Message to Girlfriends from Fred Stoeker:

Your boyfriend is a Christian young man, and that should guarantee you a couple of things in your relationship with him. As a man, he is called by God to treat you with absolute purity, like a sister (1 Timothy 5:2). As a Christian, he is called to be the spiritual leader in your relationship, the one primarily responsible for keeping you both sexually pure as a couple. In short, he's called to live like Christ. How did Christ live in relation to others?

A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory.
Matthew 12:20

I expanded upon your boyfriend's responsibility in regards to this verse in my book Every Young Man's Battle:

But remember, guys-we're called to be like Christ. That means treating her like we would like to be treated. This means that we aren't to bruise the broken reed. This means leaving the girls you date better for having known you. I (Fred) can't think of a single girl I dated that I left better than when I met her, which is a pretty sad indictment of where my head was at. And what about Steve? Do you think the abortion left his girlfriend better off? Of course not.

Yet, too often the only leadership we take is to charge across her sexual boundaries. "Girls want guys to take the lead in the relationship," said Cassie. "Yet often it's the guys who are pushing the sexual boundaries. When that has happened to me, I felt very resentful. I know that it makes girls just feel used. We neither feel validated in who we are nor in what we stand for as women. I remember the time when a guy I really liked tried some things that made me uncomfortable. I asked him to stop, but he persisted. Finally, he just wore me down and I eventually gave in. He had weakened my defenses."

Cassie's "Christian" boyfriend was neither being a man nor acting like a Christian. There is nothing manly or Christian about pushing past a girlfriend's sexual boundaries, especially when her pain or their desire for acceptance weakens their defenses. Amber said:

"Many girls are insecure, so they let the guys do what they want, even if it disagrees with them, just so they can have that relationship with him. If she stops his advances, she fears he'll break up with her, and then she'll no longer have that identity with him. I see that happen to my friends all the time."

Later, Cassie did little better when dating her newest boyfriend:

"I often feel that I care more about my purity than my current boyfriend, Kevin, does, although he's a great spiritual leader in many areas. We sometimes fast for special needs and for our future together. But this leadership doesn't show up in our physical relationship. We've decided together on boundaries, but he often pushes hard at them. When I resist, he pouts, or asks why I don't desire him physically. I hate making him feel bad and having the blame pushed back on me, so sometimes I've given in. Kevin's happy and loving after that, but I get very resentful. Once we even broke up for a number of months."

Whatever kind of leadership that is, it smells bad from here-and it certainly isn't spiritual leadership! You see, it's not the act of defining sexual boundaries that makes your boyfriend a spiritual leader. It's the act of defending them. It wasn't that Kevin was ignorant of God's ways. He knew them well enough to help Cassie define proper sexual boundaries for their relationship together. But whenever he neared them he simply kicked out the markers a bit farther so he could stray over them at will. And Cassie didn't stop him.

For Kevin, Bible studies, prayer, and fasting camouflaged his relentless raids across Cassie's sexual borders. In the confusion, she described Kevin as a great spiritual leader on one hand while pointing out that he has been a painful stumbling block to her sexual purity on the other. How weird. How common.

Contrast Cassie's statement about her relationship with Kevin with this statement that my wife Brenda made about our relationship together in our book Every Heart Restored:

I feel incredible security knowing that I'm married to a man who keeps his eyes to himself. Even after four babies and twenty-four years of aging together, I live unthreatened by any women around me. Fred loves me for me and is very satisfied with who I am and what I've become.

When my husband prays, I'm confident that nothing is hindering his connection with God. If I knew of dark hidden areas, I'd have no faith that his prayers would even rise to the ceiling, but I've seen how a pure man's prayer packs a spiritual punch.

My confidence in Fred's spiritual protection is unbounded. I never wonder if there are open cracks in our spiritual defenses where the Enemy can slip through into our lives. Christianity is not a game to him, and image means nothing. He'd rather be a Christian than seem like one.

Fred has every right to make the decisions for our family because it's God's plan, but even if it weren't, he's earned that right through his actions. He's proven in battle that his commitment to the Lord and his love for his family are the highest priorities in his life, and we simply rest in his strength.

