The following is a guest post from Ally Spotts, author of the e-book, Asking All The Wrong Questions: Why Christians Are Waiting for Marriage for Sex.
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It used to drive me crazy that people would talk about sex like it was the worst sin in the universe.

I grew up in the church. I was part of the “True Love Waits” generation. I read I, “Kissed Dating Goodbye,” and, “When God Writes Your Love Story.” I even went on a youth group retreat where I was encouraged to write letters to my future husband. I did and kept them in a box under my bed.

But as I got older and started dating I discovered that there were all kinds of tricky loopholes to the whole virginity thing. You could mess around with a dozen guys, do everything except sex, and you were still allowed to call yourself a virgin.

What was the point of waiting for marriage for sex if we were just going to fool around with our boyfriends?

Was there a point?

When we talked about sex at youth group I would always get the same explanations:

“Your body is a precious treasure and you need to treat it accordingly.”

“Sex is a gift that you only get to give away once.”

These explanations didn’t satisfy me. If sex was such a bad thing, I wondered, than how come it felt like such a good thing? What was it that happened after the wedding day that made sex suddenly okay?

So I went along with my friends. Kissed guys. Pushed the boundaries. And eventually jumped right over the line when I didn’t see the point in skirting around it anymore.

But I couldn’t kick the feeling that something was really, really wrong.

I felt lonely and depressed all the time.

I felt like I had to hide.

I was so ashamed of my actions.

I felt isolated and alone.

It seemed like the whole world was out to get me for decisions it had told me were okay.

One day I heard a pastor ranting and raving about a woman living in sin with her boyfriend and I was so angry at him. I was living in sin with my boyfriend and it sounded kind of like he was yelling at me.

Whatever, I thought to myself. He probably has worse sin in his life.

But when I got home I looked up the pastor’s message on YouTube and listened to it again. I read the passage he was talking about from 1 Corinthians.

“Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.”

Suddenly it made sense to me. Sex was not a worse sin than any other sin that I could commit. But because my sexuality was connected to my body and my soul, sinning sexually had consequences that no other sin could.

I knew he was right. I was experiencing them.

I didn’t have any STDs or unwanted pregnancies or restraining orders against boyfriends. What I had was worse. I had to wake up everyday feeling and knowing that my spirit was dying.

I didn’t feel loved. I didn’t feel valuable. I felt numb.

Deciding to wait for marriage for sex wasn’t easy, especially after I had already messed up. But the thing that helped me more than anything else was being able to ask honest questions, and knowing there were people who would try to answer them.

I’m convinced my generation is asking the wrong questions about sex and sexuality. We’re asking, “How far is too far,” instead of, “Why are we committed to waiting in the first place?” Learn from me and teach that to your youth group kids.

We also need people who are willing to talk to us like adults, who let us ask our questions and who attempt to answer with something more than, “because I said so.”

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Want to hear more about why she made this commitment and how she kept it? Purchase Ally’s e-book called, Asking All The Wrong Questions: Why Christians Are Waiting for Marriage for Sex, or visit her website, allyspotts.com.

Posted on November 8, 2011