The Godly Hearts Column: #letswait

Guest Writer: Ruth Ellisdon

I’ll be honest. I feel completely unqualified to be writing this, because I by no means am any sort of theological expert, nor do I always get this God life right, or have all the answers. What I do however have, is a little life experience, and a real taste of the goodness of God and how transforming He can be. This post isn’t about how “bad” and “dirty” and “immoral” sex is, because frankly, it isn’t. I mean, God created sex for us to enjoy (in the right scenarios…we’ll get to that later), so I firmly believe that we shouldn’t view it in this way. So, as I said I have a little life experience, and I’ll tell you about that to get this post started. Up until about 5 months ago, I was in a pretty serious relationship. We’d been together for a couple of years, and it all felt pretty stable. Now, being brought up as a Christian, I’d had all the chats about sex and relationships it’s possible to, from the slightly awkward “birds and bees” from my parents, to the REALLY awkward talks from church leaders. (Believe me, they were bad!!) So I pretty much knew what God and the bible said about sex, which is basically wait until you’re married; as Queen B would say, “if you like it put a ring on it.” So going into this relationship, I had every intention of waiting. But as anyone who’s been 17 and in their first real relationship knows, that’s really flipping difficult!! So as you can imagine, things progressed and we eventually after about a year ended up sleeping together. Don’t get me wrong, I knew somewhere inside my heart that I was doing the wrong thing, and that it wasn’t what God intended for me, but I just couldn’t seem to translate this into action. 1 Thessalonians 4 says that you “should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honourable, not in passionate lust.” I’d lost control of myself, and therefore lost sight of what God desired for me. See, what I was doing, was trying to conform to the world’s opinion of how a loving, pre-marriage relationship should function. The culture and world around me said things like “if you love each other, why not?”, “what’s the harm, it’s only sex?” and “this will definitely last, so why wait?”. I lost sight of all those beautiful God spoken words from the bible, and instead chose to believe that I knew best, and let’s be honest, I really, really don’t!! And in truth, all I was doing was justifying to myself behaviours I already knew God wasn’t a fan of, and treading all over everything people had tried so hard to teach me (however awkwardly) over the years, which is pretty rude on both parts, don’t you think? As the relationship went on, I couldn’t get away from feeling like I couldn’t get as close to God as I used to. There’s a bit in Isaiah 59 which says “But your inequities have separated you from your God.” And this is how I felt, like I wasn’t able to be near to God, because I was continually choosing on purpose to live in sin. Of course, I can see now that God was always there, it was simply my own guilt which made me keep my distance, because FYI, God doesn’t keep his distance from us. Ever. So I reached a point where I had to choose between the world and God, and by the world I mean my boyfriend, whom I loved, but who didn’t share my love of God. So I’m sorry world (well, only a bit sorry) but God wins every time for me. As Colossians 3 says, I put to death things which belonged to my earthly nature. The relationship ended, and I really began to think deeply about what God wants for me in regards to my love life. I went back to my bible and just listened to what God really says about sex. And hey, all those people were right – he wants me to wait!! And that isn’t because sex is a bad thing, it’s because it was created by Him to be enjoyed by a couple joined together under God in marriage. I believe in forgiveness, and I know that I have made things right with God. He has forgiven me, and I am not separated from Him by my sin, because he loves me. 2 Corinthians 5 says “therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” This is what I would encourage you to take hold of: that no matter what you have done, are doing, or even what you will do, God makes you new, and the things of old do not matter anymore. So, as a new creation, I’m deciding that the next person I share a bed with will be my husband, whoever he may be. And not because sex is bad, or dirty, but because I know that is God’s plan for me because he loves me, and I definitely always trust his judgement more than my own!

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Ruth Ellisdon is a second year student at CCCU, training to be a social worker. She loves tea, Eastenders & people.

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Featured images from Cosmopolitan & wix.com.

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