Boy Meets Girl - Say Hello to Courtship (18 page)

Don't try to bargain with lust. Kill it. Don't spend the season of courtship giving into it-in your mind or your actions-and learning to delight in sin instead of righteousness. Once you do, you'll never find true satisfaction.

When Fantasy Goes Too Far

It's tempting during courtship, and especially during engagement, to begin to fantasize about making love with your future spouse. Be careful that joyful, God-centered anticipation doesn't turn into unbridled lust. Even though it's not easy, you still need to guard your heart. Its never right to fantasize about sexual immorality, and it's very easy to go from "imagining the wedding night" to sinful fantasy.

During our engagement, I struggled the most with sexual thoughts about Shannon in the morning. It always happened right when I woke up. If I allowed myself to lie in bed for an extra five minutes and dream about how one day I'd be waking up next to her, lust often got the better of me-if not at the moment, then later in how I treated her when we were together. In spite of failing often, by God's grace I was committed to fighting lust. I knew that the moment I stopped struggling against my sinful nature and started believing the lies of lust, I'd be lost.

That's why I jumped out of bed and cried out to God for grace in my times of weakness. That's why I was accountable to my roommate, Andrew, and my pastor about my thought life. That's why, when sexual thoughts about Shannon came, I did my best to turn my focus to thanking God for what our future held and to asking for His help to be patient and strong in the meantime.

The reality of indwelling sin and the deceit of lust is why this next principle is so important. To fight and avoid sexual sin, we need a game plan. This principle helps us connect our convictions to our actions:

Specific guidelines
/or
your physical relationship can never replace humble reliance on the Holy Spirit
-
but they can reinforce your biblical
convictions.

Every couple needs to search Scripture and come up with their own specific guidelines for what they will and won't do in their physical relationship. These guidelines should never become a replacement for prayer and constant reliance on the Holy Spirit. Instead, they should be seen as an expression of a sincere desire to please and obey God. A vague definition of righteousness quickly leads to compromise.

The guidelines that you and your boyfriend or girlfriend come up with are like the yellow lines that divide a road. Can they stop you from sinning? No. Do they negate the importance of carefully evaluating your heart and your motives? Not at all. But they're still important. We need the yellow lines on a road even though they can't stop a car from swerving into the wrong lane and having a head-on collision. Though the lines are unable to stop a driver who wants to ignore them, they do help drivers who want to avoid danger.

Here is what's important to understand: We can't
start
by making our guidelines. Our starting point has to be a heart desire to honor God with our bodies and to serve each other. Paul was right when he said that rules for the sake of rules and rules that originate from human traditions and glorify human piety have no "value in restraining sensual indulgence" (Colossians 2:23). Only the power of the Holy Spirit working in us can change us. Only by His grace can we learn

But here's where many people misunderstand and misapply this passage. An important part of receiving and applying God's grace in our lives is establishing behavior that flees from temptation and puts sin to death. This involves establishing guidelines -yes, rules-that help us. These rules aren't our hope, they don't earn God's love, and they aren't our starting point; but they can help us put our convictions into action.

Our Guidelines

After our "nap" in the hammock, I realized that Shannon and I needed stricter and more specific guidelines for our physical relationship. We were accountable to friends, but we hadn't really spelled out what it meant for us to be obedient. It was all subjective. "How are you two doing lately?" my parents would ask. "Uh, I think we're doing pretty good.. .1 guess," I'd say, trying to remember if I felt guilty about anything that had occurred recently As I looked ahead to the four months before our wedding, I knew it would only get more difficult to stick to our convictions.

Let me tell you some of the guidelines we came up with. In sharing them, I'm not saying that you should follow them. You have to develop your own convictions and guidelines from Scripture. You'll have different strengths and weaknesses than us. What I want to illustrate is how important it is to be
specific.

1.
We will not caress each other For us this
excludes:

rubbing each other's back, neck, or arms;

touching or stroking each other's face;

playing with each others hair;

scratching each other's arms or back.

sitting entwined on a couch watching a movie;

leaning or resting on the other person;

lying down next to each other;

playfully wrestling with each other.

3.We
will guard our conversation and meditation. For us this means:

not talking about our future physical relationship;

not thinking or dwelling on what would now be sinful;

not reading things related to physical intimacy within marriage prematurely.

4.We will
not spend undue amounts of time together at late hours.

A specific area of concern for us is time together late at night. We're more vulnerable when we're tired. Even if we haven't compromised, please ask if we're spending too much time together at late hours.

5.
Appropriate physical expressions during this season include:

holding hands;

Josh putting his arm around Shannon's shoulder;

brief "side hugs."

