If you’ve ever had an imaginary boyfriend, a romantic fantasy with a celebrity or a mental vacation from your husband, you have struggled in your thought-life. When it comes to inner purity, our thought-lives could be compared to a playground. One moment we climb the ladder toward victory and the next we’re nudged over the edge and can’t stop the downward spiral until we’ve fallen back where we started. The more confident we feel on the swing, the higher and higher we want to escape from keeping our feet on the ground.  The faster we spin the merry-go-round, the more distorted reality becomes.

While the struggle with lust takes a different form for women, it is far from being a male-only issue.  In the book, Sex is Not The Problem (Lust Is), Joshua Harris explains that “when a woman sees a seductive ad featuring a man, she might be tempted to fantasize about him, but odds are that this temptation will be rooted in a fantasy about a relationship with him, with physical pleasure being a subset of her craving for passionate affection and emotional intimacy.” (86) The same way that visual pornography is a distortion of God’s good design for male sexuality, fantasizing is a distortion of God’s good design for female sexuality.

Sexual desire itself is God-given and good. The difference between walking in purity and being dragged by your unfulfilled longings is not whether you have these desires, but what you do with them. “It’s not lust to have a strong desire for sex. A sexual thought that pops into your mind isn’t necessarily lust, but it can quickly become lust if it’s entertained and dwelled on,” (Harris). To lust is to stir up and dwell on a desire that cannot be righteously fulfilled. As John Piper defines it, “Lust is a sexual desire that dishonors its object and disregards God.

1 Peter 2:11 tells us to “abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.” Jesus said that when we have lust, we commit adultery in our hearts. (Matt. 5:28) And Paul describes those who live in the passion of lust as those who don’t know God (1 Thess. 4:5). The secret sin of lust has dire spiritual consequences. Harris rightly observes that there are few discouragements to a Christian’s walk with God like failing in the fight for purity. Like a futile attempt at satisfying hunger with cheap candy, you’re left with a rotting emptiness that deadens your appetite for holiness.

Romans 6:11-13 says, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.” When we choose to dwell on a lustful thought, we take what God created for good and present it to sin. We spiritually commandeer what God made for His glory and use it as a tool for unrighteousness.  Romans 6 goes on to ask a sobering question: “But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.” What can lust ever bring you but discontent, shame and a cyclical desire for more of what leaves you feeling empty? That’s not fulfillment. That’s enslavement.  But if you have been crucified with Christ, you are no longer a slave to sin but a slave of your merciful, soul-satisfying God, whose will for you is the wholeness of His sanctification (Rom. 6:21-22, 1 Thess. 4:4).  God intended for you to find complete fulfillment, joy and acceptance in His love.

At the core of the issue of habitual lust is probably a deeper issue of the heart. May I lovingly suggest to you that, for women, the problem with our thoughts is often a problem with our God?  Now we all struggle to submit our desires under the authority of Christ. But if retreating to a fantasy world is where you go when you’re tired, fed up and frustrated or feeling alone and unloved, what you are saying to your Creator – whether or not you consciously think this –is that He has somehow disappointed you. Your life was not ordered as you would have preferred it. You know He could have brought fulfillment in this area. But since He hasn’t you attempt to fulfill it your own way because you believe you’re entitled to more than He’s given.  You’re not only unsatisfied, you’re passively angry with your Creator. If your thought-life is consistently your battlefields, harnessing sexual desire may only be treating a symptom of the cause. The battle for our minds is as old as the Garden of Eden, where we, like Eve, believe that God is holding something back from us (Gen. 3:5). For true victory, and authentic obedience, we must repent of being angry with our Lord, acknowledge His authority over every part of our lives and rest in the knowledge that He is good to us (Psalm 119:68) and that He is for us (Psalm 56:9).

Along with that, there are some habits we can cultivate in our daily lives that help us walk in obedience to God and victory in our thought-lives. These suggestions are from a list by John Piper in an article entitled, “Strategies for Fighting Sexual Sin.”

