No, love, love don't come easy
But I keep on waiting, anticipating
For that soft voice to talk to me at night
For some tender arms to hold me tight
I keep waiting, I keep on waiting
But it ain't easy, it ain’t easy…
But I keep on waiting, anticipating
For that soft voice to talk to me at night
For some tender arms to hold me tight
I keep waiting, I keep on waiting
But it ain't easy, it ain’t easy…
-
“You Can’t Hurry Love”, The Supremes
Judging
by how they describe singleness, I suspect many Christian writers and leaders
liken the sexual desires of a single woman to a water faucet. According to this reasoning, when such a
woman is not married and has no biblical outlet for her sexual urges, the
faucet can be easily turned to the “off” position and remain that way
indefinitely. The single woman is then
free to enjoy her celibate life, skipping merrily through the pastures, helping
the needy and oppressed, blowing on dandelions, chasing butterflies, and spreading
sunshine wherever she goes – oblivious to any and all sexual impulses. Until, at long last, the day comes when her
suitor finds her and makes her his own. And after the engagement, the rehearsal
dinner, the walk down the aisle, and the wedding reception, the woman is finally
alone with her husband in the safety of their honeymoon suite where she can
turn her faucet from “off” to “on”. She
can now be sexual. No muss, no fuss.
But
in reality sexual desire cannot be handled so orderly and neatly. In fact, sexual desire is less like a
mechanical faucet and more like a massive current of rushing water. Think for a moment of how rushing water
normally behaves. Water flowing in a
river must have an outlet and if it finds its way to an ocean or sea, no harm
is done to the neighboring area through which it flows. But if there is no such outlet, water will still
flow somewhere – flooding streets, parked cars, houses, and farmland – creating
much destruction in its wake. So is the
dilemma of the single woman. She often
finds herself constantly trying to restrain a tidal wave of sexual desire when
marriage, the only outlet for such desire, continues to elude her. But restrain it she must because if her desire
doesn’t flow toward marriage, like rushing water it will flow somewhere. And “somewhere” will be sin.
That’s
not a warm and fuzzy stance, I know, but make no mistake about it, single
Christian woman, sexual desire finds no legitimate place for expression outside
of marriage. The world will tell you
otherwise but God’s Word could not be clearer:
“You have heard
that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that
everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed
adultery with her in his heart.” – Matthew 5:27-28 (This also
applies to a woman looking lustfully at a man)
“Food is meant
for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the
other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the
Lord for the body. – 1 Corinthians 6:13
Flee from sexual
immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the
sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple
of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,
for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. – 1 Corinthians
6:18-20
But sexual
immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you,
as is proper among saints. – Ephesians 5:3
Put to death
therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil
desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. – Colossians 3:5
For this is the
will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that
each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, - 1
Thessalonians 4:3-4
The
Lord’s position on sexual immorality is tough and unyielding which probably
comes as no surprise. And it’s not that
you want to sin against God. You want to use your singleness (as unwanted
as it is at times) to glorify God and please Him. You truly want to be a single woman set apart
for the Lord, the kind that the apostle Paul described in his first letter to
the Corinthian church: “And the
unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be
holy in body and spirit” (1 Corinthians 7:34).
There are times – glorious moments – when you reach the lofty spiritual
highs that your singleness affords, communing with the Lord so deeply and
profoundly that you desire nothing else.
Those times are truly magnificent and transcendent. But sometimes…
There
are times when sexual desires threaten to overwhelm you – and they seem to come
at the most inopportune moments, don’t they?
Like when you’re sitting in church service and you desperately don’t
want to have those thoughts, but you
can’t help noticing how handsome that deacon over there looks in his tailored
suit. Some Christian writers and leaders
suggest staying busy to avoid sexual feelings, throwing yourself into church
ministry, or exercising intensely to burn off the sexual energy but that has
never worked for me. I can be up to my
eyeballs in work or beat-down tired serving others and still think about
sex. I have at times even dreamt about
having sex. It’s interesting to note that the Bible doesn’t offer these
quick fixes for dealing with sexual desire.
