Past – Guiding GRACE

Pure & Simple – *more than just sex

Purity – a topic that is always a hot discussion, yet no one ever really wants to discuss it anymore in public. This week, our youth pastor at church will be speaking on it and I’m really looking forward to his take on the topic.

Personally, I came out of the 1990’s “purity movement” that took most evangelical churches by storm. And now, 20 years later, I look back on it all with a much different perspective than my young, teenage self did at the time.

In the 1990’s, purity was taught (sometimes on a level of brainwashing) as simply all about sex – no sex outside of marriage – period. Churches everywhere were holding “purity ring” ceremonies on every awkward level you can imagine. And don’t even get me started on how this was mainly shoved onto the girls only – the guys seemed to be surprisingly absent from this abstinence message. And they were singling everyone out who didn’t live up to the “pure” standards they set. Because of this, most people tossed out the purity message as not being relevant to them.

So I really started thinking – what was so wrong with the purity message of the 90’s?

I’ve focused a lot these past few months about what His Word says about living a pure life and guarding yourself and I kept coming back to II Timothy and Proverbs.

Sure we can all quote scriptures about sexual immorality and fornication (who ever thought I’d use a word like that in one of my posts?!), but what does living a pure life really boil down to?

II Timothy 2:21-22 NLT

If you keep yourself pure, you will be a special utensil for honorable use. Your life will be clean, and you will be ready for the Master to use you for every good work. Run from anything that stimulates youthful lusts. Instead, pursue righteous living, faithfulness, love, and peace. Enjoy the companionship of those who call on the Lord with pure hearts.‭

When you set your life aside for God, when you put down your own desires, He will use you in a great and magnificent way! When you put aside your own desires as a sacrifice to Him, everything else will come naturally. But you must do these with a pure heart and the right intentions.

Proverbs 4:23 NLT

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.

Last time I checked, Proverbs 4:23 didn’t say “guard your V card”, as some would like you to believe. It says “guard your heart”.

Guard your heart from those who only want to mess with it. Guard your heart from what will hurt it – from what it might not yet be prepared for. Guard your heart from the emotional games people like to play. Guard your heart as a precious and fragile gift to one day give to someone. Guard your heart against anything impure so that you can live consecrated and set apart for His good…for His great plan for our lives.

As you begin to live a life pure and set apart for His good, you’ll find that living purely in other areas will come naturally.

And that pure life … it can start today, right now, no matter what your past holds. No matter the choices you’ve made. No matter the consequences you may be living with now. When you give it all over to the Lord, you start fresh and anew, washed clean as snow, with everything of the past cast into the sea, forgotten, never to be brought up again by God.

Start living your life set apart for Him. Let your thoughts and speech be pure (even I am working on this). Let your life be an outward example of the greater one who lives on the inside of you.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that sexual purity isn’t important – I’m simply saying it’s only one aspect of the pure life we should all be leading.

Purity is about more than just sex! Purity is also about living a life that is pure, no matter your past. This is what should have been taught back then. And it’s what the purity message should be from here on out.

So remember, It doesn’t matter what you’ve done in your past – determine today to live your life pure as a gift, not only to your future spouse, but as consecrated and set apart for the one who gave His all for us!

You Are Enough

It’s amazing how at the age of 33, I still allow the voices from my childhood to influence my life today.

When you think back over your past, your history, there are always moments in time that stand out to you – good and bad. You’re history made you who you are today, but it doesn’t have to dictate your future. Silencing the voices of inadequacy in your head are possible, but you have to give in to God first, knowing He made you perfect, just the way you are.

I can remember the day as if it was yesterday. An awkward, and completely average (not overweight) little girl was standing in her friend’s bedroom playing dress up, only to be scolded by the friend’s mother. “Don’t wear that! Take it off now!” You’ll stretch it out!” At 8 years of age, I found myself holding back tears while I was told I wasn’t ‘skinny’ enough to play dress up. I saw myself as ‘different’ and ‘fat’ from that day on.

