, outside of good sex, that you can't stand this person. At that point, you call the divorce attorney.

If you honestly love one another, the bedroom intimacy is going to spark, regardless of the timing "when." Later is much better than sooner, knwoing the human body, and knowing you will enlist powerful narcotic-like chemicals if you engage in intercourse. "The two shall become one flesh..."... there is much to this Biblical truth. You do join, both physically, and I think also spiritually at that moment, becoming one. The biological purpose is for making babies, not for the satisfaction of your lust. Outside of marriage it is the satisfaction of your lust, if a baby should come, then what? You reap what you sow...

But this is the question:

Can you love someone enough to NOT engage the powerful chemicals that might influence your thinking and blur your judgement? That is what abstinance accomplishes. Plus you love them enough NOT to cause them to sin. If you cause them to sin just to satisfy your lust, how is this love?

Friendship is 1,000 times more important than sex. Can you even get along with this person on a day-to-day friendly level? Longevity in the relationship is going to depend on it. Friendship is going to include some compromise. Down the road you are going to need to compromise some of your thoughts and things, and the other person will have to make compromises, just to make the relationship work. No bond of any two people can survive if one or the other cannot compromise. I am not talking about compromising ethical or moral things. I mean... let's say you (the girl) likes pizza, and he (the guy) likes spaghetti... its a stressful week, and you just gotta have pizza... but he just doesn't want pizza this week. Do you fight, argue and complain about pizza, or do you as a couple agree (decide) to make some kind of concession or compromise?

If he is not even your friend, chances are in conflict he is going to be an even worse adversary and vice versa. But friends will find a way to get along. Honor is one blessing of friendship. You might honor him just enough to give in and not have pizza. Or, he might honor you, even when he can't stand the idea have having pizza this week, and give in from his side and call the pizza place. But what I want to point out is, without friendship, sexual attraction means nothing at this decision making level. In fact it would most likely be used as a weapon againts each other in the onsuing conflict. One party or the other might make the comment "you ain't getting any tonight." Thus sex becomes a weapon.

Where is the love in that?

Love is based in friendship, not sex. When we are old and gray, and our bodies no longer follow the same lusts of our youth, it is the bond of friendship that will follow us to the two rocking chairs on our front porch. My parents were married for 62 years. It was their friendship and love for one another that kept them together.

Do you like doing things together with your new partner/friend/boyfriend/girlfriend, etc...? Or does one or the other utterly despise some activity the other likes. For example, maybe one party likes to shop or hunt or some kind of thing that the first party can't stand to do. How does sex solve THOSE differences? It does not, and cannot. Sex does not create a decision-making force in the relationship, but if engaged it can sorely influence how you think and act around a person. It can affect the decision making process in a contrary motion to moral decision making.

Sex is for the next, deeper portion of the get together. Figuring out who it is you want to spend the rest of your life with is a long term investment. It seems in our society we are encouraged to "live for the day" and get the "quick fix" to everything. But wealthy people will tell you it is the wise, long term investments, nurtured over many quarters and through many diverse times and economic situations, that bring the most stability. Not the one-night-stand financial ventures.

In some ways, I am telling my own story here. I got married when I was 35. I wasn't living God's way, and on our first date we hit the bedroom, and it was "lust at first sight". About 7-8 months after we were married (we only dated 7 months), I realized that if I had dated this woman for about one year, I never would have married her. There were many realities that hit after the initial sexual "honeymoon" of hormones and chemicals died down. 5 years later it ended in a bitter divorce. I decided to get counseling, and figure out why I had made these choices, and some of the stuff I wrote in the paragraphs above comes from trying to understand my own human body and my sexual urges and what causes me to make decisions, and the chemistry involved between man and woman once certain sex-drive decisions are connected to the man/woman relationship.

I made another decision for myself, too...

I decided NOT to jump right back into another love relationship until I had healed from the one that went bad. I notice the temptation for many people is to try to heal the bad love with a new love. (Sometimes called "being on the rebound..."). I did try that, and when the 2nd relationship went terribly bad only a few months after the divorce, then I had two heartaches in my chest, not just one. It just didn't and doesn't work. Not to mention the baggage from the first un-healed heartache I drug into the 2nd relationship.

