Adolescent Hormones & Dating

1. Adolescent Hormones & Dating

2. Your BODY… • You must understand that your body was created by God for His Glory… • Understanding the machine that you occupy will help you live a life for His purpose… • In the age of puberty, from anywhere between 9 and 12 years of age, God introduces several hormones in your body to help shape you, to help form you, and to prepare you for what’s to come. • From the ages of 12 till about 24 years, your brain and your body continue to develop in ways to prepare you for your future. • When you understand how to deal with these changes, you will come to enjoy and use the energy that GOD has given to you in a right manner and you WILL succeed everywhere you go through His name!

3. Hormones… • Hitting Puberty, the body undergoes a process of several changes, including 3 different hormonal components… • First Component: hormones that activate the gonads => ovaries in females, testes in males; estrogen and testosterone start to be produced. This process is called gonadarche. • Second Component: testosterone-like hormones (called adrenal hormones) begin to rise by 6-9 years of age, and steadily increase for more than a decade…peaking in the early 20’s. This contributes to adolescent changes such as skin (acne) as well as pubic/underarm hair. This process is called adrenarche. • Third Component: The growth hormone (GH)=> released in pulses. Contributes to the physical growth of adolescents. It is released mainly…when you are sleeping. • Others: other hormones such as cortisol (stress hormone) and oxytocin also play a role in puberty changes

4. Your Hormones… • Without teenage hormones, normal physical and sexual development would NOT be possible. • At the beginning of puberty, your brain releases a hormone called gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), which triggers the pituitary gland to secrete follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) & luteinizing hormone (LH) into your bloodstream. • In girls, FSH and LH instruct the ovaries to begin producing estrogen, one of the primary female sex hormones, and eggs. • In boys, the same hormones tell the testes to begin producing testosterone, the male sex hormone, and sperm. • At the same time, you’ll notice other significant changes…

5. Changes… • Both boys and girls will grow taller and put on weight and muscle mass. • Girls will begin to have menstrual periods and will develop fuller breasts and wider hips as the teenage girl hormones do their work. • Boys will develop larger sex organs and will be able to ejaculate (release sperm). • Both boys and girls will develop body hair on the legs, under the arms and over the sex organs. • Both boys and girls will produce stronger body odors and may develop acne or other skin problems.

6. Mood & Your Hormones • Teen hormones affect teenagers’ moods, emotions, and impulses as well as their body. • The mood swings that teens experience are caused by fluctuations in estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone—the sex hormones. • These same teen hormones will also affect the way they think about dating and sex. • It’s hard to feel that your body and mind are being controlled by the forces of nature instead of being directed by your own decisions. Many adolescents feel that the changes they’re experiencing due to teenage hormones are weird, freakish, or unnatural. • In fact, almost everything that teens go through during adolescence is a normal part of their development. • However, it is important to remember that you CANNOT be under your body’s control…why? St. Paul says in Galatians 5:17: “For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.”

7. Identity & Your Hormones • Discovering who you are is one of the biggest challenges of adolescence. • The main thing to remember is you are formed in God’s image. Your identity, your true identity is through Christ Jesus. St. Paul tells us several times in his letters, first in Galatians 2:20: I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20: Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.

8. Wrong Identity… In 1 Corinthians 3:10, St. Paul tells us: “According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” It is important to understand what St. Paul is telling us. Our foundation IS JESUS CHRIST. This IS your identity that you build yourself upon. Any other foundation you build will lead to negative circumstances such as: • A dramatic increase in death and disability; • Suicide/homicide; • Aggression/violence; • Use of alcohol/illegal drugs; • Emotional disorders; • Health consequences of risky sexual behavior.

9. Puberty Changes & Brain Development • The natural inclination toward novelty, arousal, and excitement that seems to emerge in association with puberty creates a period of increased vulnerability in many young lives. • Teenagers are often willing to navigate great risks to achieve the high-intensity feelings that can be so appealing to them. • Puberty increases: • the appetite for a specific type of emotional experience; • desire for surges of arousal; • craving for exhilaration; • an appetite for a feeling that tends to move behavior in the direction of seeking more arousal, more stimulation— a natural desire to go faster and farther. Satan will use your natural way of growth to lead you down a path to destroy and distract yourself.

10. Puberty Changes & Brain Development • Fortunately, these emotional and motivational changes at puberty do not lead solely to bad outcomes. Sex, drugs, loud music, and reckless behavior are not the only ways to activate high-intensity feelings; effortful struggles to achieve challenging and heartfelt goals can also create them. • The igniting passions can be aligned in healthy ways, in the service of a higher good. Using the Energy of Hormones either to succeed or to fall… • Feelings of passion have primal roots in the same deep brain systems as biologic drives and primitive elements of emotion. • Yet, passion intertwines with the highest levels of human endeavor: Passion for ideas and ideals. Passion for beauty. Passion to create music or art. Passion to succeed in a sport, business, or politics. Passion toward that one person, activity, object, or pursuit that inspires transcendent feelings.

11. Hormonal Arousals and Infatuation • A young guy scanning the crowd at a party notices a girl who he finds strikingly attractive. • Immediately smitten, he approaches her and launches a shower of compliments. • She tries to rebuff his flattery but finds something about the young man quite appealing. • Romantic feelings kindle quickly. As he departs, with a kiss followed by a second kiss, emotions are flaring. • On the basis of one brief meeting, a conversation of less than a hundred words, and two kisses, the emotional lives of two adolescents have been turned upside down. • Each cannot stop thinking about the other and is obsessed with a desire to meet again. • They manage a clandestine late-night rendezvous. • Passionate feelings now accelerate at a feverish pitch. • Their motivation to be together quickly rises above all competing priorities.

