Setups include such things as being alone on a couch or in a car late at night or in a bedroom. (Stay out of each other’s bedrooms!) Learn not to trust yourself too much. Psychologist Henry Brandt’s teenage son asked him, “Dad, don’t you trust me?” Brandt responded, “Alone, late at night, in a car, with a girl?
I don’t trust me—why should I trust you?” Determine to stay away from the setup, rather than putting yourself in the setup and having to call on your convictions when your resistance is at its lowest,
and you’re most likely to give in. In the moment of strength, make decisions that will avoid temptation in the moment of weakness. When you’re on a diet, don’t step foot in a donuts shop.
12. Be accountable to someone about your physical relationship.
This should be a committed brother or sister in Christ, usually the same gender as you. It should be someone
who takes sexual purity seriously, someone with wise advice, who will pray for you and help hold you accountable to high standards. We all need someone to be honest with us. It’s a great help just to
have someone ask you, “How did it go last night? Did you honor the Lord? Did you maintain
your purity?” If you know someone is going to ask, it’s much more likely to affect your behavior.
13. Pray together at the beginning and end of each date.
Commit the evening or day in advance to the Lord. Ask him to be pleased in everything you do. Plan to pray at the end of the date to thank him for the evening. If you know this prayer is coming, it will help you to be sure to control yourself and please God.
14. Imagine your parents, teachers and church leaders are watching you through the window.
Would that change how you behave? Then meditate on the fact that someone much more holy, and to whom
you are even more accountable, is watching you, even when you tell yourself you’re alone. God is omniscient and omnipresent. He is the Audience of One. In temptation our theology becomes very cloudy. The truth is, there is no such thing as a private moment. God is never in the dark. He is always watching. He knows what we’re thinking about and what we’re doing. And it is his appraisal of our life that ultimately matters.
15. When you sense the temptation coming, before things start to get out of control, RUN.
“Flee from sexual immorality” (1 Corinthians 6:18). When it comes to sexual temptation, it always pays to
be a coward. In this battle, retreat is always the first line of defense. He who hesitates (and rationalizes) is lost.
Joseph demonstrated this with Potiphar’s wife: “And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her . . . She caught him by his cloak and said, ‘Come to bed with me!’
But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house” (Gen. 39:10, 12). Joseph not only refused to go
to bed with her but to “even be with her.” He saw the danger signs and avoided her. And when she finally pushed herself on him, he did not trust himself to stay where he was, but ran out of the house. Don’t stay and try to “resist” temptation when you have the option of running from it.NG 1998 ETERNAL PERSPECTIVES PAGE 4
16. Write out your own standards and enforce them yourself— never depend on your date.
You as an individual are responsible and accountable to God for what you do. Someone else’s convictions or
lack of convictions, or self-control or lack of self-control is not the issue. (Though you should never be dating
someone who lacks convictions and self-control). You are fully responsible for your behavior. If you fall into sexual immorality you have yourself to blame. Pointing the finger at someone else doesn’t cut it.
17. Make your moral decisions in advance—not in the time of temptation.
If you set your alarm clock at night and tell yourself you’ll decide in the morning whether you need to get up when the alarm goes off, you may as well not set it. Either you are committed to getting up or you’re not. If it’s left to your feelings in the moment of truth, you’ll make the wrong decision. Again: in the moment of strength make choices that will serve you well in the moment of weakness.
18. Memorize Scripture on sexual purity and quote it when tempted.
“I have hidden your Word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:11). When Satan tempted him, Jesus quoted Scripture to resist. When the attacks come, and they will, be ready to take up the
sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God (Ephesians 6:17). There are many Scripture passages in this handout. Choose some, then write each one on a note card and work on memorizing them.
19. Don’t do anything with your date you wouldn’t want someone else doing with your future mate.
Somewhere out there is the man or woman you’re going to marry. What do you want them to be doing now with someone else? Then live by that standard yourself. “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31).
20. Look out for the “moral wear down” of long dating relationships and long engagements.
It’s easy to peak out emotionally, to wear down in the battle for sexual purity, to begin to rationalize that
you’re really a couple, and after all you’ve been dating for years and maybe you think you’re going to get
married anyway, so you’re “almost” or “sort of” married, right? Wrong. When it comes to the freedom to have
sex there’s just two kinds of people— the unmarried, who don’t have that freedom, and the married, who do.
Don’t get engaged until you can put the wedding in sight. When you’re engaged people begin to treat you as no longer single, when in fact you are. You can be deceived into slipping into some of the privileges of marriage before marriage, especially sexual intimacy.
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