Fred Stoeker couldn’t understand why he felt cold and distant from God during the singing every Sunday in church. He sensed a wall of separation between himself and the Lord. After some heart-searching he discovered what was wrong.
Every Sunday morning before church, as he looked through the morning paper, he would quickly find the department store inserts and spend time paging through the coloured newsprint filled with models who were smiling in their underwear. He loved to linger over each ad. ‘It’s wrong’, he admitted to himself, ‘but it’s such a small thing.’ ‘It’s a far cry from Playboy,’ he reasoned. When Fred thought about his Sunday morning routine, his sense of humour, and the way he allowed himself lust after many of the women he saw each day he knew that he had a problem with sexual sin.
Don’t get me wrong! Of course it’s possible to enjoy singing songs and be living a life of compromise. There can also be innocent reasons why we are not connecting with the music in church or are struggling to feel intimate with God. But be sure of this, sin does deaden our relationship with God, it slowly erodes our responsiveness to him—that was what Fred was experiencing those Sunday mornings.
We may enjoy the pleasures of lust but don’t imagine that these pleasures come without a cost. Those of us who are married will know how shame makes us cautious about being honest with our spouse. When we lust over someone are allowing ourselves be enslaved by wrong desires and we dishonour the person we drool at. Most importantly, if we are Christians, it makes it harder to look God in the face and involves walking at a distance from him.
On the other hand purity presents us with wonderful opportunities. If we are married it honours our spouse when we seek to be faithful in our thoughts (if you are not married it may honour a potential spouse). Purity makes us more comfortable with ourselves as we don’t have to deal with the feelings of shame and hypocrisy that lust leaves. Most importantly, striving for purity gives us the opportunity to seek God’s glory in our lives. Through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit God gives us the help needed to live lives of thankfulness to him as we seek to please him with our secret thoughts and our public actions.
This autumn in Café church we are going to do a series on purity, singleness and marriage. In a few blogs I want to work through the thoughts that will make up the talk on purity.
Every Sunday morning before church, as he looked through the morning paper, he would quickly find the department store inserts and spend time paging through the coloured newsprint filled with models who were smiling in their underwear. He loved to linger over each ad. ‘It’s wrong’, he admitted to himself, ‘but it’s such a small thing.’ ‘It’s a far cry from Playboy,’ he reasoned. When Fred thought about his Sunday morning routine, his sense of humour, and the way he allowed himself lust after many of the women he saw each day he knew that he had a problem with sexual sin.
Don’t get me wrong! Of course it’s possible to enjoy singing songs and be living a life of compromise. There can also be innocent reasons why we are not connecting with the music in church or are struggling to feel intimate with God. But be sure of this, sin does deaden our relationship with God, it slowly erodes our responsiveness to him—that was what Fred was experiencing those Sunday mornings.
We may enjoy the pleasures of lust but don’t imagine that these pleasures come without a cost. Those of us who are married will know how shame makes us cautious about being honest with our spouse. When we lust over someone are allowing ourselves be enslaved by wrong desires and we dishonour the person we drool at. Most importantly, if we are Christians, it makes it harder to look God in the face and involves walking at a distance from him.
On the other hand purity presents us with wonderful opportunities. If we are married it honours our spouse when we seek to be faithful in our thoughts (if you are not married it may honour a potential spouse). Purity makes us more comfortable with ourselves as we don’t have to deal with the feelings of shame and hypocrisy that lust leaves. Most importantly, striving for purity gives us the opportunity to seek God’s glory in our lives. Through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit God gives us the help needed to live lives of thankfulness to him as we seek to please him with our secret thoughts and our public actions.
This autumn in Café church we are going to do a series on purity, singleness and marriage. In a few blogs I want to work through the thoughts that will make up the talk on purity.
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