13 He who covers his sins will not prosper, But whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.
Sometimes being honest is hard. It is the nature of the selfish heart to cover up our mistakes and crimes. We have all told lies to avoid trouble or shame or kept quiet when we should have confessed to something.
Proverbs 28:21
21 To show partiality is not good, Because for a piece of bread a man will transgress.
We all make mistakes—every one of us. Imperfection is a universal trait. That is why we need a savior, because evil and sin cannot stand in the presence of God. Jesus took the penalty of our sin, and in doing so, He made it possible for us to stand before God. God will forgive our sins because Jesus paid for them. Our tendency to be dishonest is one of the more obvious ways we all sin and fall short of perfection. It is easy to do and it is often effective. Proverbs 28:21 tells us being dishonest is so easy that we’ll do it for a piece of bread.
Proverbs 19:5
5 A false witness will not go unpunished, And he who speaks lies will not escape.
Dishonesty is a sin, and there are consequences, even if we happen to not get caught. For one, it bothers our consciences. When we lie and have deceived someone, we feel bad about it. We know we have done wrong and while we may have avoided trouble for ourselves, we likely passed that trouble on to someone else who didn’t deserve it. That is selfish. God hears every lie, and lying will not go unpunished. We don’t always get caught, but we will always be punished because our consciences won’t let us off free and clear. There is always a spiritual consequence to sin.
We will face temptations to be dishonest all our lives. Sometimes it won’t seem to matter if the truth is known or not. In fact, it may appear to be beneficial to everyone if the truth is hidden away forever. But we live in a dishonest world and adding more dishonesty to it makes our world a darker place. When we live with the Spirit of God in our hearts, then our hearts will desire to do the right thing, even when it is the hard thing. By focusing on the word of God we become sensitive to even the smallest sins, which are often simple little lies. A half-truth is a whole lie.
Guided by Wisdom, the first book in the Every Step series, shows adolescents how they can use the Bible to help them respond biblically to challenges and questions they face every day. It will show them how God’s Word is relevant in decision making and problem solving, guidance and character growth.
Look for it to release in November, 2023, on Sing Write Read / Books.
I fell in love at the age of 25. It was the first love I’d known, the first girl I really cared about since I was a teenager. From the day I met her I pursued her, not in any righteous manner, but I wanted a relationship with her. She was beautiful, very beautiful, and fun. To spend the rest of my life with this woman would have taken commitment and courage, leadership on my part and ambition. I had none of that to offer. I left.
God’s way
I had already decided that I would never marry by that time. Being tied down was not my style. Adventure and the unfamiliar were what I was about, even though the isolation and loneliness of that lifestyle drove me to despair and a desire for death more than once. In this condition, even if God wanted to bless me with a wife, I would not have seen it. I was living a life that pursued sin and I was outside of God’s will, meaning I would never know the blessings He had for me.
Six years later, I crossed paths with this woman, and she became my wife. I was 30 years old. Look at how our marriage lined up with God’s plan:
Having one partner – We both had known multiple sexual partners
Marrying young – Both of us were 30 years old when we married
Having children – We intended not to have children
Sex is to be enjoyed – There was a lot of baggage in our sex life
After we got married, we moved to southern Illinois, where I was saved at 34 years old. Getting involved in the church, I have been blessed to witness several marriages between godly families where the bride and the groom stood in front of each other purely, as virgins. One couple, I know for sure, had not even kissed another person of the opposite sex before. They shared their first kiss at the altar! I also know many other couples who fall into this category.
How I long to have what they have!
What they have is beautiful and pure. Together they have something no one else in the world can make a claim to, each other and their bodies, intimate knowledge of each other, no sacrifices made on the altar of sexual desire and promiscuity.
My wife and I will never have that, but thanks to the grace of God a multitude of sins is covered by love, His love. We have healed and have come into deep intimacy with each other, but the journey was not easy.
Sexual and Emotional Baggage
The bottom line is that when my wife and I got married we had brought a lot of baggage into our marriage, emotional baggage, sexual baggage, and a spiritual deficit.
Division
By marrying late and knowing other partners, we brought ideas about what the opposite sex likes from those experiences into our bed. Instead of getting to know our spouse intimately and sexually, we assumed they wanted the same things as others. We give them something we have already given to something else. In other words, it’s already used. There is nothing pure about something that has been used already.
During sex memories of past partners infected our minds and distracted us from true oneness with each other, which is literally committing adultery while in the arms of your spouse. Even much later in our marriage the heavy luggage of the past appeared on the circular conveyor belt of this hellish baggage claim. Betrayal was felt, suspicions were cast, and the former pursuits of this world and the ways of sin had threatened what God had intended for good once again.