Fast forward to age 16. Try outs for the youth group band. All my life I had been told I had a gift for singing. My grandmother even called it an anointing. “Your vocal range is amazing! But we just like her better since you haven’t been trained on harmonies.” The consolation from the pianist didn’t help – “You’re a much better singer than her, but it’s a popularity thing; I’m sorry.” From that day on I didn’t see my voice as a gift from God, or anointed; I saw it as “not good enough”.

I’m 19 years old, standing in the parking lot of “B’s” apartment complex, getting ready for him to move to California. He kisses me tenderly and then holds my face in his hands and says to me: “You’re so pretty – but you’d be beautiful if you just lost these round cherub cheeks.” After that moment, I no longer saw myself as pretty or perfect. I looked in the mirror and only saw my flaws – my round cheeks, scars, crooked ears, etc. I saw myself as not pretty enough, not beautiful enough, not perfect enough.

For far too many years, I’ve let those voices from my past take up residence in my present – at many times even tainting my future. These voices in my head, moments in time, words that were said – I allowed them to shape me into who I am today: the girl who battles with her weight, who is self-conscious to sing where others can hear her, who feels unbeautiful, and who feels completely inadequate most of the time to complete what God has put in her heart for G.R.A.C.E.

But something clicked this week. Maybe it was when I realized how stupid it was to worry about my voice. Or perhaps it was when I was reminded, as long as I am in the will of God, then I am the right girl, in the right place, at the right time, doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing.

But the real freedom from these voices came when I sought God for His answer to the voices from my past.

Anytime we accept the idea that we are not enough, we negate all that Christ laid down for us to be whole, perfect, and blameless in the eyes of God. We aren’t just saying “I’m not enough”, we are saying “Jesus, you aren’t enough”. That revelation right there silenced the voices of my past. I never want to diminish or devalue all that God has done for me because He loves me and made me perfect just the way I am.

Psalm 139: 13-16 NLT
You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous – how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment laid out before a single day had passed.

I heard God say to me – “You are enough for the job you need to do. You are enough for the desires I have put in your heart. You are enough for the man I have for you. YOU ARE ENOUGH!”

Words can hurt, and because we are human, they won’t easily be forgotten – but with the help of God, and knowing you are perfect in Him, you can silence those doubts when they try to take up residence in your thoughts and actions.

So when those voices rise up in your head to say: you aren’t pretty enough, skinny enough, smart enough, or whatever inadequacy you’re facing – remember YOU are enough because God on the inside of you is all you will ever need to be complete and perfect in Him! He doesn’t create subpar works of art – He creates priceless masterpieces.

A Samsonite Past

Shortly after I graduated with my bachelor’s degree, I began planning a trip to Europe with a friend of mine. I never had any of the typical high school or college experiences, so I had these ideas of grandeur to make good on one cliche – backpacking through Europe: a 20something girl, traveling through a half-dozen European countries, hopping trains, and making memories. Dad quickly put the kibosh on that one when he explained that I’d never be able to pack all I wanted or needed into a backpack and traveling the ancient, cobblestone streets, with a rolling suitcase behind me, just wouldn’t have the same appeal.

So in October of 2007, complete with a great traveling companion and more bags than any one person would ever need, two single girls set out on the trip of a lifetime. I remember dad telling me, as he was trying to fit all of my suitcases into the trunk on our way to the airport, how I would never be able to handle all of my own bags and that I was taking way too much stuff with me. Of course my independent, I-Can-Do-Anything-I-Want, self said I’d have no problem finding a guy on the airplane or at the baggage claim to help. And I didn’t. Chivalry isn’t dead; you just have to know where to look for it. I had all the assistance I needed to put my bags in the overhead bins or to pull them off of the baggage carousel. But what I hadn’t planned on was a cranky, middle-aged, taxi driver in Madrid, Spain.

