Thoughts for Parents on Sex and Relationships

Here's an excerpt from the Parent Newsletter I sent out this month for the parents in our Youth Ministry:
...I am usually quite optimistic about culture. I think there are some very positive things happening in the world today and there are some good trends in the way people are thinking these days. But there is at least one area in our culture about which I am less optimistic—dating and relationships. Our culture is almost completely void of any model of healthy, Christ-centered relationships. The voice of the Church encouraging people to save their most intimate relationship for their most committed relationship—to wait until marriage for sex—has become a marginalized voice in our world. To some, abstinence has become a laughable suggestion—“who really does that?”
But people, especially parents, should know that it’s not an unreasonable suggestion and it is, in fact, the best and most healthy suggestion. And it’s not just about saving it for marriage, it’s about intimacy and commitment, it’s about taking relationships seriously enough to be responsible with them. Relationships are hard enough as it is, why should we complicate them further by treating them haphazardly?
The fact is that sex is the pinnacle of intimacy and Marriage is the pinnacle of commitment. Intimacy and commitment are like a chemical formula, if you mix them without the right proportions, something’s gonna explode. If you’re not committed to one another in the deepest way possible—committing everything, even family and friends (i.e. marriage)—in the relationship, then you’re just not ready to be intimate in the deepest way possible. The two go hand-in-hand because intimacy is about exclusivity—being exclusively for one’s spouse.
...As complicated as relationships can be, they can be quite simple too. If you seek Christ first, if your relationship with God is the most important relationship in your life, then all other relationships will flow from that primary relationship.

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