Cultivating Purity (Pt. 2): Breaking it Down

After my last post you’re were either offended or intrigued by the thought of changing the way we think about purity and sin. Let me explain what I mean.

The Apostle Paul tries passionately to convince new believers that they are not made right with God by keeping a perfect record (Rom. 3:21-23, Phil 3:9, Gal 2:16). He states that we are made right with God by simply accepting Christ’s sacrifice for us as the adequate payment for our wrongdoings (past, present, and future). Be clear that neither he, nor I, are saying that you should just do whatever twirls your carousel. On the contrary, we still do the things that the law instructs, but not because we are cut off and defiled before God if we don’t.

As believers in Christ, that’s not to be our driving motivation for living a pure life. We live a pure life because it’s part of the character of Jesus that we want to develop in our lives.

So here’s how it works: Jesus makes us right with God by his sacrifice. That makes us pure in the “spiritual” sense. Then he gives us his Holy Spirit to help us develop a habit of purity in our daily lives. We then make daily decisions that determine the development of our character.

As long as we are focused on “not sinning”, we’ll keep circling back to the things we don’t want to do. I learned, from my dad, the saying ,“where the head goes, the body will follow”. Experts tell us that the best way to break a habit is not to focus on breaking it, but to replace it with a different one. So if you’ve got a bad habit like pornography, sexual promiscuity, fantasizing, etc., then the only way to break that habit is to develop a habit of purity.

For a few years, I’ve been making notes of the things that help to cultivate purity and faithfulness in my life. Here are a few things from my list:

• Write down one thing a day about my wife that I love
• Brag about her to other people, especially women
• Shut down all visual media at 11 pm every night at the latest
• Go to bed with my wife
• Be honest with her about everything
• Develop close friendships that I can be truthful about my life with
• Keep myself from being in private with someone of the opposite sex
• Invite my wife into every relationship I have with a girl
• Talk candidly about sex with my wife
• Study Song of Solomon for a godly perspective on sex and relationships
• Limit my TV time
• Learn to “bounce” my attention from temptation instead of meditating on how bad it is and that I shouldn’t look at it

There are plenty more things you can do, but the point is, purity isn’t something you protect from being destroyed. It’s something you cultivate and care for. Make it your quest to cultivate purity.

I’d love to hear some of your habits that help to cultivate purity in your life.

Cultivating Purity

Don’t think of a guy in a hotdog costume playing a Casio keyboard. What did you do? You thought about it, didn’t you? That tactic never works, does it? I’ve played golf, I’ve played soccer (football for the rest of the world), I’ve played racquetball, and the same scenario unfolds. I tell myself, “just don’t hit the tree/goalie/my friend in the eye”. What happens? I never fail to do exactly the thing that I’m trying so hard to avoid. Why is it, then, that we use this flawed approach when it comes to sin, especially sexual sin?

Have you ever tried not to think of a naked woman/man? Have you ever told yourself, “don’t stare at that girl’s cleavage!”? What happens? How bout when you inevitably do make a poor choice and look at pornography or get frisky with your girlfriend or boyfriend? You feel terrible, right? You beat yourself up for it, beg for forgiveness, determine never to do that again, right? I don’t know about you, but as I continue to meditate on what I don’t want to do again, I end up finding myself tempted by that exact same thing and do it again, only to feel worse.

Why do we use this tactic when it comes to sexual sin? I think it’s because of how we think of purity. We treat it as though it’s a criminal record. We think that we start out with a clean slate, then we make a foolish choice and that goes on our record. We get so upset about messing up our perfect record and obsess about that choice and how it took away some of our purity, our perfection. So we confess and ask forgiveness and then we’re perfect again. All we have to do is keep sin from robbing us of our purity again. But what if purity isn’t something that can be stolen? What if it’s not a perfect record? What if it’s a character trait, a habit, like a fruitbearing plant that is to be cultivated?

I’ll go deeper into this in the next post. But until then, I’d love to hear your responses to that question.

Porn & Mrs. P

Last week I told the story of my own introduction to pornography and made the case for a strategy to deal with it in your own life. I left off with the question, “So what do we do about lust, porn, and illicit relationships? How do we successfully guide our sexual desires and develop control of lust?” In this post we’re gonna take a look at an often overlooked passage in scripture that can clue us in to a key bit of wisdom in answering those questions.

