3. Are you willing to pursue a Biblical definition of sexual purity?
As followers of Christ we believe God has reserved the gift of sex between men and women for marriage (Genesis 2:18-25, Mark 10:6-9, 1 Thessalonians 4:2-3, Hebrews 13:4). God had our best in mind when He gave strong directives about sexual purity before marriage. Therefore, we urge couples as you have agreed to a Biblical authority over your relationship to abstain from any form of sexual contact with each other until after the wedding. Rather honor and pursue one another out of a pure heart of giving love.
a. Living separately before being married. This honors God in your relationship and avoids even the “appearance of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:22), yet alone lessens the temptation to become sexually intimate with the one you love and are physically attracted to. Culturally, a couple that is living together is typically assumed to be sexually active. 1 Corinthians 6:18-19 gives us wise counsel in this arena. "Flee sexual immorality....19 Or do you no know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's."
b. Honoring one another's body builds a security in your relationship that will last the duration of your marriage. You can move forward on your wedding night secure and comitted without the baggage of conviction and uncertainty. Imagine the trust and security in your relationship as you commit yourselves to honoring one another if ever someone is to accuse you of an affair later. Through honoring your fiance's body today, you've proven to one another that your word is bond and you have truly forsaken all others to keep yourselves to one another. You've already displayed the promise of self control, love through sacrifice, and commitment by honoring the other before you've even stepped into the marriage covenant. Therefore should accusation ever arise against your marriage you do what you should do. You side with your spouse because you trust them. This begins today. If you have already crossed that line, through God's grace and a commitment to honor one another from this day forward, it is not too late to build this trust. Please help each other in this way and start sowing seeds of love and commitment today. This is not for the sake of legalistic controlling religiosity, but an exhortation driven by love and a desire to see your relationship secure and benefitted by solid decisions made early in your relationship.
c. Dealing with porn addiction, and discussing how to protect your home from pornography or emotional/sexual affairs. If this issue has not yet been discussed, now would be a good time. Too many couples run into a head-on colission with pornography or affairs (whether emotional or sexual). Many of these issues could be avoided if they had merely discussed how to safegaurd their marriage at the beginning. Building trust is difficult. Regaining trust is even more difficult. The two of you should discuss how to overcome a porn addiction if you are dealing with such and how to protect your home from pornography's billion dollar industry as well as possible emotional/sexual affairs. You will soon be responsible for looking out for one another. If you are engaged to be married soon, now is the time to let some of those skeletons out of the closet as to exterminate their effectiveness toward the demise of your trust in the relationship later. Here are some statistics on pornography and how it impacts relationships.
If you agree and are ready to move forward, click here get started.
