You can be a virgin and not be sexually pure. But you cannot walk in sexual purity and not be  sexually chaste. As a believer who is obeying God, your virginity will end on your wedding night but sexual purity continues throughout your lifetime.

Sexual purity is not just for the young and single, it is  also for the married and the old.

Only the pure in heart will see Jesus!

So what is sexual purity and why should it be more upheld especially in this generation?

My generation was taught a lot about abstinence and refraining from sexual intercourse before marriage. However, the term sexual purity was neither taught well nor understood.

So, this allowed many people to dance around sexual activities and as long as they were not doing the main thing – “the actual sexual intercourse ” , they still felt pure.

This is what happens when we only emphasize the physical aspect of purity and we forget the main aspect which has to do with our hearts/minds.

Sexual purity is a heart issue. And this is what makes it very deep.

People can see you as a good Christian teenager or as a responsible, godly young adult because they see you as morally upright, but because God sees your heart and all you do in secrets far from the eyes of men, He (God) remains the better judge.

No wonder Jesus brought a new order

Unlike the Old Testament that said “thou shall not commit adultery/fornication”, Jesus in the New Testament took it further, he said “whosoever looks lustfully at a woman is already guilty of the adultery.”

So, before you start to take pride in yourself for keeping your virginity:

• What is happening in your heart? 

• What are you looking at when nobody is seeing?

• What is your mind fantasising about?

You cannot be hooked on porn, or glued to tik-tok sensual videos and vulgar conversations and still walk in pride because your hymen or genitals are intact.

God is looking for clean hands and a pure heart. Your hands may be clean and your heart dirty. But your heart cannot be pure and your hands unclean. This is why we have been told to guard our heart, because very often we get careless and allow things stream in

To walk in sexual purity, you need to partner with the holy spirit who gives you a dimension of his spirit called self control. Self control is part of the fruit and it’s also a spirit.

Self control is also a form of delayed gratification that can be learnt.

Self control is not a gift but a fruit. It is a by-product of intimacy with God. 

If marriage was the antidote to fornication and adultery then many marriages will not be ending in divorce or separation or pain over infidelity. Your failure to learn or cultivate self control as a single will jeopardise your marriage. 

Self control is very deep, it teaches you that you can wait and keep yourself pure in mind and body. Lack of self control makes people rush into relationships they shouldn’t be involved in, eventually they start off sexual sin. 

Self control helps you manage your sexual appetite. There is no better time to learn self control than now as a single. Sex is a beautiful experience when it’s done in God’s way.

However, rushing into marriage in order to have sex is another scam.

Because sex (though lovely) is not enough to make your marriage work. 

There are other components to make a marriage work like :

• working on your character, 

• Have a purpose for living and

• Having and keeping a thriving relationship with God

So many get disappointed when their marriages are not working despite the fact that they kept themselves. 

While you wait to be married, start working on other aspects of your life and wellbeing. 

So that you can bring something to the marriage apart from your body.