Did God want me to have sex?
Question:
Hi, I just discovered this website today, and I had a question. There is this girl that I have fallen in love with. She is everything to me. I prayed all the time asking what I should do with her and where I should go with this. I'm very close to God, and whenever I feel He wants me to do something, I always do it, no questions asked. But there is something I felt, and I didn't know what to do. I felt that God wanted me to get really close to her. And I know God when I feel Him and every time I do something that He wants me to do, good things always come out of it. But this was different, I felt like He wanted me to have sex with her. I know it sounds crazy, but that is how I felt. I went on for months not knowing what to do and this in my mind all the time. So one night I decided I should do it. It was the best moment of my life. And the thing is I felt like I did something I was supposed to. I didn't even feel I did something wrong or that I have sinned; I felt relieved. But I thought how could God want me to do something against what is in the Bible? Would God do that? Hope to hear back from you.
Answer:
"You shall have no other gods before Me" (Exodus 20:3).
When I read through your note, the first thing that jumped out at me was how often you made decisions based on how you felt. You even placed your feelings above what you knew God said in His Word. Start from the front cover and go to the end; tell me when God communicated His will through feelings?
What God told us is that feelings are not to be trusted. "He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but whoever walks wisely will be delivered" (Proverbs 28:26). Your feelings can be manipulated. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings" (Jeremiah 17:9-10). Your heart reveals the motivation, your mind your reasoning, and then God judges you according to your action. "Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one's praise will come from God" (I Corinthians 4:5).
You claim to be very close to God. But consider that John said, "Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, "I know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked" (I John 2:3-6). How can I accept your claim when you lusted after another, committed fornication, and then felt good about the sin you committed? "There is a generation that is pure in its own eyes, yet is not washed from its filthiness" (Proverbs 30:12).
The real problem is that following your feelings puts you in the driver seat of determining what is right or wrong. "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death" (Proverbs 14:12). You knew that God doesn't ask people to sin. "Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed" (James 1:13-14). James makes the situation clear. The sin came from you and your desires, not God.
Paul makes what at first appears to be an odd statement: "For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God" (Ephesians 5:5). A man who is a fornicator, unclean (i.e. lustful, having a dirty mind), or greedy is an idolater. The reason is that such people put their personal desires ahead of God and make those desires their god.
The saddest thing I read was your assertion that God wanted you to commit fornication. You interpreted the natural pleasure of sex and the release of sexual tension by orgasm as approval by God, but those things come for the sinner as well as the saint who follows God's laws. I must conclude that you want to see yourself right so badly that you are willing to deceive yourself. "The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (II Thessalonians 2:9-12).
The truth is that you followed your sexual desires into sins of lust and fornication. Rather than face the truth that you sinned, you've rewrote the events in your mind and lied to yourself by saying God approved of your sin and even encouraged it. My young friend, it's time to drop the lies and turn to God in reality. Would you do me a small favor and read "Evidence of Pardon: How Can I Know I Am Saved?" Then let's talk about really getting to know God.