This is a thought I also have... I have not met them yet, but right now I am already loving my future partner by what I am doing wth my life. I am trying to find my healing (still) and I am determined to be the best Christian man I can be before I go jump back into some "dating game." In so doing, I am trying to be a better, more healed person, for the future person that I know I will spend the rest of my life with. It is more important to me to please God than to please my flesh or make decisions outside of God's plan for my life that might please some woman. I must first get a grasp of my own walk with God, then someday I might find a good Christian woman to develop and form a relationship with. So today I am making my life better, and making my future better by being patient, comitting myself to God's plan, walking a no-compromise Chrsitian walk, and when God decides the timing, I'll meet someone. The RIGHT one. Not just some infatuation-level "lust at first sight." The relationship must start on a common Biblical ground, or for me it would be a no-go.

One of those preparatory things is going to be sharing a Christian character with this person. Sharing prayer, Bible study, and a common faith (be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers - 2 Cor. 6:14). She will be and must be a Christian woman. As a Christian man I feel very strongly in that I should honor her in NOT pressing her toward sexual means. Because in so doing, I feel I would be dragging her down a road to sin.

There is a spiritual principle that will remain in effect whether we are saved or not... "you reap what you sow"... folks might want to dabble in sin as Christians, but the payment back in return is that you will reap a like bad harvest somewhere down the road. There is no avoiding this truth. The same is true of the good we do. You will reap a good harvest if you plant good seeds. Its all about an investment, and waiting on the Lord.

I am learning new ways to deal with my finances lately. Last fall I went to a Dave Ramsey "Financial Peace University" (FPU) 12-week session at our church. It really opened my eyes to financial things, and to things that we as Americans go through in our society pertaining to debt and being "expected to be in debt" (Google Dave Ramsey, he's awesome). One thing FPU taught about finances is...

1) You can be a red-faced, feet-stamping person who just says "I want it, I want it, I want it now"... and you go into debt up to your eyebrows with credit cards, car loans, you name it. You just "gotta have it."

or

2) You learn to live debt-free, and conduct all of your business transactions with cash. (He shows folks in the FPU sessions how to live debt free according to Biblical principles...etc...)("The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want"...Psalm 23:1)

Apply this thought to the sex drive... (who or what is driving your "wants?") ...you can want it and have it now, but you know it is sin. And we know the wages of sin is/are death. Its like going into debt voluntarily. Sort of like using a credit card to go into debt everytime you jump in the sack.

or

You learn to trust God that the investment of yout time is like "money in the bank" toward the relationship. You concentrate on more important decision-making things like friendship, and put sex on the back burner.

One great benefit of this is... if you later decide this person is NOT the one you want to spend the rest of your life with, then you haven't sinned in the bedroom with them either.

And phooey on the men out there that want every woman to think the only way to "love" is through the immediate bedroom experience.

I beg to differ, and I will stand as a Christian man, here to tell you that I for one do not agree with that deception, nor am I going to allow any future relationship I might involve myself in to travel that path. Not on my own strength, but through the strength God will give me to remain on His perfect path.

No compromise Christianity.

This is the form of Christianity we see in the Bible. In the world around us we see the "lukewarm" folks and we might be deceived by them and think the lukewarm way might be the "OK" path to take. Not.

I'll give you just one good, powerful scripture on this...

-----

James 1:27 (NIV) -- Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

-----

Notice it includes care giving to widows and orphans... but includes keeping oneself from being polluted by the world...

It is the keeping of oneself from being polluted by the world that is our biggest challenge.

We can only do it with God's help. On our own we are lost, sinners, without hope. With Christ, in Christ, we have all things.

God bless,



GG49









GuitarGuy49's photo
Fri 02/24/12 07:25 PM


We all are still works in progress.




Amen, sister, amen !!!

luv2roknroll's photo
Sat 02/25/12 02:52 AM

There is much more important things two people can learn to connect with besides sex. I have given this a lot of thought in my own life. One thing I came up with is that once you engage sex it also engages hormones and body chemicals designed to bring people together for the purpose of reproducing the human race. These chemicals in the body are very strong, and can be confused as "love." They can also blur the judgment and can be as strong as a narcotic.

What is more important is the ability to learn to love one another. What, if for some reason, your partner is in an accident and cannot make love anymore, do you just dump them and go find the next catch that can satisfy your urges? That's kind of a blunt way to put it, but I am trying to make the point that there is much more to life and love than sex. The marriage vows of "for better, for worse...in sickness and in health" DO NOT state... "if they can't have sex with me any more, I'm going to drop them like a hot potato..." That's probably NOT going to be in the marriage vows, for good reason...

