Contact: Don Beehler, 615-566-0776, don@abcdcommunications.com

NASHVILLE, Feb. 1, 2011 /Standard Newswire/ -- February, particularly the week of Valentine's Day, traditionally is a time when a large number of True Love Waits abstinence-until-marriage commitments are made by students. Opportunities occur in families, at churches and other places around the world.

"At a time when people send cards and gifts to those they love, Valentine's Day is a very appropriate occasion for young people to honor God and their future spouse by pledging to remain sexually abstinent until marriage, and to remain faithful throughout their marriage," said Jimmy Hester, co-founder of True Love Waits.

"One of the greatest privileges we have as a ministry is to receive reports of young people who, on their wedding day, exchange their True Love Waits commitment cards and say to each other, 'I waited for you.'"

True Love Waits, a division of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention, is a movement that encourages moral purity by adhering to biblical principles. Since its first national celebration in 1994, millions of youth have signed commitment cards at LifeWay events, pledging sexual purity until marriage.

Over the years, True Love Waits' leadership has provided themes and direction for churches and families to help students live their lives in purity.

To assist parents with their role as spiritual leaders for their children in the area of biblical purity, True Love Waits recently created True Love Waits 3.0: A Path of Purity, which builds off the ministry's abstinence message to include a variety of markers students experience from childhood to young adulthood.

Resources supporting this new emphasis guide parents and church leaders to take advantage of these markers and treat them as teachable moments on purity.

For more information, visit www.truelovewaits.com. To access the True Love Waits blog, go to blogs.lifeway.com/blog/true_love_waits.
 
LifeWay, an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention, is one of the world's largest providers of Christian products and services, including Bibles, church literature, books, music, audio and video recordings, church supplies, and Internet services through LifeWay.com. Established in Nashville, Tenn., in 1891, the company owns and operates 163 LifeWay Christian Stores throughout the United States, as well as two of the largest Christian conference centers in the country.