“To love a spouse amid the flame of honeymoon passion is human, but to love a spouse all the days of your life, even before you ever lay your eyes upon that person – this kind of love is divine.”
Eric Ludy, Author of When God Writes Your Love Story
Growing up in today’s highly sexualized culture, it’s hard to expect anything but mediocrity, compromise, and promiscuity when it comes to romantic relationships. Public schools are now ground zero for the battle between parents and policy makers over the sexualization of our children. Children are encouraged to explore their sexuality at a young age and to do whatever feels good to them. Anything pure and abstinent is mocked and ridiculed.
But God has a heavenly vision when it comes to our children’s love stories that is other worldly. More than ever, our society needs parents to rise, protect, and guide our children in the area of sexuality. However, it will require our cooperation with God to help prepare our children for their God-written love stories. As parents, we need to set the standard – God’s standard – and point them heavenward. If we fail to do so, our children may never know anything more than what the self-gratifying perverse culture offers.
The Authoritative Word of God
What I’m about to say is highly counter cultural and many may find it old fashion. I believe this is because much of our thinking and worldview today have been shaped by the media and the culture. When we encounter biblical teaching, especially in the area of romance and sexuality, it comes across to us as strange, irrelevant, or extreme.
Author and speaker Nancy Leigh Demoss Wolgemuth says, “[W]e live in a culture that does not recognize God’s right to rule [and] does not accept scripture as the pattern for life.”2 We all pattern our lives after something. The question is, what are we patterning our lives after? Is it the authoritative Word of God? Or the world?
As I mentioned, a battle is being waged over the young and impressionable minds of our children. Do we parents stand by passively as they are being assaulted by the world with “educational” sexual content? But before we begin to prepare our children for their future marriages, we must first align ourselves with the Word of God.
Upholding Purity
Today, just the mention of the word “purity” sounds old fashion and seen as unattainable or legalistic. It is tragically disregarded when it comes to romantic relationships. Nevertheless, purity and holiness are what God commands in our lives.
A bible verse that can bring strong conviction is Song of Solomon 2:2. It reads:
"Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the maidens."
Here, the writer (who is likely King Solomon) lavishly cherishes his bride. He compares her to a lovely flower, setting her apart as dramatically distinct from the rest of the women around her. This powerful verse can bring flattery to its reader, conviction or even disdain. It all depends on who the reader identifies herself as – is she the lily? Or is she a thorn?
What makes this bride unique and few and far between is found in Song of Solomon 4:12:
"You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain."
According to the Zondervan Handbook to the Bible, this garden symbolizes the bride’s virginity1. Her groom praises and greatly rejoices in her purity. This is what sets her apart like a rare jewel from the other women around her. The saving of herself as a gift for her groom was noble and God-honoring.
Despite what the world says about purity, it is lovely, heavenly and beautiful. It is what Jesus Christ Himself embodied. And it is the very standard He has established for us to strive for to attain. Ephesians 5:3 says:
"But among you there must not even be a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people."
Preparing our children for their future marriages must begin with us. We must learn to rise above this debased culture and value purity in our hearts. Psalm 51:6 says, “Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being.” Jesus is the Truth (John 14:6). To uphold Truth in our innermost being is to uphold Jesus. To uphold Jesus is to uphold purity.
The First Kiss – a Fairytale Too Good to be True
I’ve been fortunate enough to stumble upon a Christian fairytale children’s story book titled The Princess and the Kiss by Jennie Bishop. The book is elegantly illustrated with elaborate pictures that bolster its fairytale theme.
It tells of a tale of a princess who treasures and saves her first kiss for the one she will one day marry. Unlike other young ladies in her time, she strives to live a life of purity and trusts in God’s timing to bring the right man she is to one day call her husband into her life. Her motivation in doing so is to honor God with her life. And she chose to love her future husband now, even before she has met him, by waiting for him.
The story ends with the princess finally meeting a young man who asked for her hand in marriage. He too had waited for the one who would be his wife. In the book, he declares to her:
Your beauty was marvelous, and your purity sparkled like diamonds.
And he had a gift for her: he had saved his first kiss for her as well.
It’s almost unheard of for someone to save his or her very first kiss for their wedding day. He or she will be thought of as weird, a prude, religious, or even legalistic. Our perspectives on romantic relationships are shaped by the media whether we realize it or not.
Disney films, chick flick movies, and reality TV shows all depict characters haphazardly kissing whomever they choose. Moreover, the more immodest a girl is, the more she is praised. Nothing is sacred anymore. If we think saving our first kiss until marriage is strange and unrealistic, then it’s clear that the culture has shaped our worldview.
