Category: For Men

A Common Misconception about Love and Sex

I want to talk about a very common misconception about love and sex. Many people believe that it is OK to have sex as long as you are in love. This is 100% false.

This belief is false for two very important reasons. First, feeling like you are “in love” is not a guarantee that your relationship will last. Most of you probably have ex girlfriends or ex boyfriends. This means you were absolutely convinced that you were in love with this person. Where is he/she now? I cannot count the number of times I have heard someone tell me that they had sex because they thought they had found an everlasting love. Some had been in the relationship for years. Some were even engaged. These people were disappointed and heartbroken once the relationship ended. They lost both their purity and the relationship.

Secondly, being “in love” does not protect us from the consequences of premarital sex. You still suffer the consequences even if you are in love. The spiritual consequences (feeling far away from God), emotional consequences (guilt, broken heart, tendency to repeat the mistake), and physical consequences (disease, unwanted pregnancy) happen when we disobey God’s protective commandments.

I have encouraged all of you to think about your future spouse. Imagine saying the following things to someone you want to marry:

“You will not be my first on our wedding night—you will be lover number (2, 3, 6, etc). I’ve already given myself to others, but each time I was in love.”

“I have an STD, but I was in love when I contracted it.”

God wants us to experience sex within the protection of a lifetime commitment. Follow His commandments and you will have no regrets. Follow your own heart’s desires and you are headed for trouble.

The human heart is the most deceitful of all things,
and desperately wicked.
Who really knows how bad it is?
-Jeremiah 17:9

This is one of the many articles that you’ll find in my book: Basta Lovelife: Making Wise Relationship Decisions.

Holy Week Reflections: Love is Not a Feeling

I did not enjoy the sound of my alarm at 4:00 am Wednesday morning. A couple of other factors made waking up even harder. I caught a cold a few days before and had sinus congestion. I somehow sprained my neck at the gym and it was still sore.

I did get up, despite not feeling I was at 100% strength. Why? Love is the reason.

No, I didn’t have an early morning breakfast date with a beautiful woman. I did give my word that I would meet a friend and leave with him at 5:00 am. I had a seminar scheduled for a group of about 70 students from One Body in Christ Ministries (a church in Manila). I rode with them to the Subic Bay area in Bataan. Love for God and love for those students compelled me to keep my word.

My physical discomfort was not really such a big deal. The experience, however, did remind me of an important truth: love is not just a feeling.

When we talk or sing about love, we usually start telling people how we feel (or how that “special someone” makes us feel). Some even do immoral things (like pre-marital sex or having an extra-marital affair) and say “I was in love, I couldn’t help myself.”

Of course love affects our emotions, but true love is much more than just the way we feel. In fact, true love will cause us to do things we don’t feel like doing. True love will cause us to do the right thing, even when it is not easy (1st Corinthians 13:6)

We are now in a season (holy week) in which we ponder the suffering of Jesus. Consider His prayer the nigh before He was crucified:

 “Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”
–Luke 22:42

Why would Jesus pray for the “cup of suffering” to be removed? He was a sane human being. Just like the rest of us, He had a natural desire for comfort and self-preservation. No sane, healthy person wants his/her life to end—especially not by crucifixion.

Despite His normal desire to live, Jesus willingly surrendered Himself to death on a cross. Why? He did this because of His love for us. We can develop a more mature understanding of love by remembering Jesus’ sacrifice for us.

This is one of the many articles that you’ll find in my book: Basta Lovelife: Making Wise Relationship Decisions.