Evangéliumi Hírnök, 1995 (87. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1995-03-01 / 3. szám
8. oldal 1995. március TRUE LOVE WAITS The "Safe Sex" message is not the answer to the challenges facing teenagers. Some professionals have unwittingly communicated to America's youth: "We have given up on you. We believe that most of you will be promiscuous. So, we hope to keep some of you healthy by teaching you how to protect yourselves." Hundreds of thousands of teenagers are quietly proving the "professionals" wrong. They have chosen God's plan for sexual expression and they are living consistent with His guidelines. Thousands of others are ready to make the same commitment ifproperly challenged. Even youth who have alreadyfailed can choose to begin living sexually pure by the power of the Holy Spirit. True Love Waits originated as a year-long national campaign promoting sexual abstinence. The purpose of the campaign has been: * To challenge teenagers to express a commitment to the spiritual, emotional, and physical value of remaining sexually pure until marriage. * To challenge families to address within the home biblical standards of sexual behavior. * To communicate to the world a preferred alternative to “safe sex” messages. True Love Waits has grown to become more than a campaign. It has become a youth movement with teenagers taking the lead in expressing their belief in abstinence. The True Love Waits campaign was bom as the Baptist Sunday School Board completed the development of the Christian Sex education series. A group of professionals came to realize that the wrong people were teaching young people about sexual issues. Television, school, and peers were sending deviant and incomplete messages to a whole generation of children and teenagers. What were parents and church leaders doing to counter these messages? Not much of anything... True Love Waits is launched The campaign was introduced in April, 1993. Between the summers of 1993 and 1994, over 20 denominations and youth organizations joined the campaign. In addition, well-known Christian authors James Dobson and Josh McDowell and contemporary Christian recording artist Michael W. Smith, DC Talk, Petra, Geoff Moore and the Distance, and others supported the campaign. Word began arriving that youth in other countries were involved in True Love Waits. For Example: Seventy-two commitment cards were received from a group of Budapest teenagers. The youth executive committee of the Baptist World Alliance voted to take True Love Waits to its membership, which includes 165 Baptist groups representing more than 38 million Baptists in 150 countries. Covenant cards will be collected from youth around the world and be displayed August 1-6, 1995, dur-LOVE PATIENT 1 CORINTHIANS 13 ing the Baptist World Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina. ... Where does True Love Waits go from here? God is not through with True Love Waits. Plans have been developed that will encourage churches to provide a True Love Waits emphasis each February. Like the campaign, the emphasis The Covenant Card: TRUE * LOVE * WAITS Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate, and my future children to be sexually abstinent from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship. Signed and Dated:..................... will remain simple and focused. It will encourage teenagers who have not made a commitment to do so as well as provide opportunities to affirm those who made the commitment during the campaign. As one teenager said, "it’s easy to make the commitment, but difficult to live it." ...we may be witnessing only the beginning of a strong youth movement. Encourage your teenagers to commit to True Love Waits. Affirm and support them as they live the commitment to sexual purity. (Living With Teenagers,Oct, 1994.)
