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    Before the Altar
    Before the Altar
    Before the Altar
    Ebook152 pages2 hours

    Before the Altar

    By Luis García

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    About this ebook

    Biblical purity is not merely a line we are called not to cross; it is a lifestyle we are called to live. It is more than physical restraint. True purity involves our minds, motives, and actions.

    Culture says to follow your heart. Scripture says follow God. It is time we start living like Jesus followers in every area of our lives, sold out for His glory. Romance and love are no exception.

    Books written on the topics of romance, singleness, and purity are looking back, but I am looking forward. I have never dated or kissed, and Im eighteen. Most people my age have already dated, kissed, and lost their virginity; some have even experienced pregnancy. For young adults, divorce and cohabitation rates are beyond acceptable. Abortion numbers have amassed to over nine holocausts. And I am compelled to stand in the gap. If no one makes a stand, we can only expect even worse consequences to come.

    Its time to stop playing in the muck of this world and slapping a Christian label on it. We need to be resolute in surrendering our lives to the authorship of God. And that surrender starts nowbefore the altar.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWestBow Press
    Release dateFeb 7, 2013
    ISBN9781449784089
    Before the Altar
    Author

    Luis García

    Luis Garcia is a youth wishing to change the world for Jesus and is devoted to the preaching of God’s Word. A high school forensics national champion in apologetics and impromptu, Luis dedicates his God-given abilities to the ministry. He is a pastoral intern at his church in Southern California and is seeking a Bachelors of Science in Religion with Liberty University.

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      Book preview

      Before the Altar - Luis García

      Copyright © 2013 Luis Garcia.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      WestBow Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

      WestBow Press

      A Division of Thomas Nelson

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.westbowpress.com

      1-(866) 928-1240

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

      Quotations marked ESV are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

      Quotations marked HCSB are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible, copyright 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission.

      Note: Some names have been changed in this book to protect the privacy of the individuals.

      ISBN: 978-1-4497-8407-2 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4497-8406-5 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4497-8408-9 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2013902072

      WestBow Press rev. date: 2/8/2013

      Table of Contents

      Introduction: The Footprints Left Behind

      Chapter 1 Cheated

      Chapter 2 Your Love Letter

      Chapter 3 The Heart of the Issue(One Plan)

      Chapter 4 My Beloved (One Person)

      Chapter 5 For the Altar (One Place)

      Chapter 6 How Deep Is Your Love? (One Source)

      Chapter 7 While I Am Waiting…

      Chapter 8 If I Never Marry in This Life

      Chapter 9 The Pages Before Me

      Conclusion Sealing the Envelope

      Notes

      Acknowledgments

      To Alexis and Grant, my younger siblings in our Savior, Jesus Christ. May the Lord grow me to be an example for you to blaze the trail ahead, so that you might live out the love of our God with no gray and no regrets.

      I love you both.

      Introduction:

      The Footprints Left Behind

      I remember so clearly walking on the beach with my dad. That day my heart was pouring out what was storming in my mind. He heard my tussles, and he knew the situation. There was a girl I had given a lot of attention to, and we were texting almost every week, sometimes even daily. It was not an official boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. In fact, I told myself we were simply friends, but my mind was hesitantly realizing I was treating it as something more. My heart tossed and turned in tangled emotions.

      Although technically my relationship with this young lady was a friendship, it grew to unhealthy bounds. I am ashamed to admit it, even if it seems so simple. It was nothing like what is commonly seen in our world, public schools, universities, media, and even homes. But in this simple experience, I felt God calling me out. It was like God was gently holding my face, making me look Him in the eyes to tell Him whether or not I was treating this relationship according to His Word. In trepidation, I could not help but answer no. Nothing physical had happened, but mentally and spiritually something wasn’t right.

      The Lord was opening my eyes to see that this small compromise in my heart could lead to a very harmful situation in the big picture of marriage. The largest of calamities brew from the smallest of compromises. A little lie, a little gray, can go a long way.

      From this experience, God has been changing my heart. I want to be done with following myself, my emotions, my wants, my anything. This book is about the journey God has called me to live. I want to stand for God’s truth, not for what I think feels best.

      God has a calling for single men and women that bears great significance to our marriages. It influences how we are to approach the altar, understand biblical purity, and develop a biblical mind-set toward love and romance.

      I see God’s call to live out His Word in unconditional abandon. This is a message I want to live out for God’s glory and kingdom. Will I fail and stumble? Yes. I already have. We all have. But should that stop us from seeking the Lord with all of our being? God forbid.

      Understand that I wish to stand far apart from any holier-than-thou, legalistic, or your best life now notion. Rather it is simply the truth of Scripture I seek, though I know the road will be hard. Some have even commented that the path of truth is razor thin; it is easy to fall either to the one side of being ignorant to the truth or to the other side of constructing a legalistic order. Neither brings God glory. And that is the goal: to bring God glory.

      Love, romance, purity, marriage, and singleness are not exempt from this goal. God’s Word has called us to live a love life that is filled with, centered on, and authored by Him.