Armed with my traveling expertise and what little broken Spanish I still knew, I negotiated a flat fee taxi fare before we ever put a bag in the trunk. After our 45 minute ride to our hotel had turned into an 1.5hr tour of every back road and alleyway there was to downtown Madrid (unknown to us or our taxi driver, the main streets had been closed due to a bicycle race) I felt really good about negotiating that fare up front that now would have been double had we been paying off of the meter. Good that was until he abruptly pulled over on a side street, dumped all of our bags on to the curb, insisted we get out of the taxi, and pointed in a general direction saying in broken English “Your hotel! Your hotel!”. The moment he drove off, leaving us stranded and dumbfounded, I turned to my friend and plainly said, “that’s NOT our hotel”. suitcases

After 7+ blocks, walking the busy Gran Via (uphill), lugging behind me two full-size suitcases, two carry on bags, and a personal bag, I could do nothing more than stop and begin laughing hysterically thinking “if dad could see me now he’d be saying ‘I told you so'”. Those words haunted me the rest of the trip, included as I was flying back and missed our connecting flight in Chicago and I found myself running barefoot (no time to put my shoes back on after security) through the terminal, trying futilely to catch another connecting flight, only to arrive at the gate, bags in hand, as the connecting flight was pulling away. I had never hated baggage so much in my life as I did at that exact moment.

These memories are what have come to mind each day this week as I woke up every morning with a song on my heart, Suitcases by Dara Maclean.

How can you move when they’re weighing you down? What can you do when you’re tied to the ground…You carry your burdens heavy like gravity. Just let them go now, there’s freedom in release. You can’t run when you’re holding suitcases. It’s a new day, throw away your mistakes and open up your heart, lay down your guard, you don’t have to be afraid.

Have you ever tried running with a bunch of suitcases? As you can see above, I literally have, and it isn’t easy; it’s downright exhausting. Now think of those suitcases as your past and give them a name:

Shame
Fear
Abuse
Hurt
Bitterness
Anger
Blame
Failure
Worthlessness
Betrayal
Offense
Unmet Expectations
Broken Hearts

Can you imagine running, or even just walking, through life carrying all of that baggage around? People do it every day. Now think of your relationships – every one of those bags that you hold on to gets carried in to that relationship. Add to that, the baggage your partner brings, and before you know it you’ll be so weighed down by the past, you won’t be progressing forward any more.

You can probably guess what I’m going to say next – my one reoccurring theme: this isn’t God’s best for you! Carrying around your hurts, your brokenness, your baggage isn’t what God wants for you. It’s just like the new series my church has started, Found in You. In Him, in Christ, we have been redeemed, we have been washed clean of our past, and we have been made righteous in Him.

2 Corinthians 5:21
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

Ephesians 1:7
In Him, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.

When we were redeemed and made righteous in Him, our past was wiped clean. Every bag we once held on to was thrown away. God keeps no account of our past we have been forgiven of. It’s only us, and our human nature, that continues to bring it back into the present. His word very plainly tells us that over and over again:

Psalm 55:22
Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous be shaken.

1 Peter 5:7
Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you.

Favim.com-12254 Micah 7:19
Once again You will have compassion on us. You will trample our sins under Your feet and throw them into the depths of the ocean!

Those cares and sins are the bags we hold on to. The baggage of our past. God has a plan for every one of us (Jeremiah 29:11). When we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, the plan (or flight) we had for ourselves got replaced (rerouted) with the plan (flight) God has for us. But the more baggage you hold on to, the more you’ll get held back, and the more likely you are to miss the next flight and have to be rerouted to another one.

God’s mercy on us will always bring us back to our final destination in Him when we repent and seek Him, but it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to be the person standing at the gate, holding all of your bags, as you watch your plane pull away and wait for the next one. No, God’s standing at the ticket counter saying “Give ME all of your bags. You don’t have to worry. You don’t have to care. I’ll take your cares and lose them over the Atlantic ocean and make sure you have everything you need when you arrive at your destination and I’ll exceed any expectation you might have.” Trust me, it’ll be one flight where you won’t mind having your bags lost.

So don’t be someone who holds on to your past, to all of those bags. And don’t allow that baggage to define who you are. There should be only one thing in life that defines us – Christ. I don’t want my past to define me. I want who I am in Christ to define me and my future. The only piece of baggage I want to take into my future – into a relationship – into a marriage one day – is the suitcase labeled “Redeemed and Righteous in Him”. Let go of your Samsonite past, throw your suitcases into the ocean of forgetfulness, and look ahead to the future God has for you! He’s got a first class seat waiting for you, but checked bags aren’t allowed, so pack light.

Philippians 3:13
…BUT one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.