I think one of the reasons the divorce rate is so high in our country is because people have this pre-conceived notion that you have to sleep together in order to be in love. They have to do a "quick fix" to their lust and jump into bed on the first or second date. I think what happens in these instances is that the sexual hormones and powerful narcotic-like chemistry engages at the "infatuation" level of a couple's relationship, and once sex is engaged any meeting or thought of the person is confused as "love" when it is actually and many times in the mind and through these powerful hormones and chemicals, just lust of the flesh.

What I have learned is that there are different levels of a man/woman relationship. There is the inital meeting, then it can grow into an infatuation (a.k.a "puppy love"), you can begin to like many things about the person, you enjoy their company, you build a meaningful friendship, you realize you are falling in love (beginning stages) but deep, life-long-love comes later, after much hard work, attentiveness to values and decisons, but does not need to be connected to sex. Deep, meaningful love does not come overnight. And I think many people get married during the infatuation ("puppy love") stage, having engaged their sexual drives, and through decision making blurred by the chemistry engaged way too early by going to bed with each before you even really know each other. One day you wake up and relaize, outside of good sex, that you can't stand this person. At that point, you call the divorce attorney.

If you honestly love one another, the bedroom intimacy is going to spark, regardless of the timing "when." Later is much better than sooner, knwoing the human body, and knowing you will enlist powerful narcotic-like chemicals if you engage in intercourse. "The two shall become one flesh..."... there is much to this Biblical truth. You do join, both physically, and I think also spiritually at that moment, becoming one. The biological purpose is for making babies, not for the satisfaction of your lust. Outside of marriage it is the satisfaction of your lust, if a baby should come, then what? You reap what you sow...

But this is the question:

Can you love someone enough to NOT engage the powerful chemicals that might influence your thinking and blur your judgement? That is what abstinance accomplishes. Plus you love them enough NOT to cause them to sin. If you cause them to sin just to satisfy your lust, how is this love?

Friendship is 1,000 times more important than sex. Can you even get along with this person on a day-to-day friendly level? Longevity in the relationship is going to depend on it. Friendship is going to include some compromise. Down the road you are going to need to compromise some of your thoughts and things, and the other person will have to make compromises, just to make the relationship work. No bond of any two people can survive if one or the other cannot compromise. I am not talking about compromising ethical or moral things. I mean... let's say you (the girl) likes pizza, and he (the guy) likes spaghetti... its a stressful week, and you just gotta have pizza... but he just doesn't want pizza this week. Do you fight, argue and complain about pizza, or do you as a couple agree (decide) to make some kind of concession or compromise?

If he is not even your friend, chances are in conflict he is going to be an even worse adversary and vice versa. But friends will find a way to get along. Honor is one blessing of friendship. You might honor him just enough to give in and not have pizza. Or, he might honor you, even when he can't stand the idea have having pizza this week, and give in from his side and call the pizza place. But what I want to point out is, without friendship, sexual attraction means nothing at this decision making level. In fact it would most likely be used as a weapon againts each other in the onsuing conflict. One party or the other might make the comment "you ain't getting any tonight." Thus sex becomes a weapon.

Where is the love in that?

Love is based in friendship, not sex. When we are old and gray, and our bodies no longer follow the same lusts of our youth, it is the bond of friendship that will follow us to the two rocking chairs on our front porch. My parents were married for 62 years. It was their friendship and love for one another that kept them together.

Do you like doing things together with your new partner/friend/boyfriend/girlfriend, etc...? Or does one or the other utterly despise some activity the other likes. For example, maybe one party likes to shop or hunt or some kind of thing that the first party can't stand to do. How does sex solve THOSE differences? It does not, and cannot. Sex does not create a decision-making force in the relationship, but if engaged it can sorely influence how you think and act around a person. It can affect the decision making process in a contrary motion to moral decision making.

Sex is for the next, deeper portion of the get together. Figuring out who it is you want to spend the rest of your life with is a long term investment. It seems in our society we are encouraged to "live for the day" and get the "quick fix" to everything. But wealthy people will tell you it is the wise, long term investments, nurtured over many quarters and through many diverse times and economic situations, that bring the most stability. Not the one-night-stand financial ventures.

In some ways, I am telling my own story here. I got married when I was 35. I wasn't living God's way, and on our first date we hit the bedroom, and it was "lust at first sight". About 7-8 months after we were married (we only dated 7 months), I realized that if I had dated this woman for about one year, I never would have married her. There were many realities that hit after the initial sexual "honeymoon" of hormones and chemicals died down. 5 years later it ended in a bitter divorce. I decided to get counseling, and figure out why I had made these choices, and some of the stuff I wrote in the paragraphs above comes from trying to understand my own human body and my sexual urges and what causes me to make decisions, and the chemistry involved between man and woman once certain sex-drive decisions are connected to the man/woman relationship.

