Journal notes.
When someone negates the basic, innate, healthy, normal attraction and desire that human beings have towards the opposite sex, when you condemn that, problems arise, and the result is rebellion, it causes things to be out of balance. Doesn’t it seem strange, when you teach people in the clergy to be celibate, when it is not their calling, they end up in perversion? Perversion results from twisting God’s natural, healthy order of things. Matt 19:11 – “he who is able to accept this..”
God had just been dealing with me on this issue of sexual purity, and I was traveling to the Toronto church to be in revival power with a friend, and she was telling me how she could “see” I was lusting after men, just because I would look at one or say that I liked another one who seemed to be my type. Example of when God deals with an area (sexuality) and after that someone says they see that problem in you – after the fact, after it’s cleansed – weird.
It seemed to boil down to open jealousy of an older woman towards a younger one, I don’t know. She is old enough to be my mother and I know she still wants to get married and maybe it’s just too much for her – a young (attractive, if I do say so myself) female, making her feel old or something.
I had to carefully avoid taking her too seriously, even though I wanted to be sensitive to God if He was trying to say something. Recognize how she might be twisting and skewing the truth. I knew the danger of trying to surgically cut out my most basic sexual interests.
I have had a huge problem coming to balance in sexuality, because what does a person do with his/her sexuality if one is single but has sex drive? This is the basic question and all the problems stem from that. I see stuff about the internet perverts and am reminded of how many isolated people there are in our culture who get sick in their isolation and loneliness.
SCRIPTURE ON SEXUALITY ISSUES
It is wrong even to think lust, so Jesus said. My definition of lust: sex with an object, negating the spirit, soul, mind, value of the individual and denying responsibility for them in a total commitment. This is what has to go. We cannot even think it, moreover, we must not even like it, otherwise we cannot defeat it. See, He must change our desires from within.
There are degrees of lust, and shades of sexuality in complex beings. One may have a positive fantasy about someone close to them whom they love and wish to be married to, and someone else may have degrading fantasies. It is up to the individual to determine if what they are thinking is lust and not godly – that which leads to spiritual death.
The following are passages from the bible about sexuality, and short references to what these passages say. You really need to go and look them up.
Rom 6: 12,13
Sexual immorality mentioned as one of main causes of being in judgment, or even hell. (see Revelation)
Rom 1:29, Rom 2:22
Rom 1: 26 - sexual perversion the first result of exchanging truth for a lie
1 Cor 6: 9-13 do not keep company with sexually immoral people
1 Cor 6: 9 Fornicators mentioned first! vs 13 sexual immorality, 18 flee sexual immorality. Every other sin is outside the body. The immoral person sins against his own body. vs 19,20 you were bought with a price, therefore, glorify God in your body…..!
1 Cor 7: 8, 9 If you burn with passion, marry! 1 Cor 11:11 Man and woman not independent of one another. One flesh!
1Cor 11:27-30 Don’t take Jesus’ body and blood unworthily. What would unworthily be? Casually taking the body and blood without intent to let these do what they are meant to do: change you, redeem you from sin.
2 Cor 4: 7 We have a treasure in earthen vessels (our bodies)
2 Cor 12: 9 God’s grace is sufficient for our weakness - the hinge. Don’t rely on your own strength. All commands are written to inspire conviction, but the power to change does not lie in deciding to “try” to obey them but to cast oneself upon God’s grace and mercy to help in time of need. Righteousness is a work of God.
Gal 5:13 Don’t use your liberty as an opportunity for the flesh
Note: Paul wrote a lot of things that imply to us that we are to do this or do that – and it sounds like something we are to do instead of God. Be reminded that Paul was of all people most aware of the need to fall upon God’s mercy and have God’s righteousness replace his own. The things we hear, the exhortations are things God uses to instill good within us, but we need to hear these things through the Holy Spirit and NOT allow our flesh to rise up and say “I’m going to try to do that!”
Col 3: 5,6 wrath!
1 Thes. 4: 3-7
Hebrews 12: 15,16 Bitterness and fornication equated
2 Peter 2:14 Eyes full of adultery, weak women
Jude vs 7
Rev. 21: 8 and Rev 22: 15 sexual immorality
Marriage is sacred and binding - what then, is sex outside of
marriage?
Matt 5: 27-28 lust is a degrading view of someone. It is ignoring the soul and spirit and looking on the body instead of the soul. vs 32
Matt: 19-3-9
If unmarried man sleeps with unmarried woman he can actually make it up to God and to her by marrying her, and he cannot divorce. Deuteronomy 22: 28 But Deut 22: 25 If she is betrothed and he isn’t and he forces her in the country, where no one would be able to hear her cry out, he is killed. If in the city, both killed. vs 22 If she is married, both die also. How do these laws play out today, considering God fulfills his law through His spirit, even when man doesn’t carry out punishments?
Deut. 27 - more laws on sexuality
Deut. 24:5 1 year of happiness to the newly married
Similar to Don Juans and Donna Juans
Beware oh beautiful young woman of your beauty. Men may desire you, but not love you, and women may find it hard to love you, even hate you. It’s because of beauty walls are created. One can merely concentrate on being attractive as the primary thing, leading to trouble.
If a woman or girl has a lot more on the inside - more self love and an awareness of one’s value on the inside, then that woman or girl will demand that value to be seen by others and will not lean on her exterior qualities. What leads to depending on the exteriors? Something goes wrong.
In the Mall of America tonight, I am reminded of things past. I remember loneliness -a spell that would be broken only by the admiring glance of a handsome young man. Now, I am thankful that with time and learning, when I walk around in the mall that I seem to be more of an object of scrutiny for reasons beyond beauty, to both young women and men. Particularly it is the young who notice me. With those women who are not young, I am always afraid of jealousy popping up, so I avoid looking at them at times. But things have changed. The old ways are breaking.
I saw a baby crying as his mother walked away to throw trash away, and look at her with glee again as she returned. She approached him inching, making wide smiles at him while he giggled. I thought of how a child sees his mother as beautiful, even if she has shoulders too wide and wears camp, masculine clothing and isn’t pretty. To him she is beautiful. And this is reality we were all born for: to be loved by people who know us, not to be admired, not to live inside a glass case. To live on the inside of who we are and what we believe and to be known and loved for who we are. How did I get so isolated?
Immoral sexuality is indulged by those who deny healthy family ties, who deny that sex can bring a baby and that a baby needs to come into the world through a home. But how do we get like that? How do we become lost so that we desire sex outside of love and family - so that we attract people we find attractive, but we don’t love them and it doesn’t lead to love, but it looks good, it feels good, and it seems as if one is reaching for love and intimacy, while all the time one is pouring sand through a sieve.
How did it get that way? It comes from pain in those significant relationships. It comes from hurt. But in looking back at the life that led to the wrong things, one has to forgive, one has to forget wrongs that were done. Bitterness underlies all wrong sex, and bitterness has to go.
Sexuality that is evil desires pleasure and even intimacy, but denies responsibility for the person or persons. In the past I chose those who wanted me for a moment, and then ran away. I chose wrongly because there was something wrong in me.
MARRIED, literal translation: “possessed.” Scary!
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