Yesterday I had the opportunity to teach the young women about the law of chastity. Since we have 11 year olds up to 18 year olds all combined together, I was hoping to make the lesson applicable and understandable to all. I hope that they were able to feel the spirit and learn from the things that were shared. I never go word for word through a lesson but I always type out everything I think I might want to say and then make adjustments as we go along...adding thoughts that pop in my head, rearranging if something goes well with a comment that a young woman makes, cutting things out if I run short of time, etc.
So this is similar to what was shared but not exact.
(I brought my wedding dress and some photos and my daughters' baptism
dresses and blessing dresses.)
**Write
words “purity”, “virtue”, “chastity” on board…give them a couple of minutes to
write down what these words mean, any questions they have, how they feel about
these topics, why they think these are important topics. They
can write about just one word or 2 or all 3. Allow them to share if they would like
to.
*Express
deep love for them…I pray for them daily, love them, cheer them on and want so
very much to teach them and help them become converted to the Lord. Heaven would not be heaven without them
there. They are needed. We’ll be talking about a sacred topic
today, a subject that made me uncomfortable as a youth…but a topic that the
Spirit has impressed upon me that we need to review. The topic is intimacy…and while the
world treats this topic casually, crudely and inappropriately, it IS a sacred
and beautiful topic.
*What
does it mean to be virtuous? What does it mean to be chaste?
Refer
to Proverbs 31 (virtuous woman) Read some of the verses that describe a virtuous woman...waht stands out to them? Virtue is more than just chastity
though that is part of it. And chastity
or purity is more than not being intimate or having sex…in fact as we’ll talk
about today, intimacy is an important part of the Lord’s plan for His
children…but virtue refers not just to chastity but to the overall way we live
our lives. In
personal progress book under virtue, we read “Who can find a virtuous
woman? for her price is far above rubies (Proverbs 31:10).
I
will prepare to enter the temple and remain pure and worthy.
My
thoughts and actions will be based on high moral standards.”
In the Doctrine and Covenants 121:45 we are admonished
to let virtue garnish our thoughts unceasingly. Being virtuous then means being clean
and pure in the ways we speak and think…it means dressing modestly…it means
that we don’t criticize our selves, our leaders or others, that we don’t speak
of sacred things in casual or profane ways.
Virtue encompasses a range of thoughts and actions…though today we will
focus on one aspect which is chastity.
Put up definitions of virtue and chastity on the board.
For the
Strength of Youth and True to the Faith. Have a few girls read about dating standards, a
few read about sexual purity, a few read "chastity" in True to the Faith. Then
share what they found…what are the standards?
What does
chastity mean?
Chastity means
not engaging in sexual behavior outside of marriage…avoiding sexual behavior
before marriage and having complete fidelity within marriage. I read aloud the paragraphs about what the exact standards are.
Why does
the Lord have us wait until we are 8 years old to be baptized? Why don’t we get baptized as infants? (There are probably many reasons…but at least
one is that we are spiritually prepared to make and keep the covenants
associated with baptism.) Why don’t we
enter the temple to receive our endowments at age 8 right after baptism? (Again there are probably numerous reasons
but at least one is that we aren’t yet spiritually prepared or mature enough to
keep the covenants associated with this ordinance.) Today I’d like to talk about why we need to
be spiritually prepared and why chastity is such an important topic. I’ve prayed that I might be able to teach by
the spirit. I’ve reached out to your
parents to let them know we’d be discussing this topic. I hope that if you have questions, you’ll ask
them…of your parents, of our beloved Bishop or one of the YW leaders. I have prayed that I can teach this in the
manner that Heavenly Father wants me to and in a way that will help you
recognize what a special gift intimacy is.
Before I say anything more, I want to BEAR TESTIMONY of our Heavenly
Father’s love for you. He knows
you. He loves you. He wants you to be happy and He desires to
bless you.
In a
beautiful talk given at BYU, Elder Holland spoke on this sacred subject. He gave 3 reasons that chastity is so
essential. He reminded the BYU students
that our purpose was to come here to Earth to gain a body and to be
tested. Elder Holland said,
QUOTE #1 Elder Holland said, “it is LDS doctrine that sexual transgression
is second only to murder in the Lord’s list of life’s most serious sins. By
assigning such rank to a physical appetite so conspicuously evident in all of
us, what is God trying to tell us about its place in his plan for all men and
women in mortality? I submit to you he is doing precisely that—commenting about
the very plan of life itself. Clearly God’s greatest concerns regarding
mortality are how one gets into this world and how one gets out of it. These
two most important issues in our very personal and carefully supervised
progress are the two issues that he as our Creator and Father and Guide wishes
most to reserve to himself. These are the two matters that he has repeatedly
told us he wants us never to take illegally, illicitly, unfaithfully, without
sanction.”
