Pure [week 1] - Purity is way bigger…
This week we are starting a new series called PURE. Its kind of timely for today, seeing as how it is Valentine’s Day and all, maybe you’re feeling like romance is in the air… maybe not. Whether love and romance sounds disgusting to you or whether it is your biggest desire to be in a relationship with a certain someone, we hope the next 4 weeks is a time for us to be real with you about what God—the inventor of love, romance and our sexuality—has to say about the thoughts and challenges we face on this topic of sexual purity.
It may be a surprise to you that the Bible doesn’t talk about dating relationships at all, but it does have a lot to say about the idea of living a life that is pure in our relationships with the opposite sex, and how we are to make decisions regarding the gift that God gave to each of us which is our sexuality. You might be thinking “What this is Church … are we really going to be talking about that word!?!” We want there to be no mistake about it, God invented sex, it was His idea! He created it to be something that is pure, beautiful and fun for one woman and one man to experience with each other for life. (aka Marriage) Everything that God creates is good, which means that we should not be ashamed to talk about it. Sex is not dirty, it is not shameful, it is not sinful. Most often the way we see sex in the world around us is a cheapened dysfunctional version of it, instead of what God created it to be. Maybe you’ve been led to think that sex is no big deal, that its just part of life, maybe your friends talk about it at school or have even experimented with it. The world around us give a pretty small view of sex, and how special God made it to be, and how big of a deal it is to God. So for today we will be talking about how Purity is way bigger than we think, it includes all of who we are, not just our physical bodies, but also our heart, our mind and our soul.
In the story that Matthew wrote about the life of Jesus, he includes an interesting time in Jesus’ life when he is teaching his followers about this idea of being “Pure in heart” the verses says:
"God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God." - Matthew 5:8
Jesus makes an interesting connection between the way we fight to keep our hearts pure and our ability to see and understand God. Not only that but those who’s hearts are pure will experience God’s blessing. So what we begin to see is that God’s desire for us to be pure is not because he wants us to miss out on all the fun that all our friends are talking about, instead it is because he wants us to experience HIS BLESSING! This blessing that comes from living pure is not having to worry about things like: a broken heart, regrets, comparison, guilt, shame, embarrassment, diseases, fear of getting pregnant, the list could go on but I think you get the picture.
As we seek to understand the fullness of what Purity looks like in our lives, we start to see that it is so much more than just “Not having sex until you’re married.” Purity is not just a physical thing, it includes all of who we are. As attractive as all of you are, you are more than just a body, you have thoughts, and feelings and a spirit that can not just be shut off or separated from what you decide to do with your body. You can’t say “I’m willing to honor God with my body but not my mind or my heart.” Purity is an all or nothing pursuit, it cannot be half hearted, it requires all of who we are. And it is something that God calls us to for life, not just while you’re a teenager, or only while you’re single, even as a married person I’m called to a sexually pure life that is pleasing to God. If purity was just about virginity then there would be a problem when we get married. The truth is that God cares much more about your purity than about your virginity. You can be a virgin and be impure, and you can chose to live pure even if you’ve made mistakes in the past.
One of the most beautiful things about purity is that it is a radical shift that takes our focus off ourselves. It’s a commitment to God that we are not okay with living to fulfill our own desires, but to please and honor Him and our future husband or wife. When you chose to pursue sexual purity now as a middle schooler or a high schooler you are choosing to be faithful to the person you will one day marry. You probably haven’t even met this person yet, and most likely you won’t meet them for another 10 years or so, but doesn’t it make you think about how cool it would be one day to be able to tell that person that “when I was years old I decided to pursue purity so that I would have all of my heart, mind and body to give to you, so that I can experience sex with only you for the rest of our life together.” Believe it or not, the decisions you make now regarding dating, and sexual purity will affect your future relationships and your marriage one day. This is why we HAVE to talk about it, It’s too important to ignore because we love you guys and want you to have a great marriage and a great future one day, most importantly God loves you even more than we do and he wants you to experience His blessings in this area of your life, He wants to protect you from the pain that can come from making unwise choices. Over the next 4 weeks we will be talking about how this affects the decisions you make as Middle/High Schoolers, and about how to deal with the pressures that are very real during this time in your life.
The cool thing about this time in your life is that you have a choice about the message you want to send to your friends, family and the people around you. You don’t have to wait until you are older to be an example to the world of what it means to live PURE. There was a young man in the Bible named Timothy who most likely experienced a lot of the same pressures as many of you. His mentor, Paul wrote some very powerful words to him to encourage him as a young follower of Jesus.
"Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith and your purity." - 1Timothy 4:12
We hope that encourages you as we discuss the Big Idea for this week:
"Purity includes all of who I am for the rest of my life."
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