Marrying Late and Almost Missing Out
Getting married late led us to the decision not to have children. We both were so self-centered and fixed on our life course that we chose to focus on our careers and personal interests and hobbies instead. Thank God, through the same incident He used to bring me to Him, He led us to have our two kids. There is no greater blessing on this side of heaven, aside from the gift of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, that compares to family.
God’s Way is the Right Way
God’s plan
My wife and I have been married for 17 years. I can honestly say that when we make love there is no other sexual experience that can be more satisfying or take its place. It is beautiful, romantic, pleasurable, and very intimate. Knowing what I know now, I can say without doubt that monogamous sex within marriage, one that starts in purity at the altar of marriage, is the best path. It is not a surprise to learn this later in life, that God’s way, what He says in His Word, is the best way.
I’d like to say I wish I could go back in time and change my behavior and marry my wife at a younger age, refusing to be a rebel and a loner, forsaking the sexual path I followed, but I can’t say that. The variables in a child’s life are extremely influential. The situations I found myself in, almost always involving trusted adults, led me to view life through a lens that was worldly and not godly. Once I reached adolescent age, I thrust myself into the open arms of the world and pursued what I was taught as a child. It has become a disease that has infected me to this day; literally, a thorn on the flesh. I was on a path to destruction, and I believe God rescued me from it, many times, before I was saved at the age of 34.
Parents, I beg this of you; guard the hearts and minds of your kids. They are not ready for sex, sexual encounters, or sex education in their developmental years. This pursuit is too much of a burden for young minds and bodies. I know it is difficult, but you need to fight for your kids. You need to be the one who is making decisions on your children’s behalf, and not letting the world or our culture dictate to you the decisions you should be allowing. The world is the wolf, your kids are the sheep. That makes YOU the shepherd. Show your kids the path to sexual purity, encourage it, and fight like a madman against any foe that brings perversion to your door.
Read part 2 of how sobriety remains important and possible in my life.
Disguised under a tinted and vulnerable, cellophane-like covering, we boast adventure, experimentation, freedom, passion, and hurt as reasons for some of our poorest decisions. When we think of what causes the most pain in a life, many of us go straight to drugs and alcohol. These readily available and well-marketed delusions have destroyed many lives, along with the lives of the user’s immediate circle. Dangerous and adrenaline creating stunts are also culprits of chronic pain and destruction. While I’ve had ample experience with these cases, my immediate and confident answer is not in any of these arenas.
What is the thing that has caused me the most pain in my life? Hands down and without doubt, it is pre-marital sex.
Pre-marital Sex
In the previous article we showed how God tells us in His Word we are meant to have one sexual partner, marry young, have kids within marriage, and to enjoy sex with our spouse, which it is a gift and blessing from God. I took all these directions and promises and gifts of God and destroyed them in my life. I trampled on them. I cursed them. Looking back, I know there is nothing that has caused greater destruction, pain, death, and regret, than my sexual path as a young person. I can tell you by not only what it says in the Bible, but by life experience, this is God’s truth.
The world, the devil, our selfish freewill, however you want to express it, has taken God’s beautiful gift of sex and has perverted it to our own destruction. When we disregarded God’s initial intention for sex within marriage it became a pathway for millions to be infected with disease. It has created and sustains the abortion industry. It has broken countless marriages, which are permanent bonds in the eyes of God (see Mark 10:9). Sex outside of God’s law has created prostitution, the pornography industry, and the sex trade, which victimizes the most vulnerable; children, the poor, and the defenseless. It is a driver of embarrassment, stress, pain, anxiety, murder, and suicide.
Pre-marital sex
My History
When I was a young boy, I can’t say the age, but I can say they are in my earliest memories, I was continually given pornography to look at by other men. It’s interesting to look back on that and know that these men were not intentionally trying to destroy my life. They were doing me a favor as far as they were concerned. Giving a boy what he wanted most. Giving him experience and knowledge in the ways of the world so he wouldn’t be found wanting. Often, the giving was also a distraction to what they were doing in the other room. Let’s not be naïve, this is non-contact, sexual abuse to a child.
As an adolescent I was encouraged to pursue sexual experiences with women. Always being asked what kind of sexual experiences I was having with my current girlfriend. I was hooked up with women who were known to be sexually active and liberal. I lost my virginity at 13 to a 14-year-old girl. I had my own liquor cabinet behind a bulletin board in my bedroom for a year or two prior to that.
