5 Ways to Stay Pure in Today’s Sex-Obsessed Culture
Walking by the youth-oriented clothing store at our mall, I noticed its featured T-shirt prominently displayed in the window. The message emblazoned on the front was “PRACTICE SAFE SEX.”
Young people hear this message regularly in public schools and are bombarded by it in the media promoting casual sex. Add to the equation countless millions regularly watching and being inflamed by the “click away” perversions of pornography.
The most widely read advice columnist in newspapers today makes available a booklet to help “educate” our children in safe sex and homosexuality. This is not based on a biblical worldview but the same permissive propaganda promoted by Planned Parenthood. Family Research Council reported that in California, an undercover video caught undercover ACLU attorneys instructing teachers to secretly help students obtain contraceptives and abortion services without parental knowledge or consent.
In Fort Collins, Colorado, the prohibition on public exposure of breasts by women and girls over 10 years old is now gone from the city code as of this week.
Hustlers, the blockbuster movie in theaters across America, sends the message that girls can make megabucks as glamorous “adult entertainers” (strippers) seducing guys, using drugs and enjoying lavish lifestyles based on nudity and promiscuity.
In actuality, lives are destroyed daily in our hypersexualized culture. There are long-term effects of violating God’s standards: HIV risks, aborted babies, depression, sleeplessness, infertility, rape, sex trafficking and skyrocketing suicides. There is also the horror of sexual abuse.
A front page story in USA Today last week heralded the headline, “Millions of Women’s First Sex Was Forced.” Their nationwide survey of 18- to 44-year-olds revealed that 56% were pressured, 46% were held down and 25% were physically harmed. Seems like all of this uninhibited “freedom” results in alarming rates of sexual abuse in addition to experimentation with homosexuality out of frustration and resentment toward the opposite sex.
About 110 million Americans are infected with sexually transmitted diseases. Read that again—it’s not 10 million but 110 million! Realize this is highly concentrated among the 15- to 55-year-old demographic, which significantly increases the odds for infection among those younger. In just three areas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals skyrocketing stats over five years: 67% increase in gonorrhea, 76% increase in syphilis and off-the-chart cases of chlamydia.
Against this chilling backdrop, pastors and parents must “bare the truth” to our children, grandchildren and young people to prepare them and protect them against this avalanche of destructive immorality. Singles, listen up, as what follows may save your very life.
5 Guidelines to Guard Godliness
1. Affirm Jesus is Lord to live a set-apart (sanctified) lifestyle of guilt-free holiness, as we consider rather than defraud others.
“For you know what commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the lust of depravity, even as the Gentiles who do not know God, and that no man take advantage of and defraud his brother [or sister] in any matter, because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, as we also have forewarned you and testify. For God has not called us to uncleanness but to holiness” (1 Thess. 4:2-6).
“Defer”—limiting my freedom to not entice or offend those God calls me to serve (Rom. 14:21).
“Defraud”—arousing sexual desires in another person that cannot be righteously satisfied.
2. Embrace the biblical worldview of chastity before marriage and fidelity in marriage.
“Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). God’s order is crystal clear: first the leaving, then the cleaving and finally the becoming one flesh (sexual union in marriage). This divine order is not to be reversed, as it is God’s directive enabling us to enjoy peace, security and healthy relationships and a healthy life.
3. Abstain from wearing clothing that draws lustful looks, causing others to sin (Matt. 18:6) or tempts them to pressure someone into compromising and even dangerous sexual situations.
“In like manner also, that women clothe themselves in modest clothing, with decency and self-control” (1 Tim. 2:9a).
“Modest”—having a regard for decency in behavior and dress. The biblical directive applies equally to men and women.
4. Remain radically biblical and charitable in all areas of sexuality, living for the glory of God.
“Therefore, whether you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31).
Regarding any sexual activity before marriage, remember that foreplay or petting is prohibited.
“It is good for a man not to touch (stir up passions in) a woman” (1 Cor. 7:1).
“Do not stir up or awaken love until it pleases” (Song 8:4).
If you doubt, do without—because “whatever is not from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23b).
“My son (or daughter), if sinners entice you, do not consent … do not walk in the way with them, keep your foot from their path; for their feet run to evil … whoever listens to me will dwell safely, and will be secure from fear of evil” (Prov. 1:10, 15-16, 33).
The book of Proverbs addressed youth so they’d be wise and avoid evil consequences of fools!
5. Be courageous in convictions, refusing to submit to Satan’s schemes so that you may enjoy the abundant life Jesus promised.
“Yet as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:15b).
“The thief does not come, except to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
Here’s the Deal: Soon to celebrate 50 years as a born-again Christian, I tell you from experience that the world doesn’t deliver as promised, but Jesus does. Follow me as I follow Christ to discover the adventure of abundant living as a truly free, fruitful and flourishing child of God! {eoa}