So here are 3 reasons why this commandment is so important:
Reason #1 D& C 88:15 we read that ““the spirit and the body are the
soul of man”. Our body is a gift from God
and it is part of our very SOUL!!
So when we toy with, abuse, misuse, touch inappropriately someone else's body, we are misusing, abusing, toying with or inappropriately touching their soul.
Reason #2 Intimacy (a more refined word for sexual relations) is ordained of God to bring a husband and wife closer, to unite them. Intimacy is a beautiful and important part of
a marriage. The world would have you
either consider it to be merely a way to seek personal gratification or would
convince you that it is disgusting and dirty and sinful…but the reality is that
it is a beautiful gift from our Heavenly Father when used appropriately. It is to help unite us as husband and wife…to
help us share every part of ourselves with another.
QUOTE #3: Elder Holland said, “Human
intimacy, that sacred, physical union ordained of God for a married couple,
deals with a symbol that demands special sanctity. Such an act of love between a
man and a woman is—or certainly was ordained to be—a symbol of total union:
union of their hearts, their hopes, their lives, their love, their family,
their future, their everything. It is a symbol that we try to suggest in the
temple with a word like seal. The Prophet Joseph Smith once said we perhaps ought to render
such a sacred bond as “welding”—that those united in matrimony and eternal
families are “welded” together, inseparable if you will, to withstand the
temptations of the adversary and the afflictions of mortality.
(See D&C 128:18.)… That commandment cannot be fulfilled, and
that symbolism of “one flesh” cannot be preserved, if we hastily and guiltily
and surreptitiously share intimacy in a darkened corner of a darkened hour,
then just as hastily and guiltily and surreptitiously retreat to our separate
worlds—not to eat or live or cry or laugh together, not to do the laundry and
the dishes and the homework, not to manage a budget and pay the bills and tend
the children and plan together for the future. No, we cannot do that until we
are truly one—united, bound, linked, tied, welded, sealed, married.”
I hope this makes sense.
Intimacy is meant to help a man and woman, a husband and wife, increase
their love, concern for one another and unity with one another. You are meant to share every part of your life together...to go on vacations, play games, laugh and have fun. But also to do dishes, cook and clean, cry together, mourn together, etc. But that only really happens if they are
united in all things…good and bad and truly “helpmeets” to one another.
A THIRD REASON…this procreative power unites us with God. Remember how I
mentioned baptism and how he has set bounds for it? And endowments? Both draw us closer to Him and help us unite
with Him. So does intimacy. Heavenly Father loves us and so He has conditions for when we participate in ordinances or activities that help us draw closer to Him.
QUOTE
#4: In the words of Elder Holland, “That
leads me to my last reason, a third effort to say why. After soul and symbol, the
word is sacrament, a term closely related to the other two.
Sexual intimacy is not only a symbolic union between a man and a woman—the
uniting of their very souls—but it is also symbolic of a union between mortals
and deity, between otherwise ordinary and fallible humans uniting for a rare
and special moment with God himself and all the powers by which he gives life
in this wide universe of ours.
In this
latter sense, human intimacy is a sacrament, a very special kind of symbol. For
our purpose here today, a sacrament could be any one of a number of gestures or
acts or ordinances that unite us with God and his limitless powers. We are
imperfect and mortal; he is perfect and immortal. But from time to
time—indeed, as often as is possible and appropriate—we find ways and go to
places and create circumstances where we can unite symbolically with him, and
in so doing gain access to his power. Those special moments of union with God
are sacramental moments—such as kneeling at a marriage altar, or blessing a
newborn baby, or partaking of the emblems of the Lord’s supper. This latter
ordinance is the one we in the Church have come to associate most traditionally
with the word sacrament, though it is technically only one of
many such moments when we formally take the hand of God and feel his divine
power.
These are
moments when we quite literally unite our will with God’s will, our spirit with
his spirit, where communion through the veil becomes very real. At such moments
we not only acknowledge his divinity, but we quite literally take something of
that divinity to ourselves. Such are the holy sacraments.”
SHARE
THIS PART IN OWN WORDS (from Elder Holland):
"Now, once
again, I know of no one who would, for example, rush into the middle of a
sacramental service, grab the linen from the tables, throw the bread the full
length of the room, tip the water trays onto the floor, and laughingly retreat
from the building to await an opportunity to do the same thing at another
worship service the next Sunday. No one within the sound of my voice would do
that during one of the truly sacred moments of our religious worship. Nor would
anyone here violate any of the other sacramental moments in our lives, those
times when we consciously claim God’s power and by invitation stand with him in
privilege and principality.
I can't imagine any of you Young Women acting in such a way...or running into a baptism and shouting and disrupting it or spray painting a temple. You recognize that these things are sacred. Yet the world often treats intimacy in such a disrespectful way. Most people don't view it as sacred.
