Marriage to me always seemed pretty lame. You basically submit yourself to another person, stress yourself out, become responsible for your spouse’s actions, and get to constantly worry about that tall man-hunk that keeps talking to her. And up until I was around the age when you start to realize that sex is more than just laying naked next to your wife and the next day she’s pregnant, I had believed that I would never get married. I was young, I didn’t know what sex was, and I’m pissed off that I ever decided to peek in through the keyhole of the door to intimacy. Because I’m at the point where I realize that I liked the home-schooled, M rated video game sneaking version of myself, who just wanted to have fun and ignore girls, so much more than the graduated, allowed to play M games, and lustful version of myself.
The grown up who knows what sex and marriage are really for.
I can’t say that I’ve ever been in love. It all seems so abstract, forceful, and non-real to me. But I CAN say that I have been in lust; in fact, just this morning I succumbed to lust! And I know that Paul says that it is better to marry than to burn with lust. So I guess one of these days I might just get married right? I’ll have to get back to you on that one. I’m in the middle of deciding whether to get married and have sex, or stay single and never have sex. Both require me to never have sex unless that woman is legally bound to me. Do I think it is possible to wait for sex? Absolutely.
If I weren’t a Christian, my response to that question would be “Man, as long as I really love her then it’s okay.” This is because of my God-given conscience, man I hate that little cricket sometimes… But because I AM a Christian, I can say that I will wait, because I love Christ because He first loved me. Christ commanded that if we love Him, we will obey Him. I intend to do just that, but not because of my own strength or willpower, but because the God that loves me came down to show His grace. His ever forgiving, never ceasing, always sympathetic love for us, for me, is why I will not have sex before I am married. And that is incredibly different to what I would have said about 4 years ago.
At that time, I didn’t really give a flying Romulan about God. I knew He saved me, and that was it, I was allowed to do whatever I wanted to right? This was all obviously after I had discovered sex, and lust and all that, so I was like “Sure, I’ll stay single. But that won’t stop me from one-night stands and masturbation!” And to see the transformation in my life from that to this is inspiring, and yet quite disturbing, considering how little of a real heart change there is.
Back on the subject of marriage, sex, and waiting, how will I wait? How will I keep myself pure, vigilant, and godly through this awful culture that we live in?
It seems like there is only one way to get anything done in the world and in our hearts, and that’s by submitting to God. When I think about it, no crazy epiphany has ever come to me through a Bible reading or something like that, that drastically changed my life. It’s always been through some God-given miracle that my heart has EVER changed for the better. It seems like following God is a lifestyle, not a chore.
So basically, the way that I would go about making SURE that I would stay pure for marriage, would be to simply be accountable. When I decide to take the axe to a habitual sin, the first thing I do is find accountability. Exactly what X3Watch does, it keeps us accountable. But there’s no program to keep track of what exactly your reproductive organs are doing, so that’s where people come in. I have witnessed dozens of couples deciding to date and get married and all that, and they make it with just some prayer and good accountability.
Sadly though, I’ve seen about double the amount of couples try to take life on their own. Saying God’s on their side but not submitting to His people. Not trying to sound judgemental or anything, it’s just discouraging to see two great people succumb to something like this. And usually the mistakes that cost them a lifetime of a pit in their stomach could have been prevented by just by getting in touch with some accountability.
Yes, I think it’s incredibly possible to save myself for marriage in this culture, and I think every single thing is made possible because of God. I know that I can’t stay pure on my own.