"I'm Not Hurting Anyone"

Can you truly say that no one will get hurt if you have sex outside of marriage?

"First of all," says Dick Purnell, "you don't really know another person's heart. It says in Jeremiah 17:9 that 'the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked.' How can you know if you have hurt another person? You don't even know your own heart. The only one who knows your heart is God.

"You are also hurting yourself because you've lost self-control; you don't really know what love is all about; and you've gotten yourself into a situation you don't know how to get out of.

"You are not only hurting yourself, but you are also hurting other people, and you are setting a pattern for others who are watching you. Many times children will look at adults and say, 'If that's the way they act, that gives me an excuse to act the same way.'"

Sex outside of marriage is harmful. Please be careful of deceiving yourself that it is not.

"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 NKJV).