As I’m sitting here in my living room with my music plugged into my ears waiting for the Lord to take over my hands, all I can think about is what has been weighing on my heart for the past week: Purity. I honestly don’t know where to start since the subject itself seems to focus primarily on sex but in reality the term is relative to all aspects of one’s life. I remember when I first embarked on my quest for purity. I quickly came to the realization that purity was not two-dimensional like everyone thinks but is way more complex. To be pure is a lifestyle…not a temporary state of being.
My favorite definition of purity comes from Elisabeth Elliot’s book, Passion and Purity. “Purity means freedom from contamination, from anything that would spoil the taste or the pleasure… It means cleanness, clearness-no additives, nothing artificial-in other words, “all natural” in the sense in which the Original Designer designed it to be. All natural… Living a life the way God created you is not weird, it should be natural! But unfortunately sin has come into our world and contaminated that which was “all natural”. So now we must pursue, even harder, the original way we were created to live a pure life in relationship with God.”
The first thing I noticed upon reading this definition is that it had nothing to do with sex. This does not mean that the about definition cannot be applied to such situation but that it’s not the sole focus of purity. “True purity is not merely connected to our sexuality, but every part of our lives.” There is mental purity (our thoughts), emotional purity (emotions/feelings), spiritual purity (soul) and of course physical purity (body).
Like a lot of young women I use to think purity was all about sex. I thought that being a virgin until I was married meant that I was pure. Well about a good 15 months ago God put it right in my face…Purity has to do with the music I listened to, TV shows I watched, games I played and the company I kept. Purity has to do with the words I say, the thoughts I think, what desires I have in my heart and how I express those passions. Purity deals with me choosing whether or not to give my heart to someone undeserving knowing that they won’t appreciate or love me the way God intended. Purity is how I dress, even the books I read. Purity simply couldn’t be only connected with my virginity any more for the simple fact that if I guy or girl is a virgin it doesn’t mean that they live a pure lifestyle.
Purity begins in the heart. God is concerned with what our heart looks like more than what we look like (1 Sam 16:7). God calls us to live respectable life. In His word he tells us to holy because he his holy (1 Peter 1:16). Whatever is in our hearts will result in actions. A good heart produces good actions from its core; an evil heart produces evil actions from its core.
People often associate purity with promiscuity. This is not wrong but promiscuity often only equates to sex for many when the definition of promiscuity is the practice of making relatively casual and indiscriminate choices. How many times do we give our heart and emotions away to men that we know don’t deserve us? Giving your heart and emotions to multiple partners and not waiting to save those deep feelings for your husband is by definition, promiscuous. When we have sex with different men we don’t realize what soul ties are being created when we join ourselves to another person in such an intimate way. And another thing, being intimate does not mean sexual activity either. Intimacy is a close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another person. Intimacy is not sex…being affectionate is not having sex.
We have to be very careful not to give our hearts away. We have to be careful not to carelessly invest our emotions into mediocre relationships with men who don’t value God which means that he can’t possibly know how to love you because God is love and ultimately results in him not valuing us. We often think because we find a man who is spiritual he is automatically the one. God calls us to be pure spiritually as well. Until we are married even the depth of a spiritual bond is off-limits. As a person who believes that there multiple evil spirits such as pain, destruction, suicide, child perversion we must be careful who we connect with. STD’s not only connect with the physical but spirit as well.
As single women we also have to be careful of our thoughts. Thoughts often result in actions…so what we dwell on is very pertinent. Saying a simple “yes” to God’s will and “no” to sin results in a series of actions that greatly affect our lives from that moment on. Having pure thoughts is a battlefield. In her book Battlefield of the Mind, Joyce Meyer states “Battles are fought in our minds every day. When we begin to feel the battle is just too difficult and want to give up, we must choose to resist negative thoughts and be determined to rise above our problems. We must decide that we’re not going to quit. When we’re bombarded with doubts and fears, we must take a stand and say: “I’ll never give up! God’s on my side. He loves me, and He’s helping me! I’m going to make it!”
Physically our bodies are to be a temple for worship, not some random love nest. Resisting any physical temptation is a part of purity. ( 1 Cor. 6:19-20) Just think that our Ultimate Creator sent his only son so that we may have life. He wanted us to be free from sin. He wanted us to be pure…just as He is; as sure as his blood is. What we allow ourselves to participate is affects our purity. Ultimately our emotions, thoughts, spiritual ties or any other inappropriate connection to others lead to our physical purity. Take pride in it. Make it your ambition to have pure thoughts and healthy relationships. Make it your business to be pure.