12. They are willing to… • spurn friends and family; • disregard dangers; • ignore pain; • begin to act as if being together is more important than life itself— …even though they just met four days before and barely know each other…. The Lie of Infatuation Understand this is natural hormonal changes, but important to remember to NOT act on it…it is only a temporary feeling

13. The Deception • Your body, in the flesh, will end in death; in Romans 8:13, St. Paul tells us, “For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” • Living and acting upon those hormones, the desires your body is going through, will ultimately lead to wrongful acts….to death. • Let us look at an example… • When you plant a seed for an apple tree, you will water it, garden it, soil it, care for it, and by time, the tree will bear fruit. Now, ask yourself this question: will you eat the apple when it’s halfway developed? Will you eat the apple when it has just begun to grow? No. You will eat the apple when it has been fully developed to enjoy all of it as a whole. • You are at an age where you are still beginning to develop….your hormones, your changes, are all just the beginning to making you whole…to making you complete in God’s image!

14. Final Comments… • As teenagers, you are in an age of exploration; exploring your body, the changes in your body, the hormones going through your body… • YES it is difficult, but think of Puberty as the commencement to your Marathon to the Kingdom of Heaven. • Your sexuality, your urges, and your desires; use them to get closer to God and not to be away from God.

15. Final Comments… • When you feel any urges, any desires…train yourself to STOP, and say a prayer, and only through the power of the Holy Spirit that you will be able to overcome these urges. • Giving in to your urges…will be like a drug….you will want it more and more…until it destroys your life. • You are at an age where God is developing you, training you, molding you, forming you perfectly in His Image. Do NOT ruin His work.

16. Our Personal Story • I struggle with pornography. • Something that has entered my life for a while. I pray and pray about it. Years pass, and the struggle is still there. I fight and battle with God, “Why God are you letting this sin be in my life?” I continue in my sin, I continue in my struggle. I fight and battle with God again and again, “Why God are you doing this to me? Why do you let this happen?” I continue on and on, struggling with the sin, and battling with God. Struggle with the sin, and battle with God. • I can go on to pray and struggle with this 999 times; and rest assured, the 1000th time will be no different. God will remain silent.

17. Our Personal Story • Why? Why is God silent to my prayer and to my struggles? Well, let’s look at what the Bible – the Word of God – tells us to do: In 1st Corinthians 6:18, St. Paul tells us specifically to “FLEE sexual immorality. Every sin that man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.” The word flee in this verse is an active verb. It is an action. We must actively flee any sexual immorality. Do I encourage my sexual sin by keeping my computer in my room in closed doors? Do I encourage my sexual sin by indulging in it and letting my flesh overcome me? Do I even try to escape the sin? St. Paul is very clear, that we must FLEE any sexual immorality. It is an action. I can pray on and on to God, but if I’m not active with my prayer, God will stand by and wait…

18. Sayings of the fathers on purity • “Chastity is a name common to all virtues.” • St. John Climacus • “Chastity makes us as familiar with God and as like Him as any man may be.” • St. John Climacus • “Dirty, shameful thoughts in the heart are usually caused by the deceiver of the heart, the demon of fornication, and only restraint and indeed a disregard for them will prove an antidote.” • St. John Climacus • This demon is especially on the lookout for our weak moments and will viciously assail us when we are physically unable to pray against it. • St. John Climacus

19. Sayings of the fathers on purity • “Living a chase Christian life is sometimes more difficult than suffering a martyr’s death.” • St. Mark the Ascetic • “What happens is this: In a moment, without a word being spoken or an image presented, a sudden passionate urge lays hold of the victim. • It comes faster than anything in the physical world and is swifter and more indiscernible than any spirit. It makes its appearance in the soul by a simple memory, which is unconnected with anything, independent of time and inexpressible, and in some cases comes without the person himself realizing the fact. • Someone who has been able to detect such a subtlety, someone with the gift of mourning, may be able to explain how with the eye alone, with a mere glance, by the touch of a hand, through a song overheard, the soul is led to commit a definite sin of unchastity without any notion or evil thought.” • St. John Climacus

20. Sayings of the fathers on purity & chastity Some say that it is from thoughts of fornication that passions invade the body. • But some affirm on the contrary that it is from the feeling of the body that evil thoughts are born. • The former say that if the mind had not gone before, the body would not have followed after. • And the latter adduce the malice of bodily passion in justification of their view, saying that often bad thoughts manage to enter into the heart as the result of a pleasant sight, or the touch of a hand, or the smell of perfume, or hearing sweet voices. • If anyone can do so in the Lord, let him explain this; for knowledge of this sort is extremely necessary and profitable for those living the active life scientifically. • But for those practicing virtue in simplicity of heart, this is not of the least importance. For not all have knowledge; but neither have all the blessed simplicity which is the breastplate against the wiles of evil spirits. • St. John Climacus

21. Conclusion Be patient, and endure the struggles, for it is better for you to endure the hormonal struggles and hold steadfast… … than to give in to your hormonal desires and fall into sin and suffer the consequences for the rest of your life.