This normal, godly pattern leaves everyone flourishing, and this wouldn't be possible if blatant sin were clogging things up. I know who he is and, in the secret places of life, I know where he will not go.

This paints a better picture of male spiritual leadership, doesn't it? Even after all these years of marriage, I'm still focused upon leaving Brenda better off for having known me, and that's how it should be. Every Christian man is called to live this way in his relationships with women.

But every Christian woman has a call, too, and there is one more thing about Brenda's relationship with me that I don't want you to miss. You see, it takes more than good male leadership to bring sexual purity to a relationship...it takes a good woman's help, as well. So as you consider Cassie's relationship with Kevin, don't stop at comparing Kevin's actions to mine. Take time to compare Cassie's actions to Brenda's.

Let's face it. While I loved that statement Brenda made about me, it did make me sound a bit like a Superman, as if I somehow accomplished all of this in our relationship on my own. I didn't. Brenda played a big hand in it, too.

Brenda wouldn't dream of leaving the whole job of sexual purity up to me. Her thoughts were once captured quite simply in this quote from Every Man's Marriage:

I don't pretend to understand Fred's sexuality. All I know is that sexual purity is not just every man's battle, but every couple's battle as well.

While it is true that Brenda is not a man and therefore she's not called to lead our relationship into purity, she is a Christian, and so her responsibility to me is very similar to mine...she, too, is called to leave me better off for having known her. That means she is not only called to help me define our sexual boundaries, but she is also called to help me to keep them.

Brenda took her role seriously from the beginning, and it was a good thing. I'd only been saved for one year when I met Brenda, which meant I still had a lot to learn as a Christian. In an effort to accelerate my Christian growth, Brenda immediately bought me the first Christian album produced by B.J. Thomas, a favorite secular pop star of mine who had evidently been saved about the same time I had. You see, Brenda knew something I didn't know...good Christian music could help transform my heart with good Christian truth very quickly. Two songs from that recording meant so much to me and our relationship that they were eventually sung at our wedding.

As our relationship grew closer, she helped further by guarding our sexual boundaries as strongly as I did, and we never had sexual intercourse until our wedding night. We kept those promises we made to each other from the beginning, and she played a big part in that.

Even a good non-Christian girlfriend will do that, as expressed in another story I told in Every Young Man's Battle:

I got a summer job on a roofing crew to make some quick, big cash, and I began dating an old friend named Melissa, entering a relationship that quickly mushroomed into a heavy love affair. When I wasn't pounding nails on someone's roof, Melissa and I spent endless hours together. Just before I got set to return to Stanford for my sophomore year, we decided to spend a secluded weekend together at Dad's property on Shield's Lake in southern Minnesota.

Beneath a bright, full moon on a crystal-clear night, we lay down to sleep with a cool breeze blowing gently over us. The setting was romantic, and I was getting more excited by the minute. I quietly reached for Melissa, and she knew exactly where I was headed. Melissa looked up at me with a deep sadness in her big brown eyes, the moonlight framing her innocent face. "You know that I'm saving myself for marriage-hopefully ours," she said. "If you push forward with this, I want you to know that I won't stop you. But I will never be able to respect you as much as I do right now, and that would make me very sad for a very long time."

Laying her virginity on the line, she had delivered the ultimate pop quiz. How would I answer? Who did I love most-her or me? My head spun. My desire and passion pounded away as I gazed into that sweet face glowing softly at me. We became silent for a long time. Finally, I smiled. Snuggling in next to her, I dozed off to sleep, passing her test with flying colors.

Melissa stood up to me and stated the boundaries clearly at the moment of truth, and though I haven't seen her in many years, to this day I respect her to no end because of her strength. She left me better off for having known her, and she wasn't even a Christian. Shouldn't a Christian girlfriend do at least as much for her boyfriend?

Defend your sexual boundaries with a passion, my friend. Even if you don't end up married, leave Him better off for having known you. Please.

And don't forget to invest in your boyfriend's spiritual life, like Brenda did in mine. Consider getting him a copy of Win This War. After all, who knows? If you do end up married, perhaps a song or two from the project will be sung at your wedding.