The Gift - part 3

Daughter (go here for the beginning) quickly learned that some of her greatest challenges would come from those she called friends. Her church youth group was filled with young men and women in her age group and they all called themselves faithful Christians. As they reached the later teen years, Daughter began to see the difference between conviction and simple opinion (Ephesians 4:14).
She had four close girlfriends. They had discussed their gift from God many times. Each young woman had expressed a desire to maintain that gift in the pure form God intended in order to exchange it at the time of marriage. Daughter, however, was the only one who used the word committed, and the only one with parents who encouraged her and took an active role in her commitment. (Ephesians 6:4; Proverbs 22:6)

One day, her friend Abandoned told her about how she had started spending more time with one of the guys from youth group, Rogue.


She told Daughter how much fun they were having together and confided in some of the intimacies they were sharing. Abandoned's parents had always let her do as she wanted - there were no rules about curfew or questions about who she was out with - they rarely asked her about her day to day life. After all, they had always taken her to church and Rogue was from another church family, so they said they trusted these kids (Jeremiah 17:9).

When Daughter reminded Abandoned about their talks on purity, she was quickly admonished, "You know, Rogue said the 'churchy' people would look down on our fun. He said you can't take purity issues so seriously - not in today's world. Besides, I'm not giving him the whole gift, just some pieces." (1 Thessalonians 4:4-7)

It didn't take long for the friendship to become strained and awkward. Daughter was uncomfortable around Abandoned and Rogue because of their open and physical manner with each other. Not because she wanted to judge their choice, simply because of the immodesty in their behaviour. Rogue simply called her a prude.

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Another friend of Daughters had been even more obvious about ignoring purity issues. True enough, she had never clearly expressed much interest in the discussions over the years. Her name was Harlot. She had given away her whole gift easily at a young age and seemed to target different guys for the main purpose of taking their gifts (Proverbs 1: 18&19). It was like a challenge to her. Recently she had been spending time with a boy from town called Larceny. His reputation for taking gifts was well known, too. Harlot had simply stopped coming to church (Titus 1:16).

Daughter was always saddened to see those she cared about fall away from their stated beliefs and their faithfulness to God; as well as losing any chance of keeping their gift in its pure form. She continued to serve in her church and community. Her parents encouraged her in her faithfulness and convictions. She had two close friends left, both had also expressed dismay over the behaviours of Abandoned and Harlot, but had made questionable remarks about other young men themselves. Daughter could not help but wonder if these two were actually committed to purity...

...to be continued in part 4...