Some Thoughts on Abstinence

1) it requires that you consider God even in your most passionate moments. You Honor God, not because of some Divine mandate that "You shall not have any fun before marriage" but because your mind is on God even as you are fully involved with your lover. I suspect that this habit of inviting God in, even at your most intimate and vulnerable, makes the marriage and sex all the more full. 

2) I have a secret: I think it would have been possible for Kristen and I to make love in a way that was very healthy without being married. As with any sin, it is not the act itself that is necessarily sinful but rather the underlying implications that really get you in trouble. I think Kristen and I could have been intimate in a way that honored each other and considered the other before ourselves, I think that having sex could have been a beautiful expression of our love for one another. But by taking this long pause before engaging in sex we told each other something that will profoundly shape our love for one another for the rest of our lives: I love God more than you. Sex is a spiritual practice.