Every Young Man's Battle: Stategies for Victory in the Real World of Sexual Temptation: The Every Man Series (5 page)

The bifurcation myth says that you can do what you want as a
teenager because after you move into adulthood, it won’t matter. That
myth caused me many problems, and it will create havoc for you as well, if you
believe it.

You see, there’s no line that you step over from the
teen years to the adult years. God knows that; it’s why He sees you as a
man right now. You must begin to see yourself this way too, because the person
you become as a young man is the person you’ll drag into adulthood. Your
likes and dislikes—from food to music to movies—will follow you.
More important, your character will be formed, just as a concrete foundation
outlines a house.

Since life-bifurcation is a myth, the decisions you
make today
will
impact everything in your future. The sexual desires
you feed as a teenager will be the same desires you’ll want to feed when
you’re forty. Decision-making is a two-edged sword: The right decisions
you make today will help you make the right decisions when you’re older.
Wrong decisions today get you traveling down a path that leads to more horrible
mistakes tomorrow. These decisions will carry right over into marriage, and
you’ll live one life in front of your wife and one life behind her back,
trapped by the sexual habits you form now. You likely haven’t even met
your future wife yet, but know this: If you believe that today’s sexual
decisions are harmless to your future, bifurcation is rotting the roots of your
future marriage right now.

Because of this bifurcation myth, you may
not be one bit horrified by the story of my (Fred’s) college
years—the porn magazines, the multiple sex partners, the all-around good
times. You may even be a bit jealous. “Wow, Fred had it all! He had sex
anytime and anywhere, then he fell into God’s arms and walked off
scot-free. That’s for me!”

We’ve heard upperclassmen
return from college totally frustrated because they “missed out” on
all the excitement. “My friends lived it up while I missed out on all the
fun and wild times,” exclaimed one college graduate. In his mind, he had
a free get-out-of-jail pass but, like an idiot, he didn’t use it. He
believes that missing out on a backseat rendezvous with Betty Jo “B.
J.” Blowers actually screwed up his life.

It’s as though he
was raised by watching the Disney animated classic
Lion King.
Remember
the young lion Simba in that film? (Okay, we know you prefer more manly fare
like
Gladiator
or
Pearl Harbor,
but humor us.) If you recall,
Simba took off and turned his back on the Pridelands and everything he knew,
hooking up instead with some buddies for some R&R in
“paradise.”
Hakuna matata…
no worries. He and his
buddies did whatever they pleased, whenever they pleased. The young lion had
everything but responsibility.

Suddenly, Simba’s evil uncle,
Scar, took over the Pridelands, which caused total disarray and ruin. With
everything on the line, Simba did the right thing. He turned his back on the
playboy lifestyle, gathered up the troops, led them to victory, married Nala,
stood regally at his coronation, and took his rightful place of greatness among
the animals. In only a day, Simba moved without a hitch from the questionable
character of his young days to his mature adult days. And most of us figure
that’s the way it’ll also work for us.

So we often take off
for our own sexual paradise beyond the Pridelands of our Father’s
kingdom.
Hakuna matata.
When the guys start swapping tales in the
locker room, we want to share our own stories. Why not? The laws of “you
reap what you sow” appear to have been suspended.

So we play,
with little concern. Randy, a Christian and now seventeen, ran off to
“paradise” at age thirteen. Not long ago, he broke up with his
girlfriend, saying he was giving up on the dating scene for a while. A few
weeks later, some friends saw him walking arm in arm with his old girlfriend
again. Later, one friend asked him, “Randy, what’s up with that? I
thought you broke up with her.”

“Oh, she’s not my
girlfriend,” he casually replied. “We’re just humping
buddies.” Randy may think things are cool, but those actions will catch
up with him. It’s impossible to form the proper respect for women in the
shadow of such sin, let alone a proper respect for God. And what will happen
long-term if Randy’s wife doesn’t match up sexually to his former
girlfriend?

