A Higher Standard

Series: The Princess and the Kiss--Part 2

Leslie Basham: If you are married, think back to the days when you were dating. You probably had a lot of excitement and romantic feelings. And maybe some things happened that you regret.

Now assuming you have children, think about this: Would you want your son or daughter’s courtship experience to develop exactly the same way yours did?

This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Tuesday, November 29th.

Many moms feel inadequate to talk to their children about the whole topic of staying pure before marriage. This can especially be true if they experienced some failure in this area in the past. But today we’ll hear from moms who are able to point to the grace of God and who found a very useful tool to use in talking to their children. Here’s Nancy to explain.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: I think a lot of moms face a dilemma, "How can I challenge my kids to hold to a standard of moral purity that I didn’t keep myself?" As a mom you know you can’t say nothing, but you’re afraid after you have laid it all out, your child might ask, “So mom, did you keep yourself pure before you married dad?”

And let me say this too: Moral purity is more than just staying out of bed with a person of the opposite sex. It’s a matter of guarding your heart as Proverbs chapter 4 says. It’s a matter of not arousing or awaking love until its time, as it says in the Song of Solomon (2:7).

So we have this dilemma. And to help you think through how you can answer that question whether your son or daughter has actually asked it, I want you to listen in on something we recorded a little while back.

This is a group of moms who had all been through the book The Princess and the Kiss with their daughters. We’ll tell you more about the book later on today’s program, but first listen to how God supplied the grace these moms needed to overcome issues from their own past even as they challenged their daughters to commit themselves to a life of purity.

Woman 1: I dated a ton from the time I was probably fourteen all the way through my college years. And I learned a lot of things along the way, but looking back now, I can see that I got my self-worth out of feeling like I was special to some other person.

What I am trying to teach my daughter is what I wish I had known back then. And that is: I have value in my life because of the Lord, because He loves me and He treasures me. He created me. He knows everything about me, and He still accepts me. [This is my value] instead of trying to dress myself up on the outside and trying to impress other people and see which eye I can catch this week.

Woman 2: I think I am so grateful, too, that the girls can understand that purity is not because God is a legalistic, judgmental God saying, “I don’t want you to have fun. You have to abstain from all these things because I’m a mean God.”

He gives us the gift of purity that I didn’t understand it that way. He’s given our girls this gift, this precious gift of purity because of His love and because His way is best. He knows how their lives are going to have the greatest rewards, not because He’s withholding from them like the rest of the world would have them believe, but because He wants to give to them.

Woman 3: Growing up in a Christian home, I’ve talked to so many women whose Christian parents had them in church every Sunday but failed to communicate these vital truths that we need to obey. And as Cherie said, the rewards are so great if they will guard their heart with all diligence.

When I was seventeen or eighteen, I had already been in several immoral relationships. And even now after being married for 15 years, one of the consequences of that sin are memories that we can never rid our mind of. It is only from the power of God working in our heart and in our mind to remove those memories that are embedded in us.

And the enemy will use those when my husband and I are wanting to be intimate—there will be a flashback in my mind. I will think, “Where in the world is this coming from? It is just . . . it is a scheme from the devil to discourage us and frustrate us in our walk with God because as a married woman now I do desire to have a pure heart.

So as I went through these relationships, at the age of seventeen I found myself pregnant. That pregnancy did end in an abortion. And that is the deepest regret of my life—that I failed to obey God, the truths that I did hear as I was sitting in church. I failed to make Him Lord of my life. I failed to obey the truths that are in His Word regarding purity and that will be a life-long consequence that I will live with.

However, through the blood of Jesus we can stand before God pure and clean and we can have victory over the enemy when we’re trusting in the Lord. And for my daughters, I need to let them in on my failures. I have told them of my failures, and I want them to learn from that and to see that when we sin there is a consequence and when we obey there are great rewards. That picture of purity for them can be beautiful, even if it comes from a life that was impure in previous years.

Woman 2: One thing that I want to add was how I felt my greatest fear with having children, and especially with a little girl, was that she would one day ask me when I tried to explain to her about purity, that she would ask me, “Mommy, were you pure?” And coming from a life of immorality, I thought I could never tell her that because then I would have no credibility with her to teach her these truths.