It was common to sneak out of the house to pursue alcohol and sexual experiences at this young age. I realize now that depression and isolation had appeared in my life at the age of 13, a condition that would weigh heavily on me into my 30’s. My first suicide attempt accompanied the first time I got a girl pregnant, which was followed by an abortion. I was 14 or 15.
Later in life I would experience the one-night-stand. Immortalized in song and movies as the ultimate sexual experience, the two I had experiences only delivered deepened depression, worry, fear, anxiety, guilt, and regret for me.
As a result of being taught this lifestyle and behavior from boyhood, I failed to have a faithful relationship with any woman throughout my teenage and young adult years. I was trained to be unfaithful, to want sexual volume and experiences over relationships and intimacy. Fortunately, I wasn’t a good “womanizer.” I was horrible at it actually. My heart wasn’t in it, I was a terrible liar, and I cared too much for the women I met. There was a seed of responsibility and a gentlemanly character planted in me as a result of the influence of a few godly men in my life. Their seeds were in the minority, but the light they provided successfully staved off a complete takeover by the darkness that held me.
A Short Life of Sin and Destruction
By the time I was 17, I had experience with disease, unwanted pregnancies, abortions, suicide attempts, severe depression, addiction, DUI and multiple car wrecks, arrest for theft, and isolation. You will find the breakage of all ten of the Commandments in these few years, including murder. I can honestly say, it is the guidance I was given by the dominant males in my life, guidance that encouraged sexual conquest over sexual purity, and worldly pleasure over a relationship with God, that caused nearly all of this pain, destruction, and death.
I was a child who thought he was a man. A child who was living his life as if he were capable of making the important, life-changing decisions of a man. I was a child who was led terribly astray.
In the third and final post of this series I will walk you through where I failed in these three areas and how they affected my marriage:
Having one partner
Marrying young
Having Children
God’s intention for sex to be enjoyed
Check out a recent blog post on sobriety and addiction.
Thank you for reading. It may seem strange to say, but I hope you are encouraged by my failures, poor choices, and eventual life-changing salvation.
In this series of three blog posts, we are going to talk about sex. The series is written from my point of view, based on my history with sex, marriage, and God. This first part will explain what the Bible says about sex and marriage, as related to the topics I want to discuss with you. The second part will tell you about my sexual journey from childhood into marriage. The third part will contrast my experience (Part 2), with God’s Word (Part 1).
One Sexual Partner for Life
God tells us in His Word that we are to remain sexually pure until we marry one person. He talks about it a lot in the Pentateuch, or the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. There are whole chapters, like Leviticus 18, devoted to sexual immorality. We see the Hebrew nation fall away from God time and time again to pursue Baal (sex was a big deal in Baal worship) and polygamy, marrying many wives (Gideon had 70 sons from “many wives,” Solomon over 300 wives and lovers). Don’t think for a minute that because Abraham was given Hagar, or because Jacob had two wives and two concubines, or because the kings of Israel, like David and Solomon, had many wives and concubines, that this was right in the eyes of God. It wasn’t. God says in Genesis 2, Jesus says in Matthew 19 and Mark 10, and Paul reminds us in Ephesians 5, that man shall leave his parents and cling to his wife, singular, and the two shall become one flesh.
When people do something that is in direct opposition to God’s Word, even if they find success in it, or if it becomes culturally acceptable, or even law, it doesn’t allow us to disregard what God says and it doesn’t change what He says. The Bible is not up for cultural interpretation when it comes to moral law. It is written on your heart, and it is written on mine, believer, skeptic, and non-believer alike.
Marriage – God’s Way
Marrying Young
Sex is a gift from God, and it is a beautiful gift. God tells us this in the Song of Solomon, which is a book in the Bible that tells us of two young lovers and how they desire each other. Their eyes and their hearts are only for each other, and the power of their attraction is insatiable. It speaks to the blessed decision to marry at a young age. To find the love of your youth and commit to a life together.
Having Children
We can’t talk about sex and the Word of God without mentioning having children. When the Bible talks about marriage and sex, more often than not, childbearing and raising a family are mentioned. In Genesis 1, God says, “Increase and multiply.” It’s not that God’s will for everyone is to be married and have a family. Paul makes that clear in 1 Corinthians 7 that if one is unmarried, it is fine to remain so. But if one wants to start a family and have children of their own, then God says this is to be done within the family unit, one father and one mother. This is His will for our lives.
Sex is a Gift from God, meant to be Enjoyed
When you get married and make love to your spouse for the first time, and you enter this world of sharing your most intimate self with another for the first time, you have just received God’s wedding present to you!
God’s Gift to You
Look at what Proverbs 5:15-20 says. It is about the beauty and enjoyment of sex with your spouse.
