Last updated on October 27, 2020
Question:
I’m 18. I’ll go straight to the point. I’m feeling terrible for having committed fornication. I had my own rules that guided me to a righteous life. After I met my first boyfriend a few months ago, I broke my rules. I had never been touched or kissed. But after I met him, I was transformed into a carefree person. I have given myself to him. I love him crazily, and he’s there for me, treats me right, but I know he doesn’t love me. He’s 28. Now my relationship with God is lost. I want to get back together, and I know I should break up with this guy, but it’s so hard for me. Every time I plan to break up, as soon as I meet him, I can’t do it.
Please help me mend my relationship with God. I’m guilty and I want to leave the sin of fornication. Please reply soon. I badly need help.
Answer:
It appears to me that while you had your own rules, behind it wasn’t a drive to be pleasing to God, except perhaps in a surface way. It was convenient for you before and you never really tested out your commitment to God until recently.
I can encourage you to do what is right, but I can’t make you do the right thing. You have to decide which is more valuable to you: God and your self-respect or a guy who basically uses you for his own pleasure.
I think what bothers me most is that you are certain that this guy doesn’t love you, but you don’t want to give him up. Are you that attention-starved that you have to “buy” attention with sex? I think you deserve a better guy in your life, not a guy who treats you nicely because you give him sex.
You can do the right thing. “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it” (I Corinthians 10:13). But first, you have to be determined to change. “For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death. For observe this very thing, that you sorrowed in a godly manner: What diligence it produced in you, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication! In all things you proved yourselves to be clear in this matter” (II Corinthians 7:10-11). You have to decide not to be used.
“Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin” (James 4:17).