Pure Love, Pure Life: Exploring God's Heart on Purity

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Pure Love, Pure Life

ZONDERVAN

Chapter One

Breaking it down

"I honestly don't know what God asks. I've been to many churches and I've gotten different responses. Most of them say something about living faithfully and being pure until you are married, but I'm not sure what they mean by that." ~Kaitlyn

THE BIG GIRL DEFINITION

I thought it might be interesting to check out the official definition of purity. Not that Dictionary.com is the author of truth, but it gave me a good picture. Here's what it says:

Purity is defined as:

Freedom from anything that debases, contaminates, pollutes, etc.

Freedom from any admixture or modifying addition.

Freedom from guilt or evil; innocence.

Physical chastity; virginity.

Freedom from foreign or inappropriate elements; careful correctness.

That's a whole lot of freedom. Freedom from guilt, contamination, and modifying additions. It's a neat thought—freedom. A life free from the things that mess with our hearts: shame, sin, pain, guilt. I actually get that. I carried pain and guilt for a long time after some of my choices. In fact, I still carry some regret, wishing I'd done things differently than I did. And when I was pressured to do things I didn't want to do, or for my friends who've been raped—yes, it would be great if we never had to carry any of that with us today. To be free would be an amazing thing. In fact, if that's your story, if you've been violated in any way, keep reading. You can still live this pure life out—you are not disqualified. We'll talk more about that in our "Second Chances" chapter, but for now, know that this book is not going to add to the pain you've already experienced. Hopefully, this book will only help you live the future you were always meant to have.

So purity is freedom. It's freedom from everything that can hurt you. But what else? Let's break it down into the everyday stuff of life. Throughout this book, we'll be looking at it from every angle: physical, emotional, and spiritual. Below is just a taste of what each of those angles can mean.

PHYSICAL

Physical purity is all about protecting your body, guarding it from hurtful things and saving it for good experiences. I know that makes sense on some levels, but it's tough to wrap your brain around it when you're in the middle of a temptation. Just like what happened in my relationship with Darren, kissing and touching didn't feel bad or hurtful in the moment. It's not like we started crossing lines and all of a sudden we were in pain and heartbroken. It was just the opposite. It felt good. We liked it. We had heard all the warnings, but we sure didn't feel like what we were doing was bad. I think that made us question all those people who told us to say no. They obviously didn't know what they were talking about, because holding each other didn't feel like a bad thing at all.

So I'm not going to tell you that if you kiss and touch and get more and more physical with your boyfriend, you'll keel over or turn purple or fall into some kind of abyss. You'll probably enjoy it in the moment; you just have to remember that it's the down-the-road consequences that God wants to protect you from. This is where trust comes in. God has good things for you. God knows that physical touch is a good thing. He created it. He designed it to bring us all kinds of pleasure, fun, joy. The only limit he put on physical connection is to let it happen in marriage. Why? Because someone who makes love to you in the evening should be there in the morning, and the morning after that—and that matters to God. Because you won't run the risk of disease that can be passed between two people having sex. Because you won't chance having a baby when you're not ready to provide. Because God knew that when you touch, caress, and hold another person, your heart is always involved, and he wants to protect your heart.

God is not some mean, uptight ogre in the sky looking to keep you from having fun. He is good and kind, and he wants to protect you.

So then comes the question, how far is too far? What is the magical line, anyway? Exactly what can you do without walking into sin? When I surveyed girls, I got a few different responses:

"My line is holding hands. There is just something special even in that simple gesture. And it would be all the more precious if I save it for the man God has made for me. Also, I haven't officially decided, but it's always been in my mind that I would not kiss until my wedding day." Mary

"I think going too far is having sex. My line stops at everything before having sex." Jordan "You've gone too far if you touch any area that a bathing suit covers." Anonymous

"When I'm not in a serious relationship and completely in love with someone, it's easy to say no to everything. When I am in a relationship and we truly love each other, it is much harder and my line is pushed further back." Anonymous

Notice how personal and unique each line becomes? That's because we're asking the wrong question. Unfortunately, whether your line is kissing or nothing below the belt, what will happen every time you're together with the person you're dating? You'll go right up to that line ... and then maybe push it back just a touch.

Ah, but then you'll feel bad and promise never to let it happen again.

Until next time.

Then you'll go right up to the line, and push it even further.

The frustrating thing about sexual lines is that you always want what you can't have. And you'll always be tempted to push back that magical line each and every time you're together. The things you do the first month of dating will lose their thrill, so in the second month of dating you'll push that line back a bit. By the third month of dating, the lines will have blurred even further. Pretty soon all those good reasons for guarding your purity as you date will be long forgotten as you become more and more consumed with what you want but can't have. Even the guilt will begin to diminish as you shed the "rules" and go with where you're sure your heart is taking you.

That's the danger of having a magical line that you dance around every time you're together with your date. You're basically putting yourself right smack into the middle of temptation and expecting your mind, body, and heart to listen to a rule you put in place what will feel like eons ago.

Think of it this way: Imagine that you're addicted to food, and that you have a special warm-fuzzy feeling when it comes to chocolate frosting. Now imagine that because of your deep love of frosting, you have decided to go into a bakery every single day. You determine to buy a slice of chocolate cake with the most decadent chocolate frosting ever. You put it down in front of you and begin to nibble at the cake portion. You even allow the frosting onto the fork, but then quickly put the fork down onto the plate. See how strong I am? You think to yourself, I didn't even lick the frosting! Of course you did stare at the frosting, play with the frosting, and imagine the taste of the frosting every single moment of nearly every single day. And then, sadly, the day comes: in a haze of frosting-induced obsession, you buy the entire chocolate cake and lick off every bit of frosting in sight. You even run around the counter and start licking off the tops of cupcakes. You simply won't be denied another moment.

