Staying Morally Clean: A Resource Guide

As a YW presidency,  we decided to each tackle a difficult or controversial topic that the girls might face in their lives and come up with a short resource page on the topic.  Each of the advisers and presidency members will receive a booklet containing all of the resource pages and use it in their lesson preparation and to refer to in case they are faced with difficult questions.   All quotes are taken directly from lds.org.   The girls will not receive copies of the booklet  as we would not want to introduce them to controversial topics that they may not have thought of yet, but individual pages can be shared as we feel inspired.   Stay tuned for more topics.

Here is the first topic that we tackled:

Why Stay Morally Clean?   (see here for an FHE lesson on the same topic)

When you are sexually pure, you prepare yourself to make and keep sacred covenants in the temple. You prepare yourself to build a strong marriage and to bring children into the world as part of an eternal and loving family. You protect yourself from the spiritual and emotional damage that come from sharing sexual intimacy outside of marriage. You also protect yourself from harmful diseases. Remaining sexually pure helps you to be confident and truly happy and improves your ability to make good decisions now and in the future.

Source:  https://www.lds.org/youth/for-the-strength-of-youth/sexual-purity?lang=eng

But what if we love each other?  

Sometimes people try to convince themselves that sexual relations outside of marriage are acceptable if the participants love one another. This is not true. Breaking the law of chastity and encouraging someone else to do so is not an expression of love. People who love each other will never endanger one another's happiness and safety in exchange for temporary personal pleasure.

When people care for one another enough to keep the law of chastity, their love, trust, and commitment increase, resulting in greater happiness and unity. In contrast, relationships built on sexual immorality sour quickly. Those who engage in sexual immorality often feel fear, guilt, and shame. Bitterness, jealousy, and hatred soon replace any positive feelings that once existed in their relationship.  

Source:  https://www.lds.org/topics/chastity?lang=eng&query=staying+morally+clean

But it’s my body….

The body is an essential part of the soul. This distinctive and very important Latter-day Saint doctrine underscores why sexual sin is so serious. We declare that one who uses the God-given body of another without divine sanction abuses the very soul of that individual, abuses the central purpose and processes of life, “the very key” (Ensign, July 1972, 113) to life, as President Boyd K. Packer once called it. In exploiting the body of another—which means exploiting his or her soul—one desecrates the Atonement of Christ, which saved that soul and which makes possible the gift of eternal life. And when one mocks the Son of Righteousness, one steps into a realm of heat hotter and holier than the noonday sun. You cannot do so and not be burned.

Source:  https://www.lds.org/youth/article/personal-purity?lang=eng

Additional Reading Material:  

YW Manual #1, Lesson 32:  Personal Purity through Self Discipline

Article from lds.org:  Protect the Power to Create Life

lds.org article on Chastity

lds.org/youth article:  Personal Purity

Talk by Pres. Boyd K. Packer:  Why Stay Morally Clean?  

For the Strength of Youth:  Sexual Purity