• Believe that God is for you. (Psalm 84:11)
• Recognize that God’s laws are intended to protect something precious not deny something pleasant. (1 Thess. 4:3)
• Store up good things to think on. (Phil. 4:8)
• Meditate on the truth that Christ suffered agony for your purity. Fight image with image. (Titus 2:14, 1 Cor. 5:15)
• Realize that lust disables and weakens our capacity for higher spiritual joys with God. (1 Peter 2:11, Mark 4:19)

To simply stop the sin is an incomplete solution – we have to replace and fill our minds with a Greater Thought, a Better Meditation. We must turn from one source of contemplating, to completing the Person, the work and the character of Christ.  When we focus on who Jesus is and truly savor our Savior, the lure of lust will be starved out. Then, we have to preach to ourselves: “How can you stay here when you are dead to sin and alive to Christ?” (Rom. 6:2, 11)  “What will this temptation ever bring me but more shame?” (Rom. 6:21)  “I was set free to be free and by God’s Spirit will not be enslaved again,” (Gal. 5:1).

Other practical ways we can avoid lust is to be aware of those things that are triggers. For some women, specific times of the day are more of a temptation than others. Meditating on Scripture as you fall asleep will set your mind on what is pure and true. For others, certain music or chic-flicks frequently cause them to stumble.  If it’s constantly pulling you down, try a 30-day fast from the radio and movies. It sounds extreme but if you eliminate the distractions for a season you’re more likely to be in tune with the Spirit on what media can later be re-introduced without sending you on a downward spiral. And for many women it’s the romance novels. Maybe it’s time to put the Fabio-fable down and see what affect it has on your walk with God. Lastly, 2 Tim. 2:22 says that along with fleeing lust, we are to “pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.” Are the people in your life a help or hindrance to purity? Are you surrounded by people that influence you to desire (physically or emotionally) things that God, in His sovereignty, has not given or do you have friends that stir you to love and good works (Heb. 10:24)? Pursue righteousness along with those who call on the Lord with a pure heart.

You’re not alone in the struggle for inner purity.  Your High Priest sympathizes with your weaknesses and just like you, was tempted in every way, but was without sin. This same Priest was the payment for every failure, every thought. Your Advocate is interceding on your behalf right now (1 John 2:1, Rom. 8:34) and He “is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy,” (Jude 24).

Therefore, sisters in Christ, because of God’s mercy “present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.” (Romans 12:1) May the Lord Jesus reign over the playground of our minds.

© Katie McCoy
www.unlockingfemininity.com

1. Read the tenth point of contrast between a Wild and a Wise Thing (Pages 135-151)
2. Download and complete the Chapter Questions for Personal Reflection
3. Post your comments on the Blog

• Which quote from the book do you think best explains why God created sex?
• Why do you think that wrongful sexual conduct is so offensive to the Lord?
• How does an unmarried woman tell the story? How does a married women tell it?
• Has this chapter caused you to think differently about sex? How do you think it will affect your sexual conduct?

© Mary A. Kassian

by Dannah Gresh

A few weeks ago, a colleague in the Christian publishing and speaking world suddenly needed an audience with me and my team…and fast. You see, over the weekend his eight-year-old daughter had a sleepover with a nine-year-old friend. When his fourteen-year-old got on the Internet after they’d used it, she found herself seeing images no girl (or woman, for that matter) should ever see. His heart was broken by the fact that both of his little girls had been forced to look at images that rip the innocence right out of girlhood.

It should not surprise you that this happened. It happens in most houses everyday. The fourth most-searched word on the Internet for kids ages 7 and under in 2009 was “porn.” For all kids up to age 18, sex was No. 4, porn No. 5. (According to data collected by OnlineFamily.Norton.com.) This supports some research I saw a few years ago out of Britain, stating that the average age of the first inception of pornography has dropped from around twelve or thirteen to age seven or eight. Are you sure your kids haven’t seen any?

Proverbs 22:6 says you and I are to “train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” I believe that command includes training them the way they should not go. And, that means providing roadblocks to one of today’s most insidious vices: pornography. Here are a few things to do in your own home:

• Place computers in public rooms. Avoid bedrooms or dens where doors can be closed.
• Install Internet filters or accountability software. In our home, we use both SafeEyes and Covenant Eyes. Both have web addresses by their names and can be easily explored.
• Join any social mediums—such as Facebook, MySpace or Twitter—where your children belong and know their passwords. They should know that you are able to help monitor their friends and incoming images.
• Ask your children outright if they have sent or received “sext” messages. About fifteen percent or more of teens have received one, and are just waiting for you to help them talk about it.
• Collect cell phones at night to re-charge them. And to let your kids re-charge without them!

Of course, these measures must be just one part of an open dialogue about sexual purity. You can’t just hide your kids from the world, but you can train them to safe guard themselves from harmful material within it.

