Adorned Book and Study Guide Set by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 2017-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

And it repeatedly calls us to be sexually pure:

Sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you … (Eph. 5:3)

Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. (Heb. 13:4)

For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality…. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. (1 Thess. 4:3, 7)

If we want to enjoy the freedom and joy of walking in purity, we do well not only to ponder these kinds of passages frequently, but to consider what it will take to follow their direction in our daily lives—because, as we’ve seen, practical purity isn’t easy. This part of our Christian walk requires focused, ongoing effort and training as well as the watchful encouragement of these crucial Titus 2 relationships.

We need women we can call on the phone who will go to their knees and call out to God on our behalf. We need friendships with those who understand that the most godly or well-intentioned woman is never immune to temptation or failure. We need intentional, mutually invasive relationships with truth-telling friends.

And yes, I meant invasive—in the sense that we allow these friends to step into our lives and we are willing to move into theirs. These kinds of relationships don’t settle for staying on the surface where everything appears to be just fine. They don’t stand on ceremony or hold back for fear of rejection. We don’t refrain from asking tough questions and saying things that need to be said.

Of course we should do this “in a spirit of gentleness … [keeping] watch on [ourselves], lest [we] too be tempted” (Gal. 6:1). Of course we should act in true concern and humility, not jealousy or judgment. And this should generally take place in the context of established relationships, where genuine love and care are already a given.

But we all need people in our lives who love us enough to probe our hearts, who will hold us accountable to walk in the light. And we need to be willing to be that kind of friend to others. There is a time when it’s necessary to lean in, to say the hard things, to not be silent when one of our sisters is teetering toward compromise. This is how we “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (v. 2). This is how we live out the beauty of the gospel—together.

In all of this, we must let God’s Word reveal and determine what our hearts are meant to love, what our minds are meant to dwell on, what our relationships are meant to be like, and what our habits are meant to avoid. We can look to Him to transform us by His grace—no matter what we’ve done, no matter where we’ve been—until our lives ultimately mirror the gleaming whiteness of His purity.

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