Mentor Guide Home

Topics

  • Bob Lepine, FamilyLife Today Broadcast
    “By engaging in pre-marital sex, a person is saying to his or her partner, ‘I am a person who is willing to have sex with someone I’m not married to.’ That person’s partner is also communicating this back to them. Even if the couple goes on to get married and remain faithful, doubts can enter into their thinking because of their past willingness to indulge in sex outside of marriage. These doubts can weaken their emotional intimacy even after they get married.”
  • Heather Jamison, Reclaiming Intimacy, p. 39
    “I, along with many other teens, had used unmarried sex to meet the legitimate longing for intimacy. Sensing the need inside, I had tried to fill it with a tangible relationship. What I didn’t realize was that all people are sinners, and no one could meet my need for total acceptance and love except God.”
  • Heather Jamison, Reclaiming Intimacy, p. 62
    “For some young married couples, financial difficulties may be exacerbated as a result of premarital sex. If a young man fathers a child out of wedlock, he must support that child financially. Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) require visits to the doctor. STDs frequently cause infertility. If a young person suffering from an STD marries and wants children, it can lead to huge expenditures for fertility treatments and surgeries.”
  • Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker, Every Man’s Battle, p.42
    “We aren’t victims of some vast conspiracy to ensnare us sexually; we’ve simply chosen to mix in our standards of sexual conduct with God’s standard.”
  • Gary Thomas, Sacred Marriage, p. 223
    “Teens are urged to wait because by doing so their future marital relations will be all the sweeter. Faithfulness seasons the marital bed in many delightful and profound ways.”
  • Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker, Every Man’s Battle, p. 9
    “‘But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality or of any kind of impurity’ (Ephesians 5:3). If there’s a single Bible verse that captures God’s standard for sexual purity; that is it.”
  • Heather Jamison, Reclaiming Intimacy, p. 78
    “Enjoying in premarital sex creates a hindrance to healthy marital sex, may cause health problems, increases the risk of infidelity, and intensifies family difficulties.”
  • Shannon Etheridge, Every Woman’s Battle, p. 117
    “One of the concepts that I impress upon women is that we teach people how to treat us. We either teach them to treat us with respect or we teach them to treat us with disrespect.”
  • Chip Ingram, Love, Sex, and Lasting Relationships, p. 121
    “Our culture has gotten confused about the difference between love and sex in two ways: (1) We have tried to separate love and sex, describing sex as a harmless and meaningless form of casual entertainment between people who have no lasting commitment, and (2) we have tried to make sex and love almost synonymous, so that great love means great sex and great sex means great love. Both are mistakes.”
  • Chip Ingram, Love, Sex, and Lasting Relationships, p. 112
    “Research indicates that once an uncommitted couple gets involved in sexual intercourse, the relationship usually begins to end.”
  •  Esteem your mentee for reaching out to a mentor at this time.
  • Encourage your mentee to get involved in a local, Bible-believing church for spiritual growth and accountability.
  • Encourage your mentee to be committed to purity, not just technical virginity.  Help him/her understand the difference.
  • Encourage your mentee to be committed to emotional purity, not just physical purity.
  • Encourage your mentee not to let his past defeats to keep him from being pure from this time forward.
  • Encourage your mentee to see moral purity as an integral part of womanhood and manhood, and as an important investment into their future marriage relationship.
  • Encourage your mentee to see that boundaries are for protection and joy.
  • Encourage your mentee to pray daily about this area of life.
  • Encourage your mentee to decide on appropriate boundaries ahead of time and to guard against compromising situations.
  • Encourage your mentee to examine his/her media intake, such as internet sites visited, TV viewing, etc., that affect viewpoint on this area and might lead to temptation.
  • Encourage your mentee to realize that marital intimacy in the future will be well worth the wait sexually now.
  • Encourage your mentee to pursue God first and trust that “all these things will be added” later (Matthew 6:33)
  • Talk to your spouse about what affection was like in your family growing up (verbal and non-verbal).
  • Think about how your father and mother may have shown affection differently.
  • Discuss ways your family could express more affection for one another.
  • On a scale of 1-10, rate how much affection you feel you have in your marriage right now. Talk about what you would like it to be if you and your spouse could agree on how to gently and patiently bring about change.
  • Consider discussing your sexual past with your spouse in a way that is open and honest.
  • Talk about the limits you and your spouse have put on pornography and how you feel those are working.
  • Discuss how each of you defines pornography.  Talk about ways you define it differently.