It gives only one solution:
Marriage. But what if marriage
hasn’t come yet? What are you supposed
to do with these desires? Where do you
put them? How do you deal with them?
To help
in this regard, many Christian books list reasons why singles should avoid sex
outside of marriage. They include the
following:
1.
Sex
outside of marriage creates regret and guilt, destroying the unfettered intimacy
and enjoyment that God intended for marriage.
2.
Sex
outside of marriage exposes you to the risk of sexually-transmitted diseases.
3.
Sex
outside of marriage exposes you to the risk of an illegitimate pregnancy.
4.
Sex is
designed by God to create a strong emotional bond and when that bond is broken
(does not lead to marriage) it can cause intense pain and grief.
Though
these are all good reasons to abstain from sex outside of marriage, they
provide little incentive in the heat of the moment. Ultimately, we abstain from sex outside of
marriage to please the Lord. Joseph had
the right idea. When propositioned by
Potiphar’s wife, Joseph fled from her in such deliberate haste that he left his
garment behind in her hand. Why did he
flee? Obviously because he was strongly
tempted to give in to her demands since he was a man without a wife. The reason he avoided this sin, however, was
not because he was afraid of losing his job (which he lost anyway) or because
he didn’t want a sexually-transmitted disease.
He said, “How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?”
(Genesis 39:9)
So to
have sex with someone you are not married to is to sin against God. But the Bible does not only condemn
committing a sexual act outside of marriage (adultery and fornication). It condemns “sexual immorality”, an umbrella
phrase that includes essentially any sexual activity outside of the marriage
bed (Hebrews 13:4). These sexual sins are
often secret and hidden; no one knows about them since there are rarely any
witnesses. When not in a dating
relationship, most single Christians can avoid having sexual intercourse, but
the secret sexual sins are much harder to avoid. It is here where the battle for purity is
often lost and where Satan boasts many casualties.
Sexual purity. It's worth fighting for, but it's not easy in our day and time.
The Schemes of Satan
You can
say many things about Satan – he’s a deceiver, he’s evil, he’s angry, he’s
doomed – but one thing you can’t call him is dumb. Satan is a formidable enemy of the saints
because he is quite shrewd. This is not
so much a compliment to him as it is a statement of fact. Satan has been a keen observer of humanity
since creation, learning our weaknesses and developing his own bag of tricks to
throw us off the narrow path. The
temptation of Jesus in Luke 4 is a classic example of how Satan operates. He did not tempt Jesus on the day when Jesus
was preaching in the temple, resolute and full of the Spirit. No, he waited until Jesus began his 40-day
fast, when Jesus was tired, weak, alone, and very hungry. In the same way, Satan will wait until the
single woman is tired of fighting off urges, weak with desire, alone in her
bed, and hungry to be touched. He’ll
say,
“God
hasn’t given you a spouse, has He? And
yet He has burdened you with sexual desires.
How cruel of Him. Don’t
worry. I can help you deal with those. Oh, I know you don’t want to have sex and
throw away your virginity. You won’t
have to do that. There are some things
you can do that will help you get through this.
You’ll still look holy. You’ll
still be able to do all your church activities and hang out with your church friends. No one will be the wiser. It will be our little secret.”
The
Bible describes Satan as prowling around “like a roaring lion, seeking someone
to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). He has
devoured many an unsuspecting single Christian with three devices: masturbation,
online pornography and sexual fantasies and lusts. Repulsive, embarrassing subjects to be sure,
but I feel I must address them because long-term singleness with no hope of marriage
in the near future makes you vulnerable to Satan’s attacks. He will surely tempt you to curb your sexual
appetite with these secret sins so you need to be prepared. Let’s take a closer look at these weapons in
Satan’s arsenal of temptation.
Masturbation
Yep. That’s right.
I’m going there.
