On Purity

First off, happy Friday!! I figured what better way to kick off Friday than with a super light post on purity. {read: sarcasm}

If you've been around for a while, you may know that this topic is a special one for me. It's the only topic that I've written about for 31 straight days, so there's that. It's one that I love for so many reasons, but for starters, because I can't possibly talk about purity without talking about redemption. 

The fact that I even get to have a voice about this is straight up God's grace at its finest. As a girl who lost her virginity in high school, I never, ever, thought I would get a second chance at innocence. I never imagined that purity is a gift that is given from God, not a title removable by a sexual act. 

I can vividly remember the moment God opened my heart to the idea of sexual purity. I can remember driving home to San Diego, hearing a familiar voice on the radio share a sermon about dating, and boom. It didn't matter that I had already "lost my shot" by the world's standard, I knew that I wanted to save myself for marriage. 

I've learned so much since that moment. God has been faithfully teaching me about purity, and I'm gonna keep it real here, some of it was through my own trial and error. 

Through that trial and error, I saw my own weakness. I saw that if I wanted a God-glorifying relationship, I couldn't do it alone. I needed a man equally committed to protecting the purity within our relationship, and praise Lord Jesus Himself, He gave me just that. 

I want to share the things that I'm learning here. I want to share to tell a story of God's redemption, to testify of the fact that He truly does make all things new. He forgives, and He restores, and He gives new life. 

I want to share to testify of His faithfulness, to reveal that He truly is strong in our weakness. Purity can never come from self-effort, it is always a result of the Spirit. And I, for one, want to see more of the Spirit in my life. I want to see and experience sexual purity that comes from a heart changed by God. That type of purity exists in singleness, and it exists in dating, and it exists in marriage. It's not meant for one season of life, it's meant for all of life. Period. 

I wrote about it in singleness, and now, I have the privilege of writing about it in dating. I have the privilege of sharing my struggles, and my lessons, and my victories. 

I share for one reason: to give Him glory. I share because it is only because of Him that I have this story to tell. And I share because He has given me a man who truly loves my passion to share it all to praise His name. I love him for that. 

Purity has nothing to do with physical actions, and everything to do with the heart. It's not something we do, or we find, or we achieve. It's something we experience through the power of the Holy Spirit within us. It's something we find through surrendering our whole heart to our mighty God. 

Purity is two fold, the desire and the power to do what pleases God. If we have the desire, and not the power, then we constantly find ourselves falling into sin. We want to live a life of purity, but without the power to do so, we're stuck in our fleshly habits. 

If we have the power without the desire, it does no good. What good is having the physical fitness required to run a marathon if I don't have the desire to run a marathon? 

It takes both; we must find both the desire and the power to do what pleases God. And those, my friends, are gifts from Jesus. Those we find when we accept the gift of relationship with God that was given to us when a Man hung on a cross for us. It wasn't earned, or deserved. It was given, and when we receive it, we feel the life-changing surge of the Holy Spirit, which gives us the desire and the power to do things we never imagined possible.