Last updated on April 22, 2022
Question:
Hi,
I’m 14 years old. I really love God. I have a good relationship with Him. But my problem is that each time I get very close to God, it’s not consistent. Sometimes, I have the zeal to pray all night. I do, for like two weeks, and then, that’s all. I lose all the zeal and passion. This has been happening to me since childhood. Each time I repent, I see myself running back to sin. Please help me.
Secondly, I have a boyfriend. When we got into the relationship, I told myself that we’ll never have any sort of intimacy whatsoever. But I failed. He touches places he’s not supposed to touch. Well, that was about four months ago. For the past few months, he hasn’t touched me, but we still get horny over text messages, and we end up sexting. I feel very bad about it. I read a few texts in the Bible that said God judges the sexually impure. I’ve prayed to God for forgiveness but I still feel guilty.
I’m not a Catholic but I plan on going to a Roman Father for confession. I was baptized last year so I take communion. But after what I did last night, I don’t think I can even take communion again. I have made a great mistake. Last night, my boyfriend and I got horny again, and we sexted through the phone. I was so horny that I sent him a video of my naked thighs. (Just that part of my body) . After sending the video, he said he was afraid he can’t watch it. I immediately deleted it because I wasn’t feeling right about what I was doing. My boyfriend didn’t watch the video, but I feel like I’ve crossed all the limits. I shouldn’t have done that. I’ve prayed to God for forgiveness but I feel very bad. What should I do? I trust and believe God has forgiven me, but I can’t forget the guilt.
Furthermore, my boyfriend really really loves me. And I love him too. I want to tell him that we shouldn’t engage in any form of sexual activity either physically or over the phone, but I get scared that if there’s no form of sexual relations, he’ll stop loving me. I honestly don’t know what to do. I want to tell him but each time I want to, I get scared. I’m very confused right now. I love my boyfriend so so much, and I do not want us to break up.
Please help me.
Thank you.
Answer:
I’m going to assume your boyfriend is roughly the same age as you are in this answer. Both of you are new to sexual feelings and they can seem to be overwhelming. All sin tends to be progressive, but sexual sins tend to progress rapidly.
The core problem is that you are both involved in lust. You strongly desire to have something that isn’t allowed at the moment. You both want to have sex, but you are not married. James describes the progression of sin:
“Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren” (James 1:13-16).
From this passage, we learn that the destruction of a person follows a set pattern.
- Desire: Each of us are created with basic desires necessary for us to function in this world. We have desires to eat, drink, sleep, to be accepted by others, and, yes, even a desire for sex. None of these desires are wrong in and of themselves, but they can be misused. For example, there is nothing wrong with eating, but when a person overeats we refer to it as the sin of gluttony (Philippians 3:19; Proverbs 25:16).
- Temptation: Satan uses our natural desires against us. He places us in situations where it appears that in order to fulfill our desire, we must break a law of God. The situation is called a temptation. God has placed limits on how Satan may tempt us. “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). Satan is not allowed to give us a temptation that we are not able to resist if we wanted to do so. He is not able to make us face a temptation that is unique to us. And, Satan cannot seal off all escape routes.
- Lust: The word “lust” means a very strong desire. It is usually used in a bad sense when someone has a very strong desire to do something that is wrong. It is not longer that a possibility to sin exists, but that a person wants to sin but has not yet had the opportunity to commit the sin. John tells us that there are three basic types of lusts. “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life–is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever” (I John 2:15-17).
- Lusts of the flesh: These are strong desires that originate from our bodies.
- Lusts of the eyes: These are things people strongly desire because they look appealing.
- Pride of life: These are things we strongly desire because they make us look good in the eyes of others.
- Sin: When a person gives into the temptation and acts on his desire, thus breaking God’s commands, it is called sin. “Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness” (I John 3:4).
- Licentiousness: Sin doesn’t happen just once. When the door is cracked open, Satan tries to get us to repeat our sins over and over again. Though not mentioned by James, this repeated sinning leads to a state of lasciviousness or licentiousness (Galatians 5:19-21). William Barclay defines this as “a love of sin so reckless and so audacious that a man ceases to care what God or man thinks of his actions.” In other words, it is the state where a person sins so often that he has become calloused to the guilt of his iniquity. He has convinced himself that he has a license to sin.
- Death: When a person ceases to care, it becomes near impossible to lead him away from his sin. He becomes spiritually dead and on the Judgment Day he will face the second death, Hell.
The two of you are involved in sexual lust. Because of that, you got involved in sexual touching. “Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman” (I Corinthians 7:1). You pulled back from that for the moment, but you’ve gone deeper into lust. You are involved in verbal pornography (sexting) and now you are getting into visual aspects of pornography. As I mentioned, sin tends to be progressive.
You can’t compromise with sin. The only solution to it is to radically change. “For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death. For behold what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has produced in you: what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong! In everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in the matter” (II Corinthians 7:10-11). That means you must stop fanning the flames of your sexual desires.
As you’ve noticed, when you are sexually aroused, you don’t make good decisions. You are easily pushed into doing things that you know are wrong. I don’t know if your boyfriend is pushing you or whether you are both caught up in this trap. However, it is not going to end well if you don’t change.
Will your boyfriend leave if you stop? I don’t know. I do know that it will reveal his motivation. If he leaves you because you want to be righteous before God, then you know he has been mostly your boyfriend for the sexual pleasure that he gets. That is not a good foundation for a relationship. If he stays, then you know he, also, has been struggling to control himself.
Now, in regards to your religious life. You are following your feelings and not God. God never said to pray all night for weeks at a time. You decided to do that, which then led to your exhaustion and your loss of interest. Be devoted to God, but follow God and not your feelings. Pray to God because you desire to talk to your Father. Do what is right because you know it pleases your Father. Serve God with your mind and your feelings will follow.