It’s not
easy going here. The word sounds like
“constipation” and it’s ten times more embarrassing to discuss. But when a person is single, especially for a
long period of time in a sex-obsessed society like ours, masturbation will rear
its ugly, little head. Manual
stimulation, sex toys, sexual appliances of various kinds – our sinful world
condones such activity and even sees it as emotionally and physically
beneficial. But how does God feel about masturbation?
Many
times, when we sin secretly, we absolve our guilt by choosing to see God as a
doddering old man in the sky with bad eyesight, unaware of what we’re
doing. But that is not the God of the
Bible:
Job 34:21 – “His eyes are on
the ways of men; He sees their every step.”
Prov 15:3 – “The eyes of the
Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.”
Psalms 94:9 – “Does He who
formed the eye not see?”
Heb 4:13 – “Nothing in all
creation is hidden from God’s sight.
Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to who we
must give account.”
Psalm 139:11-12 – “If I say,
‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,’ even the
darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as
light with you.”
Can you
imagine God – the God who created marriage and sex for marriage – approving of
masturbation? Can you imagine Him
viewing this activity and saying, “Oh, you’re having sex with yourself? Wonderful! I completely approve.” Neither can I.
Might
God be indifferent to masturbation? Might
it be a minor infraction that He is not concerned about? Knowing the nature of God – that He is
all-knowing, holy, righteous, just – we know there is no gray area with
God. Indifference or impartiality means
that you either don’t know or don’t care whether something is right or
wrong. It is impossible then for God to
be indifferent to anything so He is not indifferent to masturbation. Since He is definitely not for it, He is
surely against it. Moreover, the real
issue with masturbation is not the physical stimulation, but the sexually-explicit,
lustful thoughts that accompany such activity.
Those thoughts are defiling to our new nature in the Lord, they grieve
the Holy Spirit within us (1 Corinthians 6:18-20), and God is fully aware of
them. Don’t fool yourself.
Masturbation. It's the elephant in the room everyone is trying to ignore.
Online
Pornography
I dare
you to find a Christian singles’ book written by a married woman that even
mentions this topic. You won’t find one
because a married Christian woman would seldom if ever be tempted by the dirty,
filthy business of online pornography.
But it is not because they are holier than single Christian women. A married woman is simply not vulnerable in
the same areas as a single woman. She is
less vulnerable to the temptation of porn because she has a husband, a man all
her own that she can gaze at and enjoy any time she wants. Therefore Satan doesn’t bother to tempt her
with porn. Satan tempts the married
woman in areas that the single woman is not tempted in – comparing her children
to another woman’s children and disrespecting her imperfect husband, for
instance.
Satan
aims at the weak, vulnerable places and he knows singles are weak in the area
of unfulfilled sexual desires. Do not
let him trick you into believing that viewing porn is a minor sin or guilty
pleasure, safe to be discreetly consumed by consenting, responsible
adults. Our world has lowered its
standards and elevated porn to acceptable private entertainment, but God’s
standards have not changed. He sees it,
He cannot overlook it, and He despises it.
Porn
is a slippery slope. It promises to curb
the sexual appetite and provide gratification but it does not ultimately
satisfy those God-given desires. It instead distorts them and perverts them. What porn is notorious for doing is not satisfying
its consumers until they get married, but creating in them an insatiable desire
for more porn…..increasingly more deviant, more violent, more repugnant
porn. Its victims spiral further and
further down into its cesspool of transient fantasies and fleeting
thrills. It is a spiritual trap and the
discerning, godly single woman would do well to resist it.
Sexual Fantasies
and Lusts
At the
risk of embarrassing myself, I must admit, this is a tough one for me. The mind is such a difficult thing to control
but God doesn’t just want my body, He wants my mind as well. He wants my head filled with His Word; He
wants it set on the things that are above (Colossians 3:2-3). During the daylight hours, this usually isn’t
a problem. Holiness is easy when I’m
busy working and running errands. But at
night when I go to bed……that’s when it becomes a challenge. That dangerously idle time between licking my
minty, freshly-brushed teeth and drifting off into the initial light stages of
slumber can become a time of uncontrollable, all-consuming, hot, sizzling,
burning-up-the-sheets lust if I’m not careful.