Saving Their First Kiss
This children’s book captures something altogether heavenly. It casts a divine vision of what our children’s future love stories can be. Saving your first kiss may sound extremely old fashion especially in our highly sexualized culture today. And many of us won’t.
But in every generation, there is a few who make a different choice. These few have chosen not to ask the question how far is too far, but rather how far can I honor God with my love story? Many of us have experienced the pain of broken relationships that it’s hard for us to believe that God-written fairytales exist. But they do (watch video below)! Wouldn’t we want God’s best for our children? Wouldn’t we want our children to be among the few in this generation who make a different choice?
How far can I honor God with my love story?
Preparing Our Children for Jesus
Unless our children have individually and personally made a decision to follow Christ, encouraging them to save their first kiss until their wedding day will only be another unattainable rule for them to follow. It will just be an additional item to include in their list of Do’s and Don’ts.
Setting up proper boundaries for them when it comes to relating to the opposite sex will of course be beneficial. However, without the proper heart, our children will only want to push the boundaries further and further.
The root issue is Self on the throne of their lives. If they have not proclaimed Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord in their hearts, then saving their first kiss will be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Self will always try to seek how close it can get to sin.
In order to prepare our children for marriage, we must first prepare them for Jesus.
But, if Jesus sits on the throne of a person’s heart, then he or she will always seek how far they can please Him. The soul recognizes its depraved and sinful state, and it recognizes its inability to live a life that is holy and pleasing to God without His saving grace.
In order to prepare our children for marriage, we must first prepare them for Jesus. We must help them recognize their sinful state and their need for a Savior. We must train them in the instruction of the Lord. And ultimately, we must help them give Jesus His rightful place to rule in their hearts.
The Gift of Purity
The decision to wait for our future spouse should be an outflow of our love for our Savior and Lord. It should also be out of love for the one we are to marry. We save ourselves and our first kiss because it’s the best gift we can give them on our wedding day.
In Ecclesiastes 3:11, one of my favorite Bible verses, says, “He has made everything beautiful in its time.” I believe, in His right time God can pen a beautiful love story for our children. It will take some hard work on our part; but if we cultivate purity in their hearts and teach them the sacredness of their first kiss, we are preparing them for a God-scripted fairytale story of their own! If you need inspiration for your children, please check out this video on a real-life fairytale love story!
The Lily or the Thorn?
You might be thinking, but I have already screwed this up! But here’s the truth: we are all thorns. We have no real purity apart from Jesus. Scripture makes this clear. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory God” (Romans 3:23), and “All have turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one” (Psalm 14:3). We are all deserving of God’s wrath on Judgment Day (Romans 2:5).
Only Jesus can make us new like a lily among thorns.
But here is the good news. This is why Jesus Christ came to die on the cross to save us from our impure state. Only He can wipe us clean. Only He can make us new like a lily among thorns. 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is just and faithful and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” And once we take that step of faith and choose to turn away from our sins, we are now new in Christ! Scripture declares, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
When I read Song of Solomon 2:2, I think I’m not worthy to be a lily. I can never be a lily. But His gentle whisper comes, and He says:
It’s not by your works. There’s nothing you can do to attain it. The work has already been done. Trust in the Cross.
Therefore, we will always have hope and newness of life no matter how much we’ve messed up. We can have hope for our children’s future stories. No matter where we are in life, in our relationships, in our marriages, in our parenting, and in our own walk in our faith, it’s not too late for us and it’s not too late for our children. He is making all things new (Revelations 21:5), and He will make everything beautiful in its time. So go to His Word. Allow Him to refresh your mind anew and reshape your perspective in the matters of purity.
Resources
Here are some books that have encouraged me and shaped my view on purity.
When God Writes Your Love Story by Eric and Leslie Ludy
When Dreams Come True by Eric and Leslie Ludy (this is their personal God-written love story)
Passion and Purity by Elisabeth Elliot
Quest for Love by Elisabeth Elliot
Devotedly, the Personal Letters and Love Story of Jim and Elisabeth Elliot by Valeria Elliot Shepard
and of course,
The Princess and the Kiss by Jennie Bishop (I purchased my “Kiss” necklace on Reviveourhearts.com)
Websites:
www.purityworks.org
www.reviveourhearts.com
1 Zondervan. Zondervan Handbook to the Bible. Alexander, David and Pat. Grand Rapids, MI. 1999.
2 Wolgemuth, Nancy Leigh Demoss. The Seeds of Our Extinction. Revive Our Hearts, 28 Apr. 2022. https://www.reviveourhearts.com/podcast/revive-our-hearts/seeds-extinction/. Accessed 28 Apr. 2022.
