Whether one travels there by virginity, which is the most direct route, or by the blessed state of earthly marriage is not God’s main concern
Waiting & Dating
Lilyan Andrews
Category: TEMPTATION & LUST & VIRGINITY
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It’s enticing to want to connect to another person in that way, and to want to feel the physical high and experience the rush of dopamine (the pleasure chemical). But don’t be fooled; as we have seen in this chapter, that instant physical pleasure will leave burn marks in its tracks. In fact, it’s better not even to taste it in the first place. Because once you do, you might be tempted to come back to it again and again. It’s harder to crave something you’ve never tasted.
Waiting & Dating
Lilyan Andrews -
David the Psalmist attests to this by saying, “The proud have me in great derision, / Yet I do not turn aside from Your law” (Ps. 119:51).
Satan will try to leverage that mockery to convince you to give into temptation, so you must have immovable convictions of what God has called you to and stand firm without lowering your standards.
Waiting & Dating
Lilyan Andrews -
“When you’re struggling with lust, prayer and fasting will not help you—you need to run away.” When you are struggling with lust, you need to flee. If I see a scene that causes me to stumble, I need to close my eyes right away. Flee.”
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Therefore, since most embrace virginity while still young and unformed in understanding, this before anything else should be their employment, to search out a fitting guide and master of this way, lest, in their present ignorance, they should wander from the direct route, and strike out new paths of their own in trackless wilds.
—St. Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity, Chap. 23 -
Why, we have known ascetics of this class who have persisted in their fasting even unto death, as if with such sacrifices God were well pleased Hebrews 13:16; and, again, others who rush off into the extreme diametrically opposite, practising celibacy in name only and leading a life in no way different from the secular; for they not only indulge in the pleasures of the table, but are openly known to have a woman in their houses ; and they call such a friendship a brotherly affection, as if, forsooth, they could veil their own thought, which is inclined to evil, under a sacred term. It is owing to them that this pure and holy profession of virginity is blasphemed among the Gentiles.
—St. Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity, Chap. 23
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when human nature has been based by passionate inclinations, it stretches out its offer of purity like a hand to raise it up again and make it look above.
—St. Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity, Chap. 2
SO GOOD QUOTES 