07 Do - Over

this is my final installment from my series in the family life on God, sex and sexuality. this was part of a class i did for my teens during sunday night live based on a youth specialties curriculum titled "good sex"

Do - Over

Remember the worst sin you every committed with all the guilt and shame that followed? Remember the consequences of that sin? You May still be dealing with them today! Now imagine you have the opportunity to go back and stop yourself from committing that sin. You have the chance to right the wrong you committed. You have the chance to do the good you should have done. We all have sins like this in our lives. Sins that make us nervous that anyone would find out. They are secrets that we have. These secrets hurt us and can hurt others. These secrets make a rift between us and God. We may see no way to make things better.

Amazingly, the LORD has provided a way to make things right. We are given a chance to start over and leave the sin of our past behind. We can not travel back in time and stop the sin, but we no longer need to live as a slave to our dark secrets. How is this possible?

Through the blood of Jesus, true forgiveness and repentance can be found. Jesus paid the price for us to be forgiven. His death on the cross brought us grace and mercy and purchased us back from sin and death. Jesus, our Savior, has done His part. Now it is our turn. Our part is repentance. Repentance has two parts. The first part is confession. We are to confess our sins one to another. We need to tell a trusted brother or sister in Christ our sin secret. Once the secret is in the open the next part is for us to turn our back and walk away from that temptation. We need to identify what the cause of the temptation is and eliminate it from our lives to neutralize its power in our lives. If you are struggling with pornography, install some monitoring software. There is software that will email an accountability partner with a report of any inappropriate websites you visit. If you lust after a classmate in school, ask your teacher if you can change seats or create something you can wear, like a bracelet or ring, to remind you to stop your lustful thoughts. If you and your boyfriend or girlfriend have crossed the line and are sexually active, turn around and come back across the line. Communicate with the other person in the relationship so they know why you need to cool things down. If they reject your desire to have a purer relationship, you should probably break up with them because they aren’t respecting you. If have a “friend with benefits” stop providing the benefits or seeking them out. The other person isn’t really your friend but is using you for sexual favors or you are abusing someone else for sexual favors. If you are the victim or someone else’s sexual sin (through incest or rape) don’t let the damage of that sin create sin in your own life. You didn’t choose what happened to you and you don’t need to be it's slave. This is a fight against sin, sexual sin in our lives. Thank God we don’t fight alone. We have the Holy Spirit inside of us. The Holy Spirit is that part of God that is in all His people that gives us the power to live as His people. Without the Spirit we would not have the courage to say no to sin and live pure and holy lives! Lives that please the LORD.

This may sound pretty simple on paper but it is a difficult path in real life. It is not easy to tell another person about our sin. To admit we were wrong and need to change. It is not easy to change relationships we are in to make them pure and holy. It is not easy to turn away from selfish desires that we have been saying yes too for so long. It is not easy to deal with the pain and consequences we may have caused through our sexual sin. It May not be easy for a long time but in the end it will be worth the reward that we as the children of God have been promised.