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It's hard to wait. Of course, many people don't care to try. But even for those who want to, not having sex until marriage is hard. Many fail. Why is sex so attractive? Why do we think about it so much? Why is sex so hard to avoid? There's no mystery to this. If you want to blame someone, blame God. He made you that way.

Imagine a house under construction. While the walls are still skeletal, with the breeze blowing through freshly cut wood, electricians come to install an elaborate network of wires. Later, when the walls are solid with Sheetrock, plaster and paint, these wires lie hidden.

One day, when the house is ready to live in, the electric company hooks the wires into a source of power. You can't see any change. The wires stay hidden. But suddenly, you can do things you couldn't before. You can plug in and blast your stereo, do homework after dark, watch your favorite TV show.

You can also electrocute yourself.

Your sexuality is something like that. Biologically, your potential was wired in at birth. You have the proper organs. You have a male or female mix of hormones. That's good. God said so.

At puberty, your wiring gets hooked into power. Suddenly sexuality becomes an active potential. Males and females are charged particles, ready to bond. That's good too. Because God made you, and that's the way you are.

When the power turns on, you begin to feel that the wonder of the opposite sex is more than something to wonder about. If you're a boy, you want a girl for your own. If you're a girl, you want a boy. It's a strong and thrilling (sometimes frightening) urge.

Biologically you want to touch: to hold hands, to kiss, ultimately to make love. Psychologically you want to touch, too: to explore a personality so distinct from your own, to love and be loved, to expose your thoughts and your fears, to be naked and unashamed, to never be alone again.

There's also fear: Will I ever love? Will I ever be loved? Am I wired right? Will I find the person I dream of?

God made you to long for love and all that goes with it. Let's go even so far as to say he made you so it's hard to wait. Call it a challenge, flung down by the Creator God. "I'll give you this amazing potential. But know in advance: It's not easy to master. It will test you to the limits."

If it's a challenge, it's also a compliment. God challenges us because he believes we can live up to the challenge.

If you stood up in class and proposed following God's Word as it relates to sex, people would think you were trying to outlaw happiness. You'd have to work hard to explain that God is not against sex. In fact, he considers it something good. It was, after all, his idea. God could have made us to reproduce the way plants do, with floating spores and pollen. But he preferred human life to spring from the loving embrace of intercourse. So it only makes sense that the all-knowing God who invented sex should know how it can best be celebrated. God wouldn't sacrifice his own Son to redeem us, and then turn around to arbitrarily spoil our fun.

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