22 Year Old Selling Virginity

Paul said, "Let no one despise your youth..." What will Natalie Dylan's future prospects for a husband be like. Will they willing embrace a prostitute? How will future employers look at her? If she decides to have children, what will they say about how their mother sold herself just to pay for grad school?

She is not desperate. She is not destitute. She is not out of options. But even so, is she not narrowing the rest of her life options by selling her soul? Even if she gains the whole world, she will be lost through the loss of her soul.

Let no one despise your youth. Another translation says, "Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young..." Does she chalk this one up as "sowing her wild oats"?

Her sad step into prostitution breaks my heart. Did her dad not love her? Does she care? As a dad I can't imagine allowing my little girl to go so far away from reality as to sell herself to greedy, bloodthirsty hounds without any scruples.

As soon as Miss Dylan commits this sin, can she ever get over it and be seen as an adult? Does her desire for sin make her any less than anyone else? Jerry Bridges addresses this in his latest book Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate because as he says, “The motivation for this book stems from a growing conviction that those of us whom I call conservative evangelicals may have become so preoccupied with some of the major sins of society around us that we have lost sight of the need to deal with our own more ‘refined’ or subtle sins.” Sins such as ungodliness, anxiety and frustration, discontentment, unthankfulness, pride, selfishness, lack of self-control, impatience and irritability, anger, weeds of anger, judgmentalism, envy, jealousy, sins of the tongue, and worldliness.

I say all of this because if we want people to take us seriously, then we should understand that we should also be examples in spirit, in faith, and in purity.

If we are to be examples in spirit, we should do as Paul says in Galatians 5:25, "Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." Simply put, be a Christian in acts and deeds as much as in thought and in hopes.

If we are to be examples in faith, we should live out our lives knowing the true love the Jesus has for us. Faith is stirred by love and mixed in our way of life as a Christian. Faith is our foundation upon the truth. Without faith our works die, yet with faith we find more than enough to do.

If we are to be an example in purity, well be pure. Let your motives equal your actions and your actions be molded by grace. There needs to be a consistency between our actions and motives and how they are conformed to God. This is where relying on the Holy Spirit is important.

But why? Why not embrace life and take advantage of it? People will judge us in how we progress in our faith. Paul says,

Meditate on these things; give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all. 16 Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you. 1 Tim 4:15-16 (NKJV)

Do you want others to have more respect for who you are? Become a pattern or example to others, and then watch people respond.