created for purity - part 1

**if you are under 18, please ask you parents if you can read this post about sexual purity. some of the content your parents may want to discuss with you before you read it. thanks!**

a couple of weeks ago we started new classes on sunday night at church. the officer is attending a revelations/end times class and i am attending a class called created for purity. it's about how to grow children who are sexually pure. the class does not cover just physical sexual purity, but emotional purity as well. i have been through the class before but it's been years. as we finished up our parenting/child training class in sunday school i was thinking to myself, "i wish my sunday school teacher would do the created for purity class again so i can take much better notes." then i notice it will be offered this semester on sunday nights. it's a 7 week long class. i was very excited.

my kids are 6 & 4 and i am sure some of you might think - do you need to take a sexual purity class now? your kids are still so young. however, i think now is the perfect time. okay well i admit i am one of those who likes to prepare - i went to the homeschool convention when my son was 2, i like to have 6 months to plan birthday parties (so i can find things on clearance/sale), and i read parenting books while i was pregnant. i like to have all the information now because it also takes me a little time to implement it into my brain. i have to figure out a way to do things before the time happens.

my daughter is turning 5 this year. she is soon moving out of the "baby/toddler" section in many clothing stores. have you seen some of the clothes they have for tweens? it's not too early to be thinking about sexual purity even at 4 or 5 years old.

i do not usually give out any kind of personal information about anyone on this blog. however, since my sunday school teacher has a site where you can purchase the created for purity i think it is okay to tell you a little bit about him. i'm not telling you anything you can't find on the website. his name is josh bullard. he is the headmaster of christian heritage academy. he and his wife, genel, have been married for 24 years. they have 10 children - no you didn't read that wrong - i typed 10 children. i take in every bit of advice he gives. i may not use it, but you can listen to the advice of a godly, christian man with 10 children.

as i said before, the study started about two weeks ago. the first week was an introduction. it was shocking. josh gave some statistics about sex in our society today. i am not going to tell you everything he said, but two things really stuck out to me. i went through junior high and high school in the 80s. it was a big deal to "make out" with a boy. back then "making out" with a boy was considered kissing - a lot (or at least that's what i thought it was at the time.) josh read several articles about today's youth. the common makeout session has gone from kissing a lot to heavy petting and oral sex. did your mouth just pop open? yep - you read that last part right. when josh read that, i couldn't believe it had come to that. there was another article that talked about "friends with benefits" - friends who have sex but were not supposed to have emotional feelings toward each other. josh has done this study for several local churches. after he did this study at henderson hills, edmond, he received an email from a lady. she said she was nervous about sending her son to middle school. she was nervous about all the older kids, what her son would hear about (regarding sex), and about the sex portable. what's the sex portable you ask? apparently one of the middle schools has a portable building the kids use during the school day to have sex. this is a known thing. those things just blew my mind. the youth today have advanced so far there's not much else left for them to move onto. they give so much of themselves away, when they finally give their virginity away, does it mean something - anything?

another thing discussed in this introduction session was "why don't we talk to our children about this?" josh polled us. he asked us "how many of our parents had talked to us about sex?" only one person raised her hand. she was an exception. she is an older woman and her mother actually talked to her about sex - what it was, why God wanted us to wait and so forth. josh said typically when he polls his audience about 5% of the group raises their hand on this questions. of that 5% whose parents talked to them about sex, approximately half of them said the "talk" consisted only of the "don't have sex, don't get pregnant" talk. most parents left it up to the kids to find out about sex. so where do kids find out about sex - friends, school, television, internet, and other avenues. how do you think these portray sex? the main reasons given in our class as to why parents do not talk to their children about sex were: they don't know how because their parents didn't talk to them, they don't know where to start, parents feel guilty about their own past, parents don't know exactly how they feel about sex - have not determined their boundaries, values or convictions, and it's just uncomfortable. josh had many articles that said children wanted to learn about sex from their parents. the kids may be completely mortified by parents talking about sex with them, but they still wanted to hear from them. the parents were the biggest influence on their sexual activity - not that they would always so what the parents would like, but they cared very much about what their parents would say/think. parents have more of an influence than they think on their kids.

that was the first session. i left there thinking, "yeah i need this now!" i don't want to wait until my daughter and son are 10 & 12 to talk to them about being sexually pure. the dialogue has to start now (more with my son at age 7 then my daughter, but i have to be open to any questions, get used to feeling uncomfortable, and get over it.) i think just covering all the "statistics" he covered was enough for the introduction session. :) i left there thinking i wonder why more parents aren't in this class. our church is considered "big", and we only have 8 adults (one adult is josh's wife, genel) and josh's 3 daughter are attending the class. maybe it's just too uncomfortable an issue.

so as i have done with any other studies i have blogged about, i will write all the teacher's notes in black and any of my thoughts will be in green. in a couple of days i will post the first session in the book - God's view on sex. there is good stuff already. are you ready for this? i thought, "okay i'm ready!" but after coming out of the introduction session, i realize it's still a completely uncomfortable topic and will always will be. the first two weeks in the study cover God's view on sex and God's view on sexual purity. the last three sessions cover physical purity and emotional purity. it gets into practical things we can do. josh said this study if for parents with kids you are not yet teenagers. it's never too late to take this study and apply it. he has a video series you can purchase on his website. if nothing else, this should prompt some discussion in your family. discussion that needs to happen. if you aren't telling your children about sex, who is? what are they learning? what do they think about sex? what do they think about dating? these are questions that need to be discussed.

**update** as my daughter was laying in bed , she yelled out, "how do babies come out of your belly?" yeah - this class is perfect timing.