6.
These guidelines are "fences" to keep us far from
violating God's
commands.

Our greatest concern is the direction and intention of our hearts. Even if we're following them to the smallest detail, please inquire if any action or activity is stirring up inappropriate desire or awakening love before its time.

Let me say it again: My goal in sharing our guidelines is not so you'll adopt them. You might be able to do some of these things with a clear conscious before God. Whatever guidelines you come up with need to grow out of the clear teaching of Scripture and from sincere conviction so you can follow them with joy.

I encourage you to take the time to "paint the yellow lines" for your relationship. You don't need them when you're feeling strong and spiritually sharp-you need them for the moments when your resistance is weak and your sense of conviction dull. In those moments of weakness you don't want to start having to decide what you should and shouldn't do. If you make your choices then, you'll wind up in compromise.

The Big Deal about Little Things

So how should
you
decide what you do or don't do in your physical relationship before marriage? This next principle can help you formulate your own guidelines:

The longer your "no big deal" list is before marriage, the shorter your "very special" list will be after marriage.

This principle reminds us that we should base our decisions

Many couples spend dating and courtship convincing themselves that things like kissing and sexual touching are "no big deal." When they finally reach the marriage bed, there's very little left that can be considered unique and special to marriage. They're the ones to lose!

I've already mentioned that Shannon and I decided to save our first kiss for our wedding day. This is another example of an outward action that is meaningless unless it's backed up by a heart desire to glorify God and serve each other. I don't encourage couples to make this or any other commitment so they can feel morally superior to other people. Neither do I think that this should be the litmus test of truly godly relationships. As you've already heard, I sinned more in my heart without kissing Shannon than many guys who kiss their girlfriends. The most important issue is our motive and our heart before God.

But let me share why Shannon and I decided to make kissing a "big deal." First, we had both been in previous relationships in which we kissed other people. We knew how meaningless this could be apart from true love. We wanted to "redeem" kissing, if you will, and make it a privilege of marriage. Second, we understood the progressive nature of sexual involvement. Once you start kissing, you want to move on. We didn't want to start what we couldn't finish. When a man and woman's lips meet, and their tongues penetrate each other's mouths, their process of becoming one has begun.

It'sa Package

Another way to put it is that we viewed kissing as part of the whole package of sexual union. And we didn't want to dissect

Many Christian couples have the conviction that sex should be saved for marriage. Unfortunately, all this really means is that they're saving intercourse for marriage. Do you see how ludicrous this is? Sex is so much more than just penetration. As John White puts it, "Defining coitus in terms of penetration and orgasm has as much moral significance and as much logical difficulty as trying to define a beard by the number of hairs on a chin." He goes on to reveal just how silly it is to try to break the passion of lovemaking into stages:

I know that experts used to distinguish light from heavy petting, and heavy petting from intercourse, but is there any moral difference between two naked people in bed petting to orgasm and another two having intercourse? Is the one act a fraction of an ounce less sinful than the other?

Is it perhaps more righteous to pet with clothes on? If so, which is worse, to pet with clothes off or to have intercourse with clothes on?

You may accuse me of being crude. Far from it. If we pursue the argument far enough, we will see that an approach to the morality of premarital sex that is based on the details of behavior (kissing, dressing or undressing, touching, holding, looking) and parts of the body (fingers, hair, arms, breasts, lips, genitalia) can satisfy only a Pharisee. A look can be as sensual as touch, and a finger brushed lightly over a cheek as erotic as penetration.

In an insightful article entitled "(Don't) Kiss Me," Bethany Torode points out that the problem among many Christians is that we "don't acknowledge sexual intimacy as a whole package."

I'm a sophomore in college with virgin lips. A few months after turning 16,1 vowed to keep my "bow" tied until a man promises to commit himself to the whole package. My first kiss will be from my husband on our wedding day. Yes, that's quite a progression, from an inexpert kiss at the altar to the complete unwrapping of the wedding night-believe me, my friends have pointed that out. Then again, Adam and Eve managed to figure everything out.

What Bethany and many other Christians are realizing is that when it comes to a physical relationship, "the beginning and the ending of passion are inseparable." We're the ones who lose when we make any other form of physical intimacy "no big deal." Even our kissing should be informed by an overriding desire to glorify God and to be captivated by sex within marriage. Bethany continues:

God never intended the engagement period to be a time for physical experimenting, for peeking under the wrapping paper. Kissing-which quickly turns passionate when you are in love-carries a current intended to light a fire. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for
kiss (nashaq)
is derived from the primary root meaning "to kindle." I don't want to open the matchbox. "Why preheat the oven when you can't cook the roast?" is the way Doug Wilson puts it in
Her Hand in Marriage.