Jason has a father who travels for four or five days at a
shot and a mother who works until 5:30 every day. That means he has two hours
after school each day “with no mom around and a junior high girl down the
street who comes over to my house every afternoon and lets me do anything I
want to her. What’s the big deal? It’s fun, and she wants
it.”

Lisa, who grew up in the church, recently approached her
youth pastor with a question. “I’ve been giving oral sex to
different boys at our parties for quite awhile now. I don’t know why, but
I just thought I should ask you about it. Is that wrong for me to
do?”

Stumbling a bit, the youth leader asked, “Were these
your boyfriends?”

Lisa responded, “No, I wasn’t
dating any of them. It’s just casual with us. All the guys know me for
it, and that’s why they come to the parties. I feel quite a bit of
pressure to keep giving them what they want, now that they expect it.
I’ve become quite popular because of it. Still, I thought maybe I should
ask you about it, just to make sure it was okay.”

Maybe you
haven’t traveled this deeply into paradise. Maybe you just hang on the
fringes with
Playboy
or regularly visit that hot adult Internet site.
Maybe you’re experimenting with fantasy, lusting over that girl at school
and repeatedly thrilling to intense wet dreams with her. In any event,
you’ve left the Pridelands.

Hakuna matata?
No worries?
Guess again. If you’re not concerned, then you should know that life
isn’t like
The Lion King.
It’s more like
Pinocchio,
another Disney classic. Pinocchio knew it was the right
thing for all boys to go to school. On his way to class, however, he met some
scoundrels who painted a wonderful picture of spending the day at Adventure
Island, a sort of amusement park just offshore. They gave Pinocchio and his
buddy Lampwick free passes for the ferry ride to Adventure Island, but neither
knew that at day’s end all the boys would be turned into donkeys and be
sold to pull carts in the coal mines for the rest of their lives. Like
Pinocchio, maybe you think Adventure Island will bring you great amusement at
no charge, although you know you’re not supposed to go there. But there
will
be a price to pay at the end of the day, and it will be a heavy
one.

First, what you view today will stay in your mind a long, long
time—maybe forever. There’s an old saying: “It takes twenty
seconds to look at a
Playboy
and twenty years to forget what you
saw.” I can still remember the nude spread of Suzanne Sommers in the
surging mountain stream as if it were yesterday. I still remember the short,
full-bodied Asian girl standing nude in the wheat field in
Gallery
after she won the “Girl Next Door Contest.” I can still see
the nude
Playboy
model cloaked in a clear plastic raincoat as the
shower cascaded over her. Every detail, from the color and cut of her hairstyle
right down to the curvature of her spreading thighs are imprinted in my brain.
I guess the old saying is wrong. I saw those images twenty-
three
years
ago, and I still haven’t forgotten.

Second, we pay the price
whether we know it’s coming or not. I’ve watched a ton of gory
movies in my day, but few screams in those films have matched Lampwick’s
shriek of raw terror when his hands were turned into hooves. He didn’t
see it coming. If you think the law of reaping and sowing has been suspended
during your teen years, then Satan gleefully uses this to his advantage. He
does everything in his power to hook you sexually before marriage.

Maybe you aren’t concerned. Maybe you think God will forgive you and
that everything will be over once you marry. He’ll forgive you, all
right, but it’s not over. Sin comes with inescapable consequences that
follow you. You’ll have to pay the price at the same toll bridge as the
rest of us. Jim told us this:

I’ve been a Christian since the
age of nine, and I’ve been sexually active since I was twelve. Now
I’m in my late twenties, and I’m on the Internet constantly viewing
the worst kinds of pornography. The lustful thoughts and acts will one day
destroy me if I can’t find a way to control it. Though I’m a
Christian, it’s always two steps backward and one step forward due to my
sexual sin. I regret the things I do but then go right back to them. I never
can focus my extra energy on Him, no matter how desperately I desire it.

