DAY 9 OF THE 40 DAYS OF SUMMER
Every single day we are bombarded with images and we “see” a lot of things that are less than ideal, perverse even. Whether it’s driving down a freeway on a billboard, a sticker on the back of someone’s truck, watching a TV show, movie or music video. Today it’s even in commercials or simply walking through a shopping center and passing by Victoria’s Secret. I always say we need to write her a letter and say, “Dear Victoria, please keep it a secret.” How many of the Netflix shows that you “subscribe” to or songs you sing are completely objectifying women or blaring that sex is casual. Just the other day, my family and I were talking about the oh-so-popular series, “Friends”. Now, I understand many who will read this have watched almost every episode or have it memorized even. Take a minute though and think about how almost every episode is laced with viewing sex as casual, no strings attached, even celebrating one-night-stands. I believe it completely normalized pornography in our generation showing these “nice” guys watching porn as a normal thing. Even promoting a wife giving her husband porn for his birthday. We have to be intentional with what we see and how we allow it to influence our beliefs and our lens.
Our culture has been shaping our worldview on how to see the opposite sex. Men are taught to see women as objects of pleasure rather than daughters of God. Often the narrative for women is to see men as only wanting sex or not worthy of trust or honor. We’ve been fed a perverse lens and we need to stop and ask ourselves if we’ve been desensitized to it all.
You are not a victim to what you see. You are powerful and capable of teaching your sex drive how to see. In today’s culture, it could be easy to be desensitized by perverse images and people being turned into objects of pleasure rather than people of value to be honored. You have the power to teach yourself how to see people as children of God. Here’s a few steps for a good start:
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Be intentional and create a vision.
We must be intentional to have a biblical worldview. The statement I’ll be shouting till I die is this: “The truth is so foreign because the lies are so familiar.” It is up to us to turn up the truth in our lives. We have to be intentional to know God’s design for sexuality so that we reject the world’s narrative. When we have a vision for our lives we will reject the inappropriate, immoral things that come at us. When you’re so familiar with the truth, the lies will stand out like a red flag. We make sure to call the impure junk out when we see it. Turn off the show. Unsubscribe from the series. Stop listening to that artist’s music when their lyrics go against your biblical beliefs.
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Renew your mind.
Spend time in God’s presence and ask Him to show you what lies you’ve believed about the opposite sex. What are things you have seen or entertained that don’t line up with your beliefs and vision for healthy sexuality. Uproot the lies and replace them with the truth. You may need to do some work in this area. There may be life-long habits that have been formed because of your upbringing, environment, pain and past that need to be exposed and uprooted. Talk to a trusted friend, mentor, pastor or licensed Christian counselor. Refuse to settle for less and restore a godly perspective of the opposite sex. Jesus wants you to see others as He does, so that you can love and value them as He does.
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Make a covenant with your eyes.
We know that a life lived with boundaries is meant to keep us safe, healthy and living in the fullness that God has for us. We need to have boundaries in what we watch as well, protecting what we see. Making a covenant with our eyes in the way we look at others of the opposite sex, just like Job did: “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look with lust at a young woman.” Another great verse to memorize and recall is from Psalm 101:3, “I will refuse to look at anything vile and vulgar.” You are a temple of the Holy Spirit, your eyes are like gates to your soul. You get to make choices to protect what comes in through the eye gate and what you see.
I’ll end with this, one of my favorite sets of Scripture on the subject. I highly encourage you to read and study this. Apply it to your life and let it influence the vision you create, renewing your mind and the covenant you make with your eyes. This passage is from 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 MSG:
“Just because something is technically legal doesn’t mean that it’s spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I’d be a slave to my whims.
You know the old saying, “First you eat to live, and then you live to eat”? Well, it may be true that the body is only a temporary thing, but that’s no excuse for stuffing your body with food, or indulging it with sex. Since the Master honors you with a body, honor him with your body!
God honored the Master’s body by raising it from the grave. He’ll treat yours with the same resurrection power. Until that time, remember that your bodies are created with the same dignity as the Master’s body. You wouldn’t take the Master’s body off to a whorehouse, would you? I should hope not.
There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two become one.” Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never “become one.” There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for “becoming one” with another. Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.”
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