People desperately need to be loved by someone who is important to them. This is especially true of young people. Just knowing that a person of the opposite sex finds you attractive, generates a warm, wonderful feeling.

When a guy and a girl are attracted to each other and begin spending time together, the excitement builds. They discover how pleasurable it is to touch and caress each other. This stirs their passions. Before long they are drawn toward sexual intercourse, and they begin to think, “If we really love each other, what’s wrong with having sex?”

There are many reasons why you should not engage in sex before marriage. They add up to one thing: What you gain by sex before marriage is not worth what you lose by it.

What do you gain? A brief thrill. Perhaps some momentary pleasure. But what you lose by having sex before marriage can affect your entire life. Let us look at just a few of the reasons you should wait until marriage.

can ruin your chances of knowing real love.

A girl makes a tragic mistake when she tries to gain love or hold on to it by giving sex. Real love may lead to engagement, marriage, and sex, but sex does not lead to real love. Instead, it often destroys your chances of knowing real love.

A nineteen year old girl had kept herself pure all through high school and the first year of college. She was going steady with a guy whom she liked very much. On the night before he left for summer vacation, she gave in to him. She thought, “Why shouldn’t I? He loves me, and I love him.”

What happened? During the summer, she heard little from her “lover.” When he returned that fall, she discovered that she had been deceived into giving something very precious to a guy who had no real love for her. He said, “Our last night together was a nightmare…I would never marry you after that.”

can keep you from ever knowing God’s best.

One of the wrong ideas concerning sex is that it is just a physical thrill to be enjoyed with whomever you choose. This makes sex cheap and meaningless, and it disregards certain facts about how we are made.

Sex is not just a physical act. In sexual intercourse, you and the other person become one. It is such an intimate experience that a part of you remains forever with the other person. When you do get married, you will find that you can never give your mate 100% of yourself. Why? Because you have given part of yourself away to others. To take this lightly is not only foolish but it is plain ignorance of how God made us.

will hurt your self-esteem.

The Bible says that a young person should learn to possess his body with honor and not follow the ways of those who are immoral. A young person’s purity is his or her priceless possession. Unfortunately many do not realize this until it is too late.

Sometimes a girl is love-hungry, and she mistakes a fellow’s sex desire for the love she is looking for. She gives in to him. All too often, the guy does not really love her or respect her as a person. He wants sex and she is available, so he uses her to get what he wants. After awhile, he gets tired of her. She is like bargain-table goods—“Slightly soiled. Greatly reduced in price.”

She has nowhere to go in her search for love but to another guy who is looking for sex. She becomes cheap in her own eyes and in the eyes of others.

can leave you with life-long consequences.

God has given you a conscience and you have to live with it. A 42-year-old woman wrote,

You may get a few moments of “thrilling pleasure” out of sex before marriage, but is it worth this price?

can be a BIG disappointment.

Do young people find sex as exciting and heavenly as they thought it would be? The answer is NO!

A study of premarital sex relations was made in a large clinic for unwed mothers. The question was asked of the unwed mothers, “Did you find the sex experience pleasurable, disappointing, or unpleasant?”

Fifty percent said it was “disappointing,” thirty percent described it as “unpleasant or revolting,” and only twenty percent said it was “pleasurable.”

Under the right circumstances, sex can be an exciting and thrilling experience, as God intended it to be. But outside of marriage it is disappointing. A sixteen year old pregnant girl expressed it like this:

is risky.

Engaging in sex before marriage can expose you to sexually transmitted diseases. The “easy” girl, who is by no means a prostitute, can be the source of any one of several such diseases. Likewise, fellows can be “carriers.” Sexually transmitted diseases can cause serious infections, blindness, and even death. They can be transmitted to your children with the same devastating effects. There is no known cure for some of these diseases.

A girl who had sexual relations with only one boyfriend thought she was safe. She was terribly shocked when her doctor told her she was infected. A “disease tracer” revealed that the guy had had sex with only one other girl. But this girl had had sex with five other men, who in turn had been with nineteen women, some of them prostitutes. The girl who thought her relationship had been limited to one person had had contact, through him, with at least 92 persons.

can shatter a girl’s life.