Here’s what Tom, a college student, said:

I’ve been
struggling with sexuality for over a year now. I had a longtime girlfriend in
high school that I made love to for a couple of years. Since we broke up,
I’ve longed for another girlfriend, but I haven’t found anyone,
which has been frustrating. So frustrating that my feelings for girls have
turned primarily to lust. I’m really ashamed of the things I do and think
about, and I’m often ashamed to face God. I don’t know how
I’ll ever get free.

Tanner says he’s addicted to
pornography:

It began when I was in high school, and it chases me
through the years. I’ve tried to pray and read my Bible, but because of
my sin, I have no desire to do these spiritual disciplines. I’m desperate
and need help. I’m studying to become a pastor, and I’m close to
ordination, but I feel convicted and guilty. My deepest desire is to serve God
and be a man of God, but I don’t know what to do. I cannot get
free.

And Derrick feels as though he’s living like a public
saint and a private sinner:

The hypocrisy is ripping me apart, and the
absence of God is like a living hell for me. I need help. I’m dying on
the inside. I just don’t know what to do or where to go. I don’t
live for God, I don’t witness, and I don’t pray. People say that
the definition of hell is “eternal separation” from God. I feel
that I have that right now, so I guess I’m in hell!

The end of
the day at Adventure Island has arrived for these men, and they struggle
against binding cords like donkeys pulling coal cars through dark mines, day
after draining day. Some of you already feel the cords wrapping you tighter and
tighter.

As the cords tighten, you struggle and struggle, and you may
be ready to give up. You hope that you’ll someday be free from sexual
sin, expecting to grow out of it as naturally as you grew into it. Kind of like
outgrowing acne. With each birthday, you wait for your sexual impurity to clear
up, but nothing changes. So you wait some more, hoping that your future wife
will arrive in time to help you fight your way back to purity.

But if
you’ve got the idea that marriage will save you, you’re foolishly
mistaken.

If
you’re looking for sexual nirvana…marriage isn’t it. When
Mark signed up to attend the premarriage class that I (Fred) teach, he told me
that his life was a mess. “I’ve been hooked on sex for years, and
I’m counting on marriage to free me,” he said. “I’ll be
able to have sex whenever I want it. Satan won’t be able to tempt me at
all!”

When we got together a few years later, I wasn’t
surprised to hear that marriage hadn’t fixed the problem. “You
know, Fred, my wife doesn’t desire sex as often as I do,” he
said.

“Oh, really?”

“I don’t want to
seem like a sex addict or anything, but I probably have as many unmet desires
now as I did before marriage. On top of all that, some areas of sexual
exploration seem embarrassing or immodest to her. Sometimes she even calls them
‘kinky.’ I think she’s rather prudish, but what do I
say?”

In our experience, you can’t say much!

To
hear that marriage doesn’t eliminate sexual impurity comes as a surprise
to teens and young singles. Ron, a youth pastor in Minnesota, said that when he
challenges young men to be sexually pure, their response is,
“That’s easy for you to say, Pastor. You’re married! You can
have sex any time you want!”

If only it were so.

First of
all, sex has different meanings to men and women. Men primarily receive
intimacy just before and during intercourse. Women gain intimacy through
touching, sharing, hugging, and communicating deeply. Is it any wonder that the
frequency of sex is less important to women than to men, as Mark woefully
discovered? Because of the differences between men and women, forming a
satisfying sex life in marriage is hardly a slam dunk. It’s more like
making a half-court shot.

Second, your wife may suddenly become much
different from the woman you courted. Larry, a strapping, handsome young pastor
in Washington, D.C., has a great Christian heritage. His father is a wonderful
pastor, and Larry was thrilled when God also called him into the ministry. When
Larry met Linda, a striking blonde bombshell, they appeared meant for each
other, a regular Ken and Barbie set. After their wedding day, however, Larry
found Linda to be far more interested in her career than in fulfilling him
sexually. Not only was she disinterested in sex, she often used it as a
manipulative weapon to get her own way. Consequently, Larry doesn’t have
sex very often. Twice a month is a bonanza, and once every two months is the
norm. No sexual nirvana there.