Transcription
I didn't wait for marriage to have sex, and I regret it. Let's talk about it.
When I was growing up, I was taught, you know, to wait until marriage. I got a purity ring when I was 13. My first boyfriend that I dated was also waiting until marriage. And I thought, okay, this is the way it's going to go.
And then I met my husband, and he had a very different life experience than me. He had been with other people before, but had recently come back to the Lord. And I did not have that experience. I hadn't been with anyone. I had been walking with the Lord my whole life, but I would say, like, the roots had never gone as deep as they needed to.
And so when we had been dating for almost a year, we had sex, and it continued as a bad cycle in our relationship for the first few months after that, where I would be tempted to do this. We would do this, and I would feel so much shame, not because I felt dirty or worthless, but because I knew I wasn't honoring the Lord and I wasn't obeying him. And I knew that this was something that God did not want to be a part of my life.
But over the months and the years, my heart grew cold to sin. And it grew cold to the reality that Jesus had so much better for me than living in sin before marriage. And I just couldn't see the hedges from the trees, if that's the phrase, because I did not love Jesus more than my sin. I know that's going to step on some toes, but I didn't. My sin made me happy. My sin gratified the desires of my flesh. My sin satisfied me in the moment. And then after that, there was a wedge between me and my relationship with the Lord. And I felt like I couldn't come to him, even though that wasn't true, because I knew deep down, even though I kept saying, "I'm going to change. I'm going to stop this," blah, blah, blah, that I didn't want to stop. And I didn't want to change.
And I think I was only able to get to that place when we re-waited for marriage three months before we got married, because I finally had my heart changed by the Lord. And he showed me that a relationship with him is so much richer than gratifying the desires of the flesh.
I was struggling, guys. There were so many years and days where I would cry because I felt like I would never overcome this sin. I wanted to help other girls so badly to show them, like, "Yes, you can wait until marriage." And when this happened, I kid you not, for the longest time, I thought, "Okay, God's not going to be able to use me. I'm not going to be able to talk about this. I am a failure. I have messed up." All the things.
But Jesus showed me that is so far from the truth. If you have messed up, Jesus wants to redeem your story. It is not too late to re-wait for marriage. It is not too late to start walking on the path that the Lord has for you. The path that the Lord has for you is not going to be full of sin. I can promise you that. Because sin leads you to a place that you don't want to be. It leads you to a sadness and a separation from the Lord, versus when you say yes to Jesus, he can actually fill you with the Holy Spirit and help you to overcome sin. That's the thing. He doesn't want you to overcome sin on your own. He doesn't want you to wake up one morning and say, "Okay, I'm never going to have sex before marriage again." Absolutely not. He's going to stand by you hand in hand and help you every single time temptation comes your way, and he's going to give you a way out. But you have the option to say yes or no.
And for so many years, I said no to the Lord. And I so deeply regret it. I wish I had honored the Lord with my life, with my body, with my testimony, with all the things. But God can and will redeem my story, and he can and will redeem your story. He has brought so much healing into my life since then. I got married four and a half years ago, and my life has not been perfect since then. But Jesus has continued to bring me deeper and deeper in my relationship with him and show me that even though I made a mistake, my story was not over. Even though Satan wanted me to think that God was done with me.