Young people who experiment with sex outside of marriage should ask themselves: “What will we do if this results in pregnancy?” They might better ask, “What will we do when this results in pregnancy?”

One who visited a home for unwed mothers said, “You can never forget that look of despair on the faces of the girls who do not know what their future holds—girls who don’t know if they will ever know real love or have a happy home.”

It is not just the “easy girls” that get pregnant, but “good girls” as well. Abortion is NOT an easy solution to the problem of an unwanted pregnancy. Killing your unborn baby can leave you with terrible feelings of guilt which can haunt you the rest of your life. The following letter tells a familiar story:

can result in some BIG problems.

Sometimes a guy will say, “If you get pregnant, we can get married.”

Marriage is serious business. It means taking on a job you may not be prepared for. Marriage is not all moonlight, romance, and roses; it’s daylight, diapers, and dishes! Consider this letter:

can fool you into marrying the wrong person.

If you become involved with someone sexually before marriage, you may think that you have found real love when all you have is the thrill and excitement of sexual attraction. You go ahead and get married and then you discover that you married the wrong person. You find out too late that it was not real love but only sex that was the attraction.

can wreck your marriage.

Some people think that if they just get married, everything will be fine. But this is not so. A happy and successful marriage is not easy to come by under the best of circumstances, but when you start out wrong, it is very difficult to achieve.

Sex before marriage greatly reduces your chances of a successful marriage. One reason is that those who play around with sex before marriage tend to do the same thing after marriage. They are never satisfied, always looking for a new thrill.

Sometimes couples engage in sex before marriage, then get married and seemingly get along well. But they have sown seeds of doubt and distrust which will bear bitter fruit later on.

A couple who had been married 20 years was counseling with Dr. Henry Brandy, trying to keep their marriage from falling apart.

The husband said, “My wife doesn’t trust me.” The wife shot back, “You don’t trust me either.”

Why had they never trusted each other? Because they had sex before they were married. It resulted in 20 years of suspicion and distrust and finally wrecked their marriage.

We have considered ten practical reasons why you should avoid sex before marriage. But there is one reason that is more important than all these ten reasons: It is wrong!

It is wrong because God says it is sin. Nothing can change that. Sin is that which is contrary to God’s will. God has said that all sex outside of marriage is sin. Sex between two unmarried people is called “fornication.” It is one of the most damaging sins. The Bible says,

Flee fornication...he that commits fornication sins against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6:18).

God says that all forms of normal or perverted sex outside of marriage are sin. People say, “Times have changed,” but God has not changed, nor has He changed His mind about these things. The Bible says,

“Marriage is honorable in all, and the marriage bed undefiled: but fornicators and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4).

“Do not be deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind [homosexuals]…shall inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).

God wants us to have the BEST

Many young people do not understand why God tells us not to engage in sex before marriage. Some even think that God does not want us to enjoy sex, but this is not true at all.

The truth is that God gave commandments concerning sex, not to keep us from enjoying it, but in order that we might enjoy sex to the fullest and over the longest period of time.

To illustrate what we mean, let us think about trains. Some of the fastest trains in the world are in Japan. These trains regularly run at 120 miles per hour and at times they hit 155 miles per hour!

How can these trains attain such speeds? The reason is that they run on tracks that are superbly designed and skillfully built. The tracks enable these trains to run at their maximum speed.

Suppose one of these trains would say, “I’m tired of running on these old tracks. They are too restricting. I want to be free to go where I want to go and do what I want to do.” So this train jumps the tracks and heads out across a rice paddy.

This train is truly free now—no longer bound by those tracks. Yes, it is free all right, but it is not running at 120 miles an hour. In fact, it is not running at all. Instead, it is lying there in the mud. And that is where it will remain until a power greater than it picks it up, cleans it up, and puts it back on the tracks.

