I've Already Had Sex, Why Stop Now?

By: Becca Gavin

For too long, I believed that to make a man happy, I needed to fulfill him sexually. I thought that if I didn’t give my man sex, he would look for it elsewhere.

When I heard messages about waiting for marriage, I assumed those sermons didn’t apply to me. After all, I’d already broken the no sex before marriage rule.

What I learned is that past sexual sin does not decrease your value or the value of your purity.

Through confession and repentance, God can redeem our past sexual sin and allow us to experience sex as the gift it was meant to be.

Why Purity Is Still Worth Fighting For

Jesus’ sacrifice covered our sin completely. We are given a new slate, regardless of what we have done. He offers this grace so we can live in freedom, not so we can excuse continued sin (Romans 6:11-14).

That is not what a lot of us want to hear. It is a truth I didn’t want to hear for a long time. But the more I experience life without sexual sin, the more I can see that God’s desire for me to wait until marriage is for my own ultimate pleasure.

The same way that abandoning a diet after one bad day doesn’t help you to meet your weight loss goals, continuing to sin after one wrong choice won’t draw you closer to Jesus.

The truth is it’s never too late to start over. Losing our virginity doesn’t mean we stop fighting for purity.

4 Guidelines For Having The Talk With Your Significant Other

This can be a really hard topic to bring up with a significant other, especially one you have been sexually active with.

1. Set aside time to have this conversation.

   This is an important talk that deserves your full attention.

2. Have the talk face-to-face and in private.

   Talk in a place where you can be completely honest and completely vulnerable.

3. If you're worried you'll forget what you want to say, write it down.

   Think about how you want to explain:

   Who Jesus is to you and why it’s so important to you to follow His lead

   God’s design for sex and why you want to wait

   Why waiting will be a greater blessing on your relationship than continuing to sin

4. Set clear boundaires about what you are comfortable with moving forward.

   If your significant other cannot respect your desire to stop having sex, he or she is not God’s best for you. You do not have to threaten someone into respecting you and you do not have to debate your worth. You are precious in God’s eyes. And you are worth waiting for.

This is not an easy conversation, and the results may hurt. But the freedom you find by stepping into God’s grace and out of sexual sin is worth the temporary pain of losing someone who does not see you as the treasure God created you to be (Romans 8:28, Psalm 139:14).

God created sex as a gift and as a wonderful thing, and He desires for us to enjoy it to the fullest extent, in the right context. Sex God’s way is more fun, more intimate, and more fulfilling than anything we can experience right now. And it’s ours if we’re willing to put our sin in the past and fight for purity moving forward.