This book, The Princess and the Kiss, just opened the door of communication so that I could share with her, “Yes, Mommy failed, but God has forgiven me, and Daddy has forgiven me. And I want to pray as your mommy that you would forgive me because I don’t have this to teach you out of experience but out of the grace of God.” And she wrapped her arms around me and it was just comforting and encouraging to me, and I was the mother in the picture.

God covered my greatest fear with His grace and showed me that with all my imperfections and the sin in my past that He would give me children that would love me in spite of them—just like He loves me in spite of those mistakes.

Woman 4: For me it was just, I feel, like a missing link in our Christian culture—the mom and daughter relationship. I grew up in a home where outward principles were stressed, outward religion. But my mother and no one I knew around me would take me under their wing and sit down with me and pour their heart into mine to guide me on the path of what it really means to have a pure heart. I didn’t know what that looked like. I had no example. I had no picture.

And by God’s grace . . . I made mistakes along the way and I would do it over a thousand times, but His grace has covered that. What I so appreciate about the book was how it was so foundational that they see their love in God, that He has their name inscribed in His hand.

And when they are founded in that, then these other truths are easily grown and taken root because that love has already prepared the soil of their hearts. Then we add the fertilizer and the water through washing them in the Word.

The study was just a tool God has used in our family’s life to make us sit down and talk about the things that we would have tiptoed around or not known exactly the right approach to take—so we wouldn’t have talked about it. God just used it mightily in our lives to make the time and to have a tool and a resource to go to and a springboard for God to use.

Woman 5: My parents divorced when I was young, and so I was one of the little girls that had more of a tendency to be drawn to wanting that kind of a love. Because my parents were divorced, my father lived very far away from us, and I didn’t see him very much. And so a lot of the things I think I did, I was trying to get this relationship from some other man that only God could fill through my father.

I think that is part of the reason I’ve made some choices that I’ve made just because I was looking for a love through this man to be physical hugs and kisses and things like that that I shouldn’t have been looking for.

Woman 6: All of us in this room probably have regrets about our past and our dating life and all that. Just think of our daughters. We entered marriage with that baggage, even if we dealt with it, we still have the memories; we still have the regrets.

But if our daughters can get to that stage in their life where they don’t have the regrets, they don’t have memories of gross sin and things that Satan will bring back to taunt us with and to try to make us feel like we are encaged and we can’t have freedom, how much greater can their marriages be when they don’t carry that in?

Then—they’re teaching their daughters. They can teach not from failure but from success. I think that’s exciting.

Nancy: Isn’t that encouraging to listen to? That was a group of moms that I had the privilege of interacting with not too long ago just after they had finished going through a book called The Princess and the Kiss with their daughters.

Really, if you think about it, none of us can hold to God’s standards perfectly, yet in His infinite wisdom God has planned for imperfect parents to communicate and uphold His perfect standards before their imperfect children. And God promises His grace to those who fail and who turn to Him in repentance for forgiveness.

Leslie Basham: It may be that you’ve felt that same level of discomfort at the thought of talking to your kids about purity. Let me take a moment to tell you how you can order a copy of this book and study on purity. There are two separate stories, one for girls and one for boys.

The Princess and the Kiss tells the story of a princess whose parents, the king and the queen, guard a very special gift for her until she’s old enough to decide to whom she’ll give it. It’s referred to as her first kiss in the book, something that represents her purity.

On the other hand, The Squire and the Scroll tells the exciting adventure of a young squire who has to refer to his scroll frequently in order to endure many dangers along his journey as he protects his own integrity.

The books are beautifully illustrated to help capture the imaginations of the kids 9 to 12 years old. You can also order a special Princess Prayer Box Necklace for the girls or a Shield and Lantern Watch for the boys. These wearable gifts are especially crafted to help your child remember the principles they learned as they study The Princess and the Kiss or The Squire and the Scroll.

Once again, our web address is ReviveOurHearts.com, and if you prefer to call, you can do that by dialing 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow we’ll hear from the daughters of these mothers and some of the lessons they learned as they studied through The Princess and the Kiss. I hope you will join us for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

Note: Special offers available only during the broadcast of the radio series.