ELDER HOLLAND SAID, “But I wish to stress with
you this morning, as my third of three reasons to be clean, that sexual union
is also, in its own profound way, a very real sacrament of the highest order, a
union not only of a man and a woman but very much the union of that man and
woman with God. Indeed, if our definition of sacrament is that act of claiming
and sharing and exercising God’s own inestimable power, then I know of
virtually no other divine privilege so routinely given to us
all—women or men, ordained or unordained, Latter-day Saint or non-Latter-day
Saint—than the miraculous and majestic power of transmitting life, the
unspeakable, unfathomable, unbroken power of procreation. There are those
special moments in your lives when the other, more formal ordinances of the
gospel—the sacraments, if you will—allow you to feel the grace and grandeur of
God’s power. …But I know of nothing so earth-shatteringly powerful and yet so
universally and unstintingly given to us as the God-given power available in
every one of us from our early teen years on to create a human body, that
wonder of all wonders, a genetically and spiritually unique being never seen
before in the history of the world and never to be duplicated again in all the
ages of eternity—a child, your child—with eyes and ears
and fingers and toes and a future of unspeakable grandeur.
Imagine
that, if you will. Veritable teenagers—and all of us for many decades
thereafter—carrying daily, hourly, minute-to-minute, virtually every waking and
sleeping moment of our lives, the power and the chemistry and the eternally
transmitted seeds of life to grant someone else her second estate, someone else
his next level of development in the divine plan of salvation. I submit to you
that no power, priesthood or otherwise, is given by God so universally to so
many with virtually no control over its use except self-control.
And I submit to you that you will never be more like God at any other
time in this life than when you are expressing that particular power. Of
all the titles he has chosen for himself, Father is the one he declares, and
Creation is his watchword—especially human creation, creation in his image. His
glory isn’t a mountain, as stunning as mountains are. It isn’t in sea or sky or
snow or sunrise, as beautiful as they all are. It isn’t in art or technology,
be that a concerto or computer. No, his glory—and his grief—is in his children.
You and I, we are his prized possessions”
I love those last few lines. You are never more like God than when you use this power of creation. And WE...you and I...are His glory and His most prized possessions. I hope you can feel that!!
When
we choose to be unchaste, we are breaking both of the two great commands, to
love the Lord God with all our heart, might mind and strength and to love our
neighbor as ourselves.
Now
I want to stress…if someone abuses you…that is not your fault and you have not
committed sin. They have. If that happens for any of you, please seek
help. But know that you are not at fault. And also know that there is repentance
available for all of us when we sin, even when we commit serious sins. You cannot sink lower than The Atonement of
Jesus Christ has power to save! It is
not possible.
I
saw the new version of Aladdin a few weeks ago.
I watched as Jafar sought for power…thinking that the power would give
him control, that ruling over others would make him happy. But it actually brought enslavement. He thought he’d have greater freedom but it
actually put him in chains. The
adversary is cunning and he’d like to enslave us. He tries to convince us to doubt, to sin, to
convince us to use these sacred powers that we have been blessed with in ways
that would lead to our enslavement. He tells us that it is okay to sin a little. And
when we sin--and we all do in different ways-- that can be how we feel…chained, weighed down, enslaved. But in Aladdin, there was a way for the genie
to become free…for Aladdin to wish him free.
For each of us, there is a way to be free...a way much better than hoping that Aladdin will wish us free…that way is through sincere
repentance and the cleansing power of the Atonement. None of us have to be enslaved by even the
poorest choices we have made. The Savior has promised us forgiveness and cleansing and healing if we repent.
There
are great blessings available from being virtuous and chaste:
Peace
of mind
Guidance
of the Holy Ghost
Self
confidence
Feeling comfortable in God’s presence.
It makes dating a more enjoyable process when you focus on building friendships. It helps you get to know the person better when you don't rush into the physical side of things.
Worthiness
to enter the temple: Sister Elaine Dalton said, "
Some lost everything but came into the valley with everything,really—temple ordinances, sacred covenants, and the promise of eternal life together as families."
(I didn't type out much on this section but I planned to expound on each one and share some experiences. It turned out that our time was nearly out and I didn't get to say as much as I wanted to about the blessings available.)
I testify that a return to virtue is possible because of the Savior’s example and the “infinite virtue of His great atoning sacrifice.”22 I testify that we will be enabled and strengthened not only to do hard things but to do all things. Now is the time for each of us to arise and unfurl a banner to the world calling for a return to virtue. May we so live that we can be instruments in preparing the earth for His Second Coming, “that when he shall appear we shall be like him, … purified even as he is pure.”
Oh how I love the young women and I hope that they will live virtuous lives. It is a blessing to understand this doctrine.
