Boy meets girl.

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Girl likes boy.

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They go to bed together.

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When did the rules change?

What happened to romance, sharing ideas, talking heart-to-heart, meeting the family...

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Marriage therapy is about to overload me in my ministry as a counselor. And take this statistic however you wish, but to date, 100% of my couples in trouble started their marriage in immorality.

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Whether in their 20's or in their 50's, every single one of them were professing believers in Christ and every single one of them lived openly in sexual sin before deciding to get married. Several were pregnant, some weren't, but none of them repented of it before marrying and for many, the counseling office is the first time they've ever openly admitted it was sin.

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We are producing a nation of moral gutter rats--and reaping the consequences. This post is not a soapbox for a moralizing middle-aged Puritan. It's simply a report of a statistic I find both sad and alarming.

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Marriage is difficult enough under the best of circumstances, but when it's begun under the cloud of disrespect and guilt (whether acknowledged or not), things tend to not get much better.

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Yes, God forgives. God can restore. He's doing just that for many of my clients. But the heartache they have had to endure for so many years was unnecessary and adds a heavy burden to an already strained relationship.

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What are we teaching our next generation?

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Sleep with whomever you wish whenever you wish, just don't get pregnant. And if you do, at least have an abortion so no one knows about it.

Marry if you must, but assume divorce is down the road and prepare for it.

Morality is old-fashioned, for religious zealots, and has nothing to do with your generation.

It has nothing to offer you.

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The sobbing wife in my counseling office may beg to differ. The confused husband is seeing things quite differently, now that it's too late. Now that respect is gone, friendship never was, and the rationalizing has stopped working.

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As usual, God knew what He was talking about when he decreed purity for his children. He knows what good marriages are built upon.

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Maybe He's old-fashioned, too. But He's also very accurate.

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