There’s an old Sunday School song that warned children to be careful about what they looked at: “Oh be careful little eyes what you see. Oh be careful little eyes what you see… There’s a Father up above who is looking down in love, Oh be careful little eyes what you see.”

It’s a point well taken. These days, little eyes–and big eyes too–need to be extra careful about what they see.

© Dannah Gresh

Melissa Click, an assistant professor of communication who surveyed 4,000 Twilight fans, aged 11 to 70, at a fan convention in Dallas last summer, noted, “With teens, we actually found that they appreciated the messages of abstinence.” Click and her co-author’s research primarily address the reasons behind the teenage vampire craze. They discovered that many teen girls are attracted to the idea of love that goes beyond the physical. Click’s colleague, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey believes the series is a “backlash to the ‘hooking-up’ culture.”

Click and Aubrey plan to publish their findings next spring in a collaborative book, “Bitten by Twilight: Youth culture, media and the vampire franchise.” The media environment is saturated with teens in sexual relationships,” says Click, “[Twilight] does provide something different for girls. I’ve had girls say to me: I’m going to wait for my Edward.’ And they think that’s really cool.”

Take 18-year-old Twilight fan France-Renee Miron, for example. “Most boys now around our age, all they want is to get you in bed. They don’t care about the romance part,” said Miron, “In the book and in the film, (Edward) doesn’t want to have sex. [His love] is really different.”Miron’s friend, Valierie Lefebvre, chipped in that the book shows that relationships can develop and grow without unmarried couples being sexually active.

Click observed that many girls interviewed felt relieved that Bella and Edward had to control their sexual impulses. “They liked that it was the man putting brakes on sexual activity. For them it probably highlighted the development of the relationship – the romantic relationship – between the two, instead of the sexual relationship.”

Click and Aubrey’s findings match the conclusion of Mike Farrell, a partner at Toronto youth research firm Youthography. In a 2008 Canada-wide study, Youthography surveyed around 500 teen girls ages 14 to 18 about 50 different “values” from current events to sex. They’ve been tracking these values for the past 9 years. According to Youthography, only a quarter of young teenage girls are interested in sex, while more than half indicated that they were more interested in marriage and having children.

“There are some fundamental things that haven’t changed that much. And one of those, especially with girls, is the focus on a search for meaningful love that is hopeful, passionate, real,” says Farrell, “Despite an increasingly sexualized youth culture, the desire for romance among teenage girls has remained.”

I don’t recommend the Twilight movie. I’m not a fan of the messages it contains. But I find it interesting that pop culture is starting to take note that relationships built on illicit free sex are unfulfilling, and that sex ought to be the consummation rather than the forerunner of commitment.

(Reference:”Lack of sex attracts teens to Twilight” study by Laura Stone, Canwest News Service, Ottawa. Published in the Edmonton Journal, November 19, 2009)

© Mary A. Kassian

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I have to hold myself back every time a white-haired grandma leans in to her pig-tailed granddaughter and teasingly asks her, “So, do you have a boyfriend?” This, usually said with a chuckle and a batting of the eyes, is generally meant to be just silly conversation, but I know too much to consider it to be cute. It is dangerous.  Being in a dating relationship for six months or longer is a significant risk factor for early teen sexual activity. Can you see why it might not be “cute” for our 8-12 year olds to be boy crazy or to have multiple boyfriends while they are still in the fourth grade? If she develops the pattern of “needing” a guy when she is eight or nine, she’s going to be in many six-month relationships in her early teen years. That’s not wise. Let’s help her stay off the boy crazy train.

I have two sixteen-year-old girls who have not only stayed off of it, but have managed to pull a few friends off. How do you navigate through boy craziness? There are three critical things you must do to prepare your princess to be successful in her quest for purity. First, you’ll need to have the big sex talk. Don’t think for a minute that it’s too early. Experts agree that sexual value formation begins when a child is between the ages of 8-10. A healthy, age-appropriate conversation during those years is critical. Second, you need to begin to establish your family philosophy on dating and begin to explain it to your child in stages. This will begin with the first stage of teaching her to related to boys as friends, not boyfriends in fourth grade! Finally, mom, it’s time to start dreaming of her future. If you take the time now to establish a dream of purity and a white wedding dress in her heart, it will know what to aim for and will be less likely to settle for anything less.

The book of Proverbs describes a virtuous woman. It says that she does her husband good “all the days of her life.” I think that includes when she’s seven!