That bit of wisdom lies in the story of Joseph and Potiphars’s wife. After Joseph’s brother’s sell him into slavery, he finds himself working in the house of a man named Potiphar. Despite this upgrade from being dragged around the desert by Ishmaelite slave traders, Joseph soon discovered his new job was fraught with just as much peril as his previous condition. His main threat came in the shapely form of Mrs. Potiphar. Mrs. P was a first class some-kinda-freaky nymphomaniac.

Everyday she would proposition Joseph. So how did Joseph handle this constant temptation? Most of us will remember that part where Joseph literally sprinted out of the house when she tried to jump his bones. Let’s go back a little bit though to his daily strategy. Read 39:10 of Genesis, “The woman talked to Joseph every day, but he refused to have sexual relations with her or even spend time with her.”

It’s that last line I want to key in on. Most of us focus on that bold red line of sexual sin. When we cross that line, we know we’ve done wrong. We’re often oblivious, however, to the steps we take towards that line. Joseph wasn’t. He realized that even being physically near this woman was bad for his moral health. So what did he do?

He didn’t chat with her. He didn’t hang around her. He may not have had any intention of having sex with Mrs. P., but he didn’t let that give him an excuse to spend time with her. He knew, ultimately, she was bad news, and he didn’t trust her or himself to just keep things “innocent”.

What does that mean for us today? It means:

• We don’t entertain even the slightest urges to stare a little bit at the girl or guy on the cover of the magazine.
• We don’t let our curiosity about an actress lead us to google her or him.
• We don’t create the opportunity for sex when we are with a person that we are attracted to.
• We change the channel and switch our focus when we know that temptation is flirting with us.

By not talking with Mrs. P, Joseph was not allowing temptation to whisper sweet little “nothings” in his ear. In doing so, he stopped the problem before it ever began. How bout you? What instances can you point out in our day to day life in which your own Mrs. P is whispering sweet little nothings in your ear?

In today’s world, Mrs. Potiphars are calling out to you from everywhere, so this is a challenge. That’s why my next post is going to be about practical steps you can take to cultivate purity in your own life. Because we both know that when you flirt with temptation, you’re flirting with disaster.

I’d like to hear some of your strategies. Feel free to post them here or email them to me so I can include them in my next post.
Category: LeadYou

Pornography 101

I was introduced to porn at nine years old. I still remember the day. My best friend, Jake, and I were pretending to be Billy and Jimmy Lee from Double Dragon. We ran around the house kicking and punching stuff and looking for more guns (boys never have enough guns) so we could save our sensei. That’s when Jake led me up to his driver’s room and said, “I wanna show you something cool.” He walked up to the closet doors, grabbed the handles and threw them open with the flourish of a practiced magician. And viola! Playboy bunny after Playboy bunny magically appeared posted on the inside of the doors. Expecting a display of armaments to make Rambo jealous, I was disappointed. On top of that, it was gross.

Nevertheless, that first exposure sparked my fascination with women and sex. A fascination that would lead me down paths good and bad over the next decade and a half. On one hand, it instilled in me an awe with the mystery and beauty of a woman and sexuality. On the other, it embroiled me in a battle with pornography and lust that can never be won on the grand scale.

Most every guy has a story like this. Statistics put the average age of first exposure to porn at 11 years old. It’s a 97 billion dollar industry with 28,258 people viewing porn sites every second. 70% of Christians admit to battling pornography daily. Reuters in Ontario, Canada reported that 87% of university students are having sexual encounters over the internet or telephone. As you can clearly see, this is a problem that a majority of the population of this planet deals with. So what do we do about lust, porn, and illicit relationships? How do we successfully guide our sexual desires and develop control of lust?

I don’t want to rush through this topic. It’s important enough to take our time through it. Let’s make this a discussion. Share your thoughts on the matter; things you do that are helpful in cultivating purity. I’ll be putting up the continuation of this post on Wednesday. I hope these questions stay with you until then and that you take the time to pray and meditate on them. Looking forward to hearing what you come back with!