Last updated on October 31, 2020
Question
Hi,
I just want to say thank you for your website. There’s been many questions and answers that have been helpful, so God bless you.
I’m a 16-year-old female, who recently gave her life fully to Christ. Before I knew there was God, but I didn’t take my faith seriously and was being sexually immoral (masturbating and watching porn). It was only last year when I completely stopped both things. I’ve felt so much better and know that Jesus is working on me.
Although I’ve stopped the two acts, I still get really aroused and get urges, and it’s like they only get worse. I am a virgin and I want to stay like that until I’m married because that’s what God wants, so I’m fine with that. It’s just getting the actual urges to have sex is really annoying and frustrating. It’s like I’m constantly fighting my flesh. At times I feel like it’s such a terrible thing to have, knowing that I’m not married, so I can’t enjoy how I’m feeling like I used to.
God is perfect in all ways, but at times I do question if sex is for marriage, why can’t we start to get sexual urges when we’re like 22 or something, when you’re at an age were you’re able to get married and then you can find a mate and that’s it. Why do you have to have them when you’re a teenager and have to struggle to ignore such strong desires? I’m willing to wait, but when I get the urges it’s just so annoying, and I just don’t want to get them. Is there any way of them going then coming back when you’re actually able to use it? Or tips for repressing it?
It’s really hard being a single teenaged Christian who’s female. I usually get aroused the most during ovulation and my period, so those things I can’t even control. It’s like every month I have to battle these feelings, and it’s just a lot to handle. It’s not like I’m going to get married any time soon, so that’s why it’s kind of a struggle for me. It seems that as I get older the feelings become stronger.
Thank you for your time to answer this, and I hope this all makes sense.
Answer:
Desires are built into the human body to encourage us to do necessary things. We have desires to eat, drink, and sleep to maintain the proper functioning of our bodies. We have a desire to be liked by others to help us socialize. And, of course, the desire for sex is to encourage us to marry and have children so that the human race continues. “God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth”” (Genesis 1:28).
Delaying marriage until a person is in their late twenties is a recent fade, brought on by societal pressures to establish a well-paying career before marriage. Just because society makes rules, it doesn’t follow that the body will follow along. Unfortunately, we also have developed various forms of birth control that allows couples to have sex without as many of the physical consequences. The result is a trend to delay or avoid marriage completely and just commit fornication. Sadly it is becoming more acceptable as the years pass. The idea of practicing self-control in regards to sexual desires is not considered.
All humans, boys and girls, develop strong desires for sex. You can see it illustrated in the Song of Solomon where the heroine daydreams of having sex with her fiancè. “Sustain me with raisin cakes, refresh me with apples, because I am lovesick. Let his left hand be under my head and his right hand embrace me” (Song of Solomon 2:5-6). Yet, she warns everyone that such longings are not proper when you are not married. “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or by the hinds of the field, that you do not arouse or awaken my love until she pleases” (Song of Solomon 2:7). Later, just before her wedding, she has a nightmare of losing her fiancè, but in the end, she finds him and again dreams of having sex. “Scarcely had I left them when I found him whom my soul loves; I held on to him and would not let him go until I had brought him to my mother’s house, and into the room of her who conceived me” (Song of Solomon 3:4). But again, she warns that such action is not proper before marriage. “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or by the hinds of the field, that you will not arouse or awaken my love until she pleases” (Song of Solomon 3:5). What you are experiencing is felt by everyone, but it is something you have to master.
We learn from an early age to master our hunger, waiting until dinner to eat, because if we don’t we may get fat. God did delay the desire for sex until you were older. Now that it has come you have to learn to control it, and you need that practice before you start choosing who you will marry. If you let your sexual desires control your choice in a spouse, you will likely end up with a man of very poor character. Just because a guy is good looking, it doesn’t mean he will make a good husband.
While I know it seems better at the moment just to not have to bother control your desire for sex, in the long run, it will benefit you if you do master it. Because mastery of the impulse to have sex will spill over to self-control in other areas of your life.
Response:
Thank you so much for answering my question. If anything else comes to mind that I feel needs to be answered personally, I’ll email again