This is the problem with asking the question "How far is too far?" It's like walking into the bakery and parking yourself in front of the cake case. The question you should be asking instead is "What can we do, as a couple, to think about other things? To do other things besides locking our lips and caressing each other's bodies?"

In other words, how can you stay out of the bakery all together?

Now, I'm not going to cheat you. I'll still answer the question as a starting point for you. It's my opinion that you shouldn't do anything beyond kissing. Some folks would say don't even go there. Talk to God, talk to godly people you trust, and once you have your answer, turn your focus to other things. That means avoiding sexting and flirting with words too, mainly because that's like describing the taste of the frosting down to the creamy, sugary deliciousness and not expecting your mouth to water. Your body will gear up for what your mind is thinking about and what your mouth is talking about. Again, it's best to just stay out of the bakery and turn to other things. The biggest part of your purity as a couple will be to work together to build your relationship through conversation and having fun together. Get outside. Play sports together. Go for a hike. Go to the movies or spend time with friends. Whatever you do, do yourself a big, huge favor and keep your eyes (and your hands ... and your thoughts) off the frosting.

EMOTIONAL

Emotional purity looks a whole lot like physical purity. It's protecting your heart—filling it up with good stuff and keeping hurtful things out. Again, it goes against the grain a little bit. Every show we've watched since we were little girls tells us that our happiness will come when we give our hearts away to the perfect guy: the sun will shine, birds will sing, all of life will fall into place. But again, it's a trust thing. Having a pure heart means loving God first, keeping other things out of the way, and letting God bring the guy (or trusting him to take care of us if it seems like the guy is taking forever).

It sounds so good and spiritual, but we all know it's not that easy. When a guy sweeps in who has that mischievous grin and warm gaze, it's hard to turn our eyes from his and look to the sky, stating, "My heart belongs to God."

Yeah. Not realistic, and kinda cheesy. But don't worry, having a pure heart that loves God isn't nearly as weird as it sounds. We'll look at what loving God really means as we wrestle through the coming chapters together. But for now, know that part of staying emotionally pure is loving God with abandon and keeping a good perspective on guys.

Emotional purity also deals with learning to handle other emotions. We'll talk about that more, but just as an example, you can imagine how feeling lonely can open the door to pornography—so it's good to know how to handle loneliness in a healthy way. Feeling love might open the door to compromise in your physical purity, so how can you enjoy feeling all the warm fuzzies with someone while still standing firm in your convictions? All those things tie into emotional purity as well.

SPIRITUAL

I have a different take on spiritual purity. Yes, of course it's loving God first and making sure we keep nasty stuff out of our relationships. In other words, it makes sense that watching pornography or having sex or fantasizing about stuff might distract you from God. But spiritual purity is more than keeping out the bad stuff; spiritual purity is all about pouring passion into good things. Again, we'll go into the details later in the book, but in short, instead of spending all your time thinking about the many things you don't want to do, it's pouring all that energy into good outlets. People underestimate the power of all that (positive) passion you have. I, however, believe in it. I can't wait to see what God does as he harnesses it and unleashes it on the world.

So that's the scoop. Purity is guarding your body, protecting your emotions, and pouring all that passion into great things. It goes against the grain, swims upstream, does things differently. It's amazing and it's a ride.

Interested in finding out more?

Let's start by looking at my mean math teacher. Oddly enough, he has something to do with this whole topic.

SO YOU DON'T CARE? FINE.

I didn't like my math teacher and I know for certain he didn't like me. He would always call my name with a sarcastic edge to his voice, as though he didn't expect me to know the answer and was just waiting for me to fail. Because I knew he didn't like me, I hated the class, barely did the work, and just scraped by with a passing grade.

Tiny Mrs. Weiner was a whole different story. She was small, but she was a spitfire. She was my creative writing teacher and she loved me. She'd smile wide when I walked in the door, we'd joke around, and she would write notes on my papers: "Way to go, Elsa—very creative how you made those green people jump out of the closet." Even on my worst papers, she managed to put a positive spin on her correction. "Nice try on the polka-dotted elephant dancing with a hula hoop, but you might want to stay closer to reality—perhaps make it a hippo." Not a huge surprise that I made sure to do the homework and aced that class.

It's amazing what a little love will do to our hearts. When we feel truly loved, there's little that we can't do—little we're not willing to do. Isn't that what can make some areas of purity so hard? You get into a relationship and you start falling for someone. You love him, he loves you. You wrap your arms around each other and it feels natural and right—it's about love or at least it's headed that way. Suddenly guarding your heart and your body doesn't seem as critical. Why would I guard my heart from him? we think. He's a good guy, we're getting so close ... We question it all, because of love.

But here is the truth: there is a greater love, and that's what most of us miss. As I surveyed teen girls and asked them why they think God wants them to stay pure physically and emotionally, it was all about the rules. "He wants me to obey him." "My body is a temple, so he wants me to keep it pure." "I'm not really sure. Because he said so." And it's true God says so ... and your body is a temple ... but underneath is the bigger truth: God wants you to choose well because he loves you. He loves you more than you will ever know. He aches for you. He knows that by crossing lines physically or filling your mind with images, you could be deeply hurt, either by someone who doesn't stick around or by the images that might take away from a good relationship down the road. He doesn't ever want you to feel dirty or used or broken. God is a valiant knight, your first love, the one who knows you best and loves you most. He has a purpose in asking you to live differently and it's all for your good, because of love.

Do you believe you are loved by a good God? Ultimately, your decisions on purity will come out of what you truly believe. It's like the story of my math and creative writing teachers. When I felt unloved, my commitment to the teacher was nonexistent. When I felt believed in and cared for, my desire to please my teacher grew by leaps