      Is Jesus only a Savior? Is He not Lord also? Jesus is more than a Redeemer. He is the King we have surrendered to in the relationship He has covenanted with us. If He is our Lord, we are to be under His authority in every area of life. The God-Man, Jesus is more than a spiritual coach or just one of many good teachers. He is the Son of God, worthy of all adoration. I want to live for the praise of my Savior and Lord, letting the world fade into the background of His marvelous light. And I am calling you to join me.

      My desire is to encourage you to take what is presented in this book and let the Lord lead you. Go before Him in prayer and seek His Word. His Word is the light to our paths, and He is to be our focus. Your life is your choice, but God’s Word is clear. His Word will defend itself. He is the one I wish to follow in my journey in all areas of life, especially to the altar. And He is beckoning you to do the same.

      On that day at the beach, my dad encouraged and prayed for me, and I resolved to move forward. I can’t help but remember how the soft sand felt on my feet, the crashing waves, and the beautiful day, as I walked and ran along the ocean’s edge. Although our time concluded and my family departed from that beach, what stayed were the footprints I left behind, scattered all over the shore.

      We all leave footprints on the shores of our lives. The question is, what will be our journey? I pray the footprints I both follow and leave are those of my beloved Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ.

      What will be your journey?

      Chapter 1

      Cheated

      Love is a mess today.

      Couples are falling apart in emptiness and fruitlessness, and scars are being left behind. Love has become a lofty principle, one hardly in line with reality. And when this idea of love shatters and the relationship is unfulfilling, people move on. There are more fish in the sea, right? Well, that mentality has put relationships today in a perilous dilemma.

      When the wedding bouquets wilt, the merry receptions are long over, and the honeymoon beauty fades into the past, almost half of all marriages end in divorce.¹ This sad denouement is most likely to transpire among people who are married in their early twenties, in the prime of their lives. Think about that. These young men and women are uniting with what they believe is the love of their life, but their marriages have the highest probability of failing. This is love?

      Even in the teen years, love conceives its earliest signs of failure. The National Campaign to prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found, With more than 400,000 teen births annually, the [United States] has the highest rate of teen pregnancy and childbearing in the industrialized world.² Pull the curtain back even more on reality and ask how many of these mothers had the fathers stay by their sides. How many fathers supported them and boldly wished to face their mistakes? The men who answer that call are few.

      Depressingly, if you look at the big picture of American pregnancies since the day Roe v. Wade was enacted to 2008, 54,559,615 abortions were performed.³ Study that number again, 54,559,615. How many generations of children have been annihilated due to abortion? In a matter of thirty-five years, the United States committed what Hitler did to the Jews over nine times. Remember, this is only America. We are not even considering the worldwide numbers.

      And then we have sexually transmitted diseases. Should we even look into how many people have contracted and died from such contaminations?

      Relationships are so problematic, especially experimental sexual relationships. The physical, emotional, and spiritual repercussions are grim. We have lost sight of what is true, sacred, and beautiful, yet we still hear our world trying to convince us that modern-day romantic entanglements are all good and fine. It is portrayed in the media, whispered in the hallways of schools and universities, chatted in social media, and promoted in the present and preceding generation that this worldly romance is what we should pursue. It is said to be satisfying and fulfilling. But is this real love?

      Well-known apologist and author C.S. Lewis writes in response to this idea.

      In the first place our warped natures, the devils who tempt us, and all the contemporary propaganda for lust, combine to make us feel that the desires we are resisting are so natural, so healthy, and so reasonable that it is almost perverse and abnormal to resist them. Poster after poster, film after film, novel after novel, associate the idea of sexual indulgence with the ideas of health, normality, youth, frankness and good humour. Now this association is a lie.⁴

      A lie indeed. If this is love, then all we can expect is what we see in our culture. And if we don’t make a change, then what we see in culture will soon be seen in us.

      Inherited Lies

      Cheated. We are being cheated. We have been lied to, and most of us do not realize it. When we honestly look at the picture of relationships today, do we not feel like we’ve been ripped off?

      Apart from human depravity, our problem is the lost answer to what is love? How we define love will determine how we approach romance and marriage. Therefore, the definition of love is the first issue we need to consider. If we have so many problems in romance, maybe it’s because we have romance all wrong.

      A popular online dictionary gives as its first definition of love—out of numerous meanings—a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.⁵ That seems like a fair explanation, and it matches what most people would describe as love.

      However, if you observe this and the majority of explanations of the concept of love, the prevailing answer wholly involves a sensation or experience, which is only partly true. Feelings are inevitable with love, but is love only a feeling of ecstasy?

      Thus, we begin to see the explanation of our societal problems in failing relationships and aching hearts. Love is commonly based solely on feelings. But feelings are fleeting, and, most of all, feelings tend to be self-focused. If love is exclusively a feeling, it’s no wonder people are like a ship being tossed around in a storm of confusion and heartbreak. All humans go through the ups and downs of emotions in every part of life. And so it is with relationships. We seem to have a difficult time finding our soul mate because no person seems to be the right one for me.

      Culture has groomed us to evaluate potential spouses by how the relationship feels. Honestly, we have abased people to the level of a shoe! We want to make sure it is the right fit, the right style, the right color, the right feel, etc. Our

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