Verses 18 and 19 say “Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth. As a loving deer and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times; and always be enraptured with her love.”
I’m sure we can get an amen to that!
Is God not telling us here to marry young, have only one lover, your spouse, and to enjoy intimate sex with each other? It is pretty clear.
Now look at verses 15-17, and 20. For brevity I’ll spell out verses 17 and 20. “Let them be only your own, and not for strangers with you.” Then, “For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman, and be embraced in the arms of a seductress?” Verse 20 speaks to the betrayal of adultery and the resulting pain and permanent damage to a relationship when we allow ourselves to be embraced in the arms of another.
In the second edition of this series, I will take you through my sexual journey as a child, and the damage it caused, before concluding with reflections on what God says about sex and marriage in contradiction with the path I chose.
Read Chris’s post on his insights into multi-cultural marriage:
After leaving the problem of progressive and liberal Christianity with some elder members of this church, I left the issue behind. Frankly, I wasn’t confident that it was my role to carry this banner for church members who lived 150 miles away from me, attended a church of which I was not a member, and being a part of a denomination that I was not involved with. But the issue refused to leave my conscience. I thought about it often over the next three years.
It’s easy to rationalize, this problem of cultural tendencies and biblical truth, into co-existing, distantly related cousins, who can blend together to create an ideal, peacefully existing unit. Our feelings tell us this is what we should do. Why not? It just makes everything easier and respects the feelings, wants, and needs of others.
Before we do this, I mean walk the path of the world, we need to decide two things:
First, that we are going to read the Bible
Second that we are going to believe what it says
If we determine these two points are valid then we cannot walk the path the world asks us, or demands us, to walk. They are not compatible. If we embrace these two points, then the world is going to take offense of us and they will not like us. This, according to the Bible, should cause us to rejoice!
Homework: Read Matthew 5:11-12 and James 1:2-3.
Once, when I was preparing to send 1,000 Christmas cards that boldly proclaimed the saving grace and love of Jesus Christ to our company client list, my wife asked me if I thought I would lose some clients over it. My reply: “I hope so!” If no one is taken aback by the boldness we rightfully have in Jesus Christ, then we are not being bold enough. I don’t mean to run around intentionally insulting people. You don’t need to do that. Your faith and your love for Jesus will take care of that. That is if you let your light shine in the darkness.
Homework: Read Luke 6:26
This is what I found when I returned to that church three years later. The pastor told the only two children in the congregation that day, they were visiting by the way, that deep down inside they were “good people.” He basically planted the seeds that said they didn’t need a savior; that their goodness was good enough. Too picky, you say? I disagree. Our words and our doctrine hold power and have eternal consequences. The Bible says teachers of the word of God will be held accountable and judged with greater strictness. What he said to those kids was very bad doctrine and my wife and I were both glad our children were not present.
Homework: Read James 3:1 and James 3:2-12, and Mark 10:18
It was during the actual sermon when the fireworks of hell really exploded. The pastor said, and I do not quote this, “Have you ever had someone ask you how long you’ve been saved? I hate it when people ask that. It makes us look proud, like we are above someone else. I always answer, ‘No. I’m not there yet, but I’m working on it.’”
Let that sink in for a minute…
When he said this my wife and I nearly jumped out of our pews, and honestly, I think we were the only ones in the room who noticed. The pastor had gone from not wanting to touch on the areas where cultural and biblical worldviews collide, in fear of insulting someone, to refusing to proclaim, and even denying the reality of his own salvation and the power of our risen Christ, because he is afraid to sound too arrogant and proud. This is the fear of men and a complete lack of the fear of God.
Pastor, you’re not working on it! The arrogance you protect yourself from by denying what Jesus has done for you is actually arrogance for self. Here is some homework for you.
Homework: Ephesians 2:8-9
And here are some verses I will not save for homework, because you all need to read them right now. You are SAVED! You are saved by the work of Jesus Christ, and you are to be joyful in it. Never, ever, be ashamed.
Romans 1:16
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
Romans 10:13
For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Romans 10:9
that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
We are to never be ashamed of our salvation in Jesus Christ. On the contrary, we are to stand boldly in it. You can back that up, and everything I’ve said in this article, by the word of God.
And you, fellow believer, have a responsibility. You are responsible for reading the Bible, every day, and knowing what is in it. You need to be able to determine if what you are being told is biblical truth or not, or else this world will have its way with you. You also need to know what God’s will is for your life, and the only place you will find that information is by spending time in the Bible, alone, with God.
2 Timothy 3:16-17
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
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