1Thessalonians 4:3-5(NLT) says, “3 God’s will is for you to be holy, so stay away from all sexual sin. 4 Then each of you will control his own body and live in holiness and honor–5 not in lustful passion like the pagans who do not know God and his ways.” When we read this verse, we must do so with an understanding of who God is and why He created human beings. Our Heavenly Father is holy, and this is a quality that singles Him out. To be holy is to be set apart, sacred, and full of love, purity, and power. This is who God is, and He is so much more! In truth, there are no words in any human language that can capture and adequately express the beauty and magnificence of God’s being. His brilliance exceeds our definitions, but the word ‘holy’ is one that He has given us to understand on some level how much and how deeply He must be reverenced and adored.
Genesis 1:26-27(NLT) tells us, “26 Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.” 27 So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” God wanted a family, and we are it! We are His children, and His desire is to expand through us. In this truth about God’s expanding and increasing through us, His children, He is also demonstrating for us the nature of love. 1John 4:8 and 16 tell us that God is love, and through His love for us, He is teaching us that the defining characteristics of love is to spread and expand. Through expansion and increase, God’s love reaches, influences, motivates, and inhabits all that He creates. This pleases Him.
God has ordained the marital union between a man and woman to mirror the union He shares with Christ, and the union that Christ shares with us. He tells both men and women about their responsibility to preserve and uphold their marital union in Ephesians 5:24-25(NLT): “24 As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. 25 For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her.” This expresses a love that is based on commitment, not only on emotions. God’s love is the love that we must exercise through a mind that is renewed to His Word and expressed through actions that look like Christ.
As a woman who loves God and wants to please Him, you must recognize that God wants to love your future husband through you. That’s what He wants to do, but if you are not staying away from all sexual sin, you are working against the holiness of God that He wants to express not only to your husband, but to you as well.
There was a time in my early twenties when I believed that all you had to do was avoid the pitfalls of dating by remaining celibate, and if I did this, God would send a great guy to marry me, and we’d have a wonderful life together. This was just not the reality of life nor was it the truth about how God blesses His children. God requires us to have faith, and faith requires us to believe the right knowledge about Him and what He does. I abstained from sex so I could get God’s goodies, but intimacy in our relationship with God requires that we abstain because we love Him and desire to be obedient to what He says. Without the love for God, nothing we do matters. 1Corinthians 13:3(NLT) says, “If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.”
The love that we have for others is born out of the love we have for God. Saving ourselves for marriage is about our commitment to God. It demonstrates our desire to please Him and keep our bodies holy so that He can move through us to do great things. The easiest way to lose intimacy with God is to refuse to say ‘NO’ to our own desires. It’s not difficult to say yes to God when you understand that He is teaching you to make the most of your life in Christ. He wants to love through you, but you must be humble, and you must desire to grow intimately closer to God. His Will is for us to be holy because we are His kids and He is holy. Understand that following God’s Word is not a burden to you. It is life to you, and it is God’s requirement if you desire to be blessed in marriage. ■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“Deepening Intimacy in Our Relationship with God”, written by Kim Times, edited by Fran Mack and K. Stephens for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2023. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!