This is Part 2 of a 3-part series I’m writing. Check out Part 1 if you missed it.
When I got married on June 19, 2004, I thought my sexual purity problems were in the rearview mirror for good.
I had been porn-free for over two years, was leading sexual purity small groups, and had regular accountability. I was also reading Christian sexual purity books that told me if I starved my eyes from lustful looks and images, there would be a “sexual payoff” in my marriage. My wife and I were both virgins when we got married, and I was ready for this payoff.
This promise fit in with what I was taught about sex throughout my teenage years in youth group: save it for marriage, and you’ll have the best sex in the world.
Please don’t misunderstand me—I’m not downgrading purity teaching or the sound biblical mandate to save sex until marriage. What I am discouraging is the idolatrous carrot at the end of the stick that’s put out as the motivating lure for a lot of this teaching. A selfish carrot based around getting my desires met, which pollutes and warps my concept of love and my concept of who and what a woman is.
Read the rest of this article written by Noah Filipiak on the Covenant Eyes blog, here.
Related posts:
He is:
Author of Beyond the Battle: A man's guide to his identity in Christ in an oversexualized world
Host of the The Flip Side Podcast
Join an online men's small group led by Noah and team at BeyondTheBattle.net
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It is hard being a virgin for 43 years, and seeing the world is promoting sex like crazy. As Beavis and Butthead said in the 1990’s: “I want to score!” Also it is hard not to be jealous when you see people a lot younger than yourself having sex and producing babies. Under that kind of pressure, it is hard to stop having “self-sex”. Another thing to understand is because of my age, my prostate is affecting my urine flow, the dreaded BPH, and wondering if m**********n will help me pee better.
I do want to do the right thing in God’s eyes as it says in First Corinthians 6:18: “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.” NKJV
Hi Anonymous, I apologize for my delay in replying. Thank you for your comment. I’ve been planning on doing a thorough blog article on masturbation for a while now, as it’s one of the more frequent questions I get asked. Your comment is helpful motivation for me to get that done. I’ve just been waiting to get my head above the water as I’ve been drowning in seminary homework plus my job, so some of my blogging has had to go on the back burner. I have a lengthy break from classes here in a couple weeks and I’ll be sure to get that article posted then, so be sure to stay tuned / subscribe. In the meantime, you can check out some initial thoughts I have on the subject in a podcast I did a year ago or so. My answer is a little clunky and will be much more refined (and better!) in the blog article, but hopefully it’s a start and something that encourages you and/or gets you thinking: https://www.noahfilipiak.com/2-or-64-lent-masturbation-and-folgers/
I also write about it just a little bit in this blog article: https://www.noahfilipiak.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/happy-286152_1280-590×390.jpg