Redeemable

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" 2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV

I wasn't a virgin when I got saved. When I heard purity talks afterward about how important it is to wait and that our purity is a gift, I was left thinking that I was worth less than someone who had waited.
      It took a while, but God finally showed me that that isn't true. He has reaffirmed me many times with the verse above and this one: "'Come now, let us reason together,' says the Lord. 'Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.'" (Isaiah 1:18 NIV). God can get rid of any stain or blemish in your life. That doesn't mean that He erases the fact that it happened, but He can make it so that when people see you, they see someone who is brand new. It doesn't happen immediately, though. It often takes a while of them looking at us because they are so used to seeing us dirty that rather than seeing who we are, they see who we've been.
      Maybe no one has told you that you can be or are pure. Don't fall into the lies that you are not good, or that you are lost and dirty. You are redeemable. I can never say that enough. I know what it feels like to think that you can never be special. That you won't have the same value as someone "better." Someone who waited.
      I've thought, "I'm not the one godly men wait for. The one they pursue or set their sights on. I'm not the one a man of God would want to be with. I'll never be the first choice. I'm the one they'll go to when the other options have run dry."
      What a liar the enemy is. If the man or woman has God's heart, then that person will have God's vision. They won't see the past; they will see who He has made you to be. They will see the new person that is living after God.
      You are redeemable. You can have a new purity. Don't keep living in your past image with your past shame. Let Him wipe you clean and use who you once were for His glory. You can be a testimony for others believing the same lie, but first you have to stop believing them yourself.
      You are worth just as much as someone who waited. You are precious. Your new purity is a gift that you can still dedicate to God and save for your future spouse, whether that be a person God has for you or (/and) Jesus Himself.