CNN.com posed a story 6:08 p.m. EST, December 19, 2006 entitled, “Reality check: 95 percent of Americans had premarital sex.” Following are some excerpts from the story:

NEW YORK (AP) — More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.

“This is reality-check research,” said the study’s author, Lawrence Finer. “Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades.”

Finer is a research director at the Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues and which disagrees with government-funded programs that rely primarily on abstinence-only teachings. The study, released Tuesday, appears in the new issue of Public Health Reports.

The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people — about 33,000 of them women — in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to Finer’s analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.

Finer said the likelihood of Americans having sex before marriage has remained stable since the 1950s, though people now wait longer to get married and thus are sexually active as singles for extensive periods.

“The data clearly show that the majority of older teens and adults have already had sex before marriage, which calls into question the federal government’s funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for 12- to 29-year-olds,” Finer said.

Under the Bush administration, such programs have received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.

“It would be more effective,” Finer said, “to provide young people with the skills and information they need to be safe once they become sexually active — which nearly everyone eventually will.”

The truth is that even the largest amount of “abstinence-until-marriage” programs will only positively impact a small percent of people. Why? Because even though it makes sense medically to abstain until marriage, it’s not what the fleshly carnal nature wants.

Now if we expand this out to encompass any desire of the flesh, not just sexual ones, then we have an even greater problem. How are we to combat the desires of the flesh when external programs fall short? The answer is with a change of the heart (a rebirth of the spirit); this is the only way to overcome the flesh.

1 John 5:3-5
3 This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, 4 for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

Reading this passage from the back to the front, we see that the necessary rebirth of our spirits comes by believing in Jesus as the Son of God. So what does that “belief” look like? It is a life lived in faith (a life fully depending on and trusting in Jesus), and according to verse 4, this life of faith is what allows us to have victory over the world, and all of its fleshly desires.

But let’s take it one step further. What did Jesus have to say about living a life of faith that directly combats the fleshly desires of this world?

Luke 11:33-36 AMP
33 No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or crypt or under a bushel measure, but on a lampstand, that those who are coming in may see the light.
34 Your eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye (your conscience [your faculty of knowing]) is sound [single and whole] and fulfilling its office, your whole body is full of light; but when it is not sound [not in unity and scattered] and is not fulfilling its office, your body is full of darkness.
35 Be careful, therefore, that the light that is in you is not darkness.
36 If then your entire body is illuminated, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright [with light], as when a lamp with its bright rays gives you light.

The first point I take from this passage is that we need to protect the light that is in us!

Luke 11:34 explains how our eyes are like a lamp that allows us to see where we are going. Without our eyes we would be lost in the dark. When a light is scattered or reflected in many directions it looses its power and intensity. It is no longer single and whole. Likewise when our eyes are used to view many things, objects, people, and events at one time they will inevitably miss many details. Another way to look at it is when you intently read a book you will get much more out of it than when you simply scan through portions of it.

Luke 11:35 applies the “eyes = lamp” illustration to our spiritual lives. We must make sure that we are not putting anything in front of us that will cause the light in us to grow dark. Every time we put something else (especially “dark things”) in front of our eyes we are potentially scattering the whole, unified Light of God in our lives. That’s when our conscience starts becoming seared and looses its ability to “know” the difference between righteousness and sin. That’s when we loose our light and blend in with the rest of the world.

Luke 11:36 is the result of you protecting God’s light in you… “your entire body is illuminated”… “it will be wholly bright with light.” When we keep “dark” things out of our lives and allow God’s perfect Light to be unified in our lives, that’s when He illuminates our entire being!!! That’s when we truly resemble our Maker and become His presence everywhere we go.

Ephesians 5:8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.

John 1:5b God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.

The second point that I take from Luke 11:33-36 is that we need to be the light that God has called us to be!

Luke 11:33 tell us that we are to be godly examples that the world sees. There is no pure and holy light in the world. But God, in His infinite wisdom, has chosen to put his Spirit, his Love, his Light in us (those who believer that Jesus is the Son of God.) So we must allow God to put us in places where we can shine…spotlighting the path that leads to Jesus.

What are the characteristics of light:

• It shines – being an immediate source of light.
• It is a source of heat – heat being a primary means of therapy and healing.
• It clearly defines its surroundings – making clear what was confused.
• It’s intentional – thrusting its beams of light into surrounding darkness.
• It stands out – being a beacon, a point of reference and an anchor in a sea of darkness.

How many of these characteristics do we have in our lives?

Let’s allow God’s Light to shine in and through us as we walk a life of faith. Let’s be His Light in this dark world pointing the way for those who are lost in the darkness. When we allow God to do these things in us it won’t matter how many federally funded programs are available, because people will no longer put their trust in the strength of this world but in the God who overcomes this world.