I made another decision for myself, too...

I decided NOT to jump right back into another love relationship until I had healed from the one that went bad. I notice the temptation for many people is to try to heal the bad love with a new love. (Sometimes called "being on the rebound..."). I did try that, and when the 2nd relationship went terribly bad only a few months after the divorce, then I had two heartaches in my chest, not just one. It just didn't and doesn't work. Not to mention the baggage from the first un-healed heartache I drug into the 2nd relationship.

This is a thought I also have... I have not met them yet, but right now I am already loving my future partner by what I am doing wth my life. I am trying to find my healing (still) and I am determined to be the best Christian man I can be before I go jump back into some "dating game." In so doing, I am trying to be a better, more healed person, for the future person that I know I will spend the rest of my life with. It is more important to me to please God than to please my flesh or make decisions outside of God's plan for my life that might please some woman. I must first get a grasp of my own walk with God, then someday I might find a good Christian woman to develop and form a relationship with. So today I am making my life better, and making my future better by being patient, comitting myself to God's plan, walking a no-compromise Chrsitian walk, and when God decides the timing, I'll meet someone. The RIGHT one. Not just some infatuation-level "lust at first sight." The relationship must start on a common Biblical ground, or for me it would be a no-go.

One of those preparatory things is going to be sharing a Christian character with this person. Sharing prayer, Bible study, and a common faith (be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers - 2 Cor. 6:14). She will be and must be a Christian woman. As a Christian man I feel very strongly in that I should honor her in NOT pressing her toward sexual means. Because in so doing, I feel I would be dragging her down a road to sin.

There is a spiritual principle that will remain in effect whether we are saved or not... "you reap what you sow"... folks might want to dabble in sin as Christians, but the payment back in return is that you will reap a like bad harvest somewhere down the road. There is no avoiding this truth. The same is true of the good we do. You will reap a good harvest if you plant good seeds. Its all about an investment, and waiting on the Lord.

I am learning new ways to deal with my finances lately. Last fall I went to a Dave Ramsey "Financial Peace University" (FPU) 12-week session at our church. It really opened my eyes to financial things, and to things that we as Americans go through in our society pertaining to debt and being "expected to be in debt" (Google Dave Ramsey, he's awesome). One thing FPU taught about finances is...

1) You can be a red-faced, feet-stamping person who just says "I want it, I want it, I want it now"... and you go into debt up to your eyebrows with credit cards, car loans, you name it. You just "gotta have it."

or

2) You learn to live debt-free, and conduct all of your business transactions with cash. (He shows folks in the FPU sessions how to live debt free according to Biblical principles...etc...)("The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want"...Psalm 23:1)

Apply this thought to the sex drive... (who or what is driving your "wants?") ...you can want it and have it now, but you know it is sin. And we know the wages of sin is/are death. Its like going into debt voluntarily. Sort of like using a credit card to go into debt everytime you jump in the sack.

or

You learn to trust God that the investment of yout time is like "money in the bank" toward the relationship. You concentrate on more important decision-making things like friendship, and put sex on the back burner.

One great benefit of this is... if you later decide this person is NOT the one you want to spend the rest of your life with, then you haven't sinned in the bedroom with them either.

And phooey on the men out there that want every woman to think the only way to "love" is through the immediate bedroom experience.

I beg to differ, and I will stand as a Christian man, here to tell you that I for one do not agree with that deception, nor am I going to allow any future relationship I might involve myself in to travel that path. Not on my own strength, but through the strength God will give me to remain on His perfect path.

No compromise Christianity.

This is the form of Christianity we see in the Bible. In the world around us we see the "lukewarm" folks and we might be deceived by them and think the lukewarm way might be the "OK" path to take. Not.

I'll give you just one good, powerful scripture on this...

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James 1:27 (NIV) -- Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

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Notice it includes care giving to widows and orphans... but includes keeping oneself from being polluted by the world...

It is the keeping of oneself from being polluted by the world that is our biggest challenge.

We can only do it with God's help. On our own we are lost, sinners, without hope. With Christ, in Christ, we have all things.

God bless,



GG49









I want you to know, that all that you wrote, was not a waste of your time, or effort. I have read it over, a couple of times, and fully understand, where your coming from, and the effects that such an action, would have on my Christian walk, with God.

Once again, thank you for your time, energy, and wise words, G.G.

God bless you.