Your Body, God's Temple Honor God with It! By Laetitia Benberry

Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore brethren to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable or pleasing to God, which is your reasonable service.
I Corinthians 6:18-20 Flee sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a TEMPLE of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own, you were bought with a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

Do you know God loves you? No, I really mean it. Do you know God loves you? As a small child I sang and you may have sang it too “Yes Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. For the Bible tells me so.” We have no idea how precious we are to Him. What a horrific price Christ paid at Calvary to purchase our salvation freedom from sin.
Do you know how VALUABLE you are? Do you know how VALUABLE and sacred your body is and that what you do with your body affects everything about you? Do you know that what you do with your body affects your emotional, mental, physical and most of all your spiritual wellbeing and health. Did you know God NEVER gives a rule without a reason, a command without a consequence and a boundary unless it is to bless us and for our benefit. God would never have put in His word “Be ye holy, as I am holy” if He knew He could not empower us to do it. He is too wise, loving, gracious and powerful to tell us to do something we could not do.

I have over the last 30 years taught expectant parents childbirth education and over the last 12 years taught teens, young adults and parents about sexual health and abstinence. I have as a nurse helped to bring babies into the world and have watched them take their first breath, an awesome miraculous experience. However, the longer I live the more I realize the scriptures written above are TRUTH AND LIFE. I have seen the emotional and physical devastation and heartbreak of broken relationships and sexual immorality. Can I give you some quick facts and then some reasons for God’s command?

Few Facts:

FACTS: God intended for a husband and wife “to leave and cleave” only to each other. The biggest risk factor for contracting a STD is having multiple sexual partners. Are we encouraging young people not to marry or to wait so long to marry so that they compromise God’s standard and plan for purity? How will they learn to be faithful in marriage when they have not practiced the discipline of a holy lifestyle before marriage?

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I will end with 7 Reasons to say “No” to premarital sex related to me by my friend Sister Evelyn Moore:
1 Premarital Sex is a one-flesh act. It creates a false sense of oneness (Makes you feel like you are married when you are not).
2. Premarital Sex raises exposure to uncleanness and disease.
3. Premarital sex plants a seed for lust-sexual immorality- leads to more lust-sin-death and opens the door to commit more sexual sin.
4, Premarital Sex distorts your view. Individuals make a mental, physical and spiritual connection; you see the person as someone they are not and some may marry because they think they are “one”, when actually they don’t even like each other.
5. Premarital Sex prevents you from growing spiritually. You cannot build a godly relationship while you are in an unholy, Satanic relationship (lose self-esteem, lose God’s approval).
6. Premarital Sex produces a false sense of fulfillment.
7. Premarital Sex promotes pleasing self instead of pleasing God. Galations 5:16-17 So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. Not kingdom practice.