Welcome!

Hello and welcome to the very first post of He Holds the Key! Maddy and I are so excited to be ministering in this new way!
I figured I'd better start with explaining our goal for this blog: to glorify God and encourage girls to a higher level of purity. Maddy and I desire to save everything for our future husbands from hand holding to the final step.

Why?

The Bible says in the Song of Solomon:"I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine" (Song of Sol. 2:16a). It doesn't say "my beloved is mine once I meet him so while I wait for him to come along I'll give my heart to a couple of other guys." Our bodies belong to one earthly man and everything we have to give belongs to him as well. Would you want to go into marriage knowing your husband had given his heart to other girls before he met you, or would you rather know that you are the first girl he allowed himself to love? Don't you think he'd like to know the same thing about you?

The second reason is that things like kissing, hugging, hand holding etc. are things that awaken love. Maybe it's just a "me thing", but I know that if I was going to hold a guys hand, or allow him to hold mine, I'd have romantic thoughts coursing through my mind! In the Song of Solomon, we are charged three times not to "awaken love until it so desires."
Now, you may be thinking,"Hey, I desire to awaken love when I kiss a boy or something." But the verse doesn't say to awaken love when you desire to,but when love desires to. And since "God is love" (1 John 4:16) we should awaken love in His timing, not ours.
But please understand that we don't look down on you if you don't have the same standards as us. You're not going to Hell because you kissed a boy or something. As Maddy puts it: "Although we believe that hand holding should be saved until marriage, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is a law in the Bible. It doesn't say, 'Thou shalt not hold hands.' But we want to shower our husbands with gifts- even something as small as hand holding. Our love life is like a flower. Each thing like hand holding, kissing and more represents a petal on a flower. Each time you give something away, a petal is taken away from the flower. To sum it up, the idea is that we'd love to give a really full flower to our future husbands someday."

On this blog, we'll discuss different aspects of this kind of purity, how to maintain it and simply encourage each other because (trust me) this is hard for all of us! We'll introduce you to books on this subject that are helpful and maybe even get testimonies from those who have waited and are experiencing the benefits of their choice and those who didn't and are reaping the consequences. The purpose of the chatbox on the side is for a more personalized encouragement (for us as well as for you!). We hope you'll take a moment and share your struggles, victories and anything else you want us and those who read this blog to know!

Thanks for joining this exciting journey! May God keep us pure!
In Christ, Elaina