I sometimes forgive myself by seeing it as compensation for a
frustrating day. No matter what happens
during the sunlight hours – dates that fall through, single men who ignore me
for my best friend, failed office romances – I always have my trusty fantasy
man at night.
But God is
not pleased with this. And lately, in my
desire to please Him, I have looked for that promised way of escape from
temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13). I recently
bought the Bible on CD in my favorite translation. On the nights when I am so beat-down tired I
fall asleep seconds after my head hits the pillow, no problem. No need for the CDs. But for those nights when I am lying awake
and tempted to sin against God, I break out the CDs and play them as I am
drifting off to sleep to keep my mind on things above.
I’m not
saying I have completely overcome this, but there is one thing I can say: It’s really hard fantasizing about sex when
you’re listening to Lamentations.
Taming the Beast
Actually
that’s not a good way to describe the sex drive. The sex drive is not a wanton “beast” but a
desire given to us by a holy God meant to be expressed in an honorable, godly,
holy way. But I know from experience it
can seem untamable at times. Besides
listening to the Bible while in bed, how do you keep your mind pure and your
sexual desires free from the influence of Satan, the world, and your own weak
flesh?
Stay positive and stay in the Word, sister! You can do this with God's help.
Often,
when troubled by sexual temptation and facing what seems to be a lifetime of
celibate singleness, we tell ourselves, “Well, God gave me this sex drive and I
can’t ignore it. I have no choice but to
sin.” Yes, it’s true; God did give you that
sex drive. But it’s highly unlikely He gave
it to you in the condition it’s currently in.
Let me explain. We live in a very
sinful, sex-obsessed society. Satan and
the world have conspired together to dial up our sex drives to a loud crescendo. Giving in to temptations like masturbation,
online pornography, and sexual fantasies and lusts is like giving Satan complete
control of the sex drive that God created and gave to you to glorify Him. It is like giving someone else the volume
control on your radio and allowing them to crank it up as loud as they want
while you’re trying to drive in heavy traffic.
It’s senseless. We must be vigilant
in the area of sexual temptation. Keep these
Scriptures in mind:
1.
“Keep
yourself from being polluted by the world.”
(James 1:27)
2.
“Set
your mind on the things above, not the things of this world.” (Col 3:1,2)
3.
“Do not be conformed to this world.” (Rom
12:2)
Take
inventory of your personal possessions. To
stay pure, I have had to throw away all kinds of sexually-explicit CDs, steamy,
romantic DVDs, lust-filled novels, and at times turned the TV off. If I’m filling my head with the tempting,
lustful messages of the world, I can’t blame God when I become a snapping,
snarling ball of sexual frustration. In
getting rid of this stuff, I am not renouncing my God-given womanly desires; I
am renouncing Satan’s dominion over these desires. I am wresting them out of the devil’s filthy
hands and placing them safely under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Do not offer the parts of
your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer themselves to
God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of
your body to him as instruments of righteousness. (Romans 6:13)
Our
attitude toward sexual sin should be the same as the attitude that Daniel’s
three friends had regarding the worship of King Nebuchadnezzar. When the three were going to be thrown into
the fiery furnace for refusing to worship him they said:
“If it be so, our God whom we
serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will
deliver us out of your hand, O king. But
even if He does not, O king, we are not going to serve your gods or worship the
golden image that you have set up.” (Dan 3:17,18)
Let us
adopt this attitude toward sexual sin:
“My God whom I serve is able to deliver me from sexual temptation. In fact, He is able to provide me with a
husband. But even if he does not, Satan,
I am not going to hand my mind and body over to you to indulge in sexual
immorality.”
(For more help and encouragement in this area, read "What Do I Do With These Sexual Desires? - PART 2")
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