Thursday, December 26, 2013

Why All These Crazy Feelings If I Shouldn’t Do Anything About Them Now?

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Since most people marry in their 20s, why do young teenagers begin to have strong feelings for the opposite sex? Why is a 13-year-old fully capable of getting pregnant and bringing a baby into the world, if she must wait until she’s 20 in order to do so?

Why all these crazy feelings if I shouldn’t do anything about them now?

I was thinking about this recently and God shared something very cool with me.

On the day of your wedding you pledge yourself, forsaking all others, to keep yourself only to your husband or wife, as long as you both shall live. All thoughts of others, all interest in others is to be strictly controlled. Once you’re married to the man of your choice, you cannot have a boyfriend too. After your wedding you can’t have a wife and a string of girlfriends.

So how are you supposed to learn how to do that—trial and error after you’re married doesn’t work out so well?!

And that’s the really cool things God showed me: That’s what these teenage romantic feelings are for. There is a reason He designed them to come early! There’s something

very important to learn: and that is how to control and deal with those feelings so that you can be married and be true to your vow.

What should I do with all these crazy feelings? Appreciate them as a gift—an indispensible learning tool! They were given you early so that you could learn how to deal with them—how to control them—how to give them to God, so that one day you could place them on your husband or wife and be faithful to your marriage vow!

It takes time to learn these things just like it does to learn to walk. Those feelings of infatuation—the starry eyes and the fluttering heart—don’t just magically go away forever the day you get married. And once you’re married, if your spouse senses you having eyes and feelings for someone else, that is going to be disaster.

This is why Satan has worked to make it socially acceptable for young people to allow these feelings to run completely unchecked. When I was in 6th grade, everyone had a girlfriend or boyfriend. There was not one word of caution or one idea expressed that maybe this was not a good idea. And I’m sure you know the kind of stuff that was going on when I was in academy. . . .

Young people today are not learning to control these feelings or how to do it. And what has been the result to marriages? Disaster, infidelity, divorce in more than 1/2 of marriages. Homes are broken up and children’s lives are ruined as their parents separate. And what is the solution these children turn to? Often it’s a teen romance, and the cycle continues.

God knew what He was doing. He knew we needed these feelings early, so that we could learn how to head off a romance—so we could learn how to tell a flirting girl where to go—so we could learn how to give an amorous guy the cold shoulder—so we could learn what to do with our own crazy hearts! It’s hard, and God knew it—He knew we needed time to learn.

“The young affections should be restrained until the period arrives when sufficient age and experience will make it honorable and safe to unfetter them. Those who will not be restrained will be in danger of dragging out an unhappy existence. A youth not out of his teens is a poor judge of the fitness of a person as young as himself to be his companion for life.” {Messages to Young People, p. 452}

“I took the [academy] girls by themselves and talked with them seriously and charged them to keep themselves sacredly to themselves. We would not, could not, allow any courting or forming attachments at the school, girls with young men and young men with girls.” EGW, Letter 193, 1897

It really was a wise plan after all!

1 comments:

Unknown said...

Thank you for posting this. I really appreciate it. :) I hope that other young people will also read this and see how God has planned out everything for our good and not to hurt us. Praise GOD!!

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