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Northeast Bible Church
19185 FM 2252
Garden Ridge, TX 78266
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February 2009 |
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Thanks to pop singers, purity rings have become a hot trend. Many young people are publicly announcing their intentions to abstain from sex until marriage. For some kids, these rings mean even more. About his purity ring, Syracuse University freshman Stephen Chang says, "It also means that I won't drink, smoke, or date until I know I'm ready to date for marriage. It's a symbol of me saying that I want to live a life that's more pleasing to God."
Maintaining a pure, God-pleasing lifestyle in our sinful world is tough. Kids are tempted to enjoy immediate pleasure rather than wait for long-term rewards. As parents, you play a vital role in your teenagers' moral decision-making. Not only do kids look to you as examples, but they want you to listen and be available to talk. Surveys show that kids crave moral information from their parents. Research also shows that kids whose parents had talked with them about tough topics were more likely to turn to their parents first in difficult situations.
Kids crave control over their lives, and the quest for purity is one area they can control. It's also an area where kids can assert their individuality, think for themselves, and not follow the crowd. So encourage your teenagers to make a commitment to a morally pure lifestyle. Even if you don't give them a purity ring, you can let them know that Jesus, who died to make them pure, expects sexual integrity from his children. Just as importantly, when we mess up, Jesus offers forgiveness and the chance to renew our commitment to live for him.
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The book Guy Talk, Girl Talk, a small-group resource from SimplyYouthMinistry.com, offers these three reasons why purity is more than not having sex:
1. It's about purity of your heart. Every commitment begins in the heart. Purity is about resisting the world's way of doing things. The challenge is to make a commitment that guards your heart, mind, and body from anything that would contaminate you with the sin of the world.
2. It's about purity of your mind. Our thoughts and what we put in our minds can be just as damaging as what we do with our bodies. Think about the magazines you read, the movies you watch, and the songs you listen to. What messages are they sending? Purity isn't about avoiding "the world" but about making daily decisions that maintain the purity of your mind and prevent it from being contaminated.
3. It's about purity of your motives. When your heart and mind are pure, the results are actions motivated by purity. Wrong motives are about fulfilling only your own selfish desires, such as instant gratification or approval from others.
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Contrary to what's seen in the media, not all teenagers engage in premarital sex. Consider these stats from a variety of online sources:
• More than half (52%) of high school students have never had sexual intercourse.
• 87% of teenagers don't think it’s embarrassing for kids to say they’re virgins.
• Of teenagers who have had sexual intercourse, 63% say they wish they had waited.
• 82% of teenagers desire to have one marriage partner for life.
• When the Barna Group asked 1,000 U.S. parents about the most important outcomes of raising their kids, the top answer (39%) was "getting a good education." Only 4% answered "helping to establish appropriate moral values."
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I was intrigued and pleased that they had waited to have sexual intercourse-and asked how they had chosen sexual integrity when most of their generation had not. Their answer was insightful. Both of them mentioned three issues. First, their parents had talked openly and freely about sex education. Second, when they were in youth group, they had taken a sexual purity pledge very seriously. Third, they added that they did have a strong sex drive and it hadn't been easy to wait, but they both had made a decision to practice the spiritual discipline of sexual abstinence. 