That is the way it is with sex. God has laid down “tracks”—not to keep you from enjoying sex, but that you might enjoy sex to the fullest and over the longest period of time in marriage. Satan offers you the thrill of “jumping the tracks,” but you end up in the mud.

If it is God’s plan for you to be married, He has just the right person in mind for you. When you walk down the aisle on your wedding day to seal your vows before a holy God, you will be glad that you kept yourself pure.

Someone reading this may be saying, “I have already jumped the tracks. Is there any hope for me?”

Yes, there is hope for you! Jesus Christ can pick you up out of the mud of your sins and failures, clean you up, and put you back on the tracks.

Christ's Example of Forgiveness

On one occasion, some religious leaders brought to Jesus a woman who was guilty of adultery. They threw this woman at the feet of Jesus and said, “Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded that she should be put to death by throwing stones at her. But what do you say?”

These men did not care about this woman. They were simply using her as a means of getting Jesus into trouble. If Jesus said, “Do not stone her,” He would be going against the law of Moses. If He said, “Put her to death,” He would be in trouble with the Roman government.

Jesus did not answer them right away. He kneeled down and began writing in the sand. When these men continued to press Jesus for a decision, He stood up and said, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw the first stone.”

Those who heard Him were convicted by their consciences and left, one by one. Jesus forgave this woman of her sins and said to her, “Go and sin no more.”

Christ will forgive you!

Jesus wants to forgive you and make you clean in God’s sight. He shed His precious blood on the cross that you might be forgiven of your sins. His blood can cleanse you from all your sins. The Bible says, “…the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from ALL SIN” (1 John 1:7).

You do not need to be afraid to come to Jesus. He forgave the woman taken in the act of adultery. He is “the Friend of sinners,” and He invites you to come to Him. Jesus said, “…anyone who comes to Me, I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37).

Your part is to come to Him; His part is to take you in. He will not only forgive you for your sins, but He can deliver you from any sin that may be binding you. Jesus said, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36).

If this is what you truly want, get alone with the Lord Jesus. Tell Him about your sins. Tell Him everything. He will not reject you. Thank Him for dying on the cross for your sins. Ask Him to make you clean through His precious blood which was shed for you.

Get a Bible or a New Testament and begin reading the Gospel of John. As you read it, underline the words “believe” and “believes.” Note especially the following verses:

Put your name in this verse: “For God so loved _________ that He gave His only begotten Son, that _________ believing in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Read this verse over and over with your name in it. Believe it! Ask the Lord Jesus to come into your heart and give you a new life.

Secondary Virginity

“I’ve blown it! I didn’t realize how important it was to keep myself for the one I marry. Can I get my virginity back?”

No, you cannot. Your virginity is something that you can give to only one person and you can give it only one time. You cannot get back your outward, physical virginity, but you can get back your inner virginity—your purity. It is called “Secondary Virginity.”

What is Secondary Virginity? It is choosing to say no to any further sex until marriage and living out that decision. You become what you choose. If you make this choice and live it out, you will become a different person.

Some people say that, once you have been involved in sex, you will keep on doing it. So they say, “The best thing to do is to carry a condom with you at all times, because you cannot or will not say no.”

That is not true! You can change! Just because you made a mistake does not mean that you have to keep making that same mistake. If you drank too much at a party one night, does that mean that you have to get drunk at every party you go to for the rest of your life? Of course not!

Because you made a mistake in getting involved with sex does not mean that you have to keep on making that mistake. You can choose Secondary Virginity. Thousands of teens make this choice—every day!

Why do teens choose Secondary Virginity? For a number of reasons. Here are some:

• I finally realized that what I was doing was wrong.
• I got tired of being used.
• Frankly, I was scared of AIDS and the other sexually transmitted diseases.
• I learned a bitter lesson.
• I did not want to take the chance of damaging my reproductive organs.
• What I got out of it was not worth what it cost me.

One of the wonderful things about taking Jesus as your Savior is that God makes you a new person. It’s like He hits the DELETE button and wipes out your past. You become a new person in Christ. You are as clean and pure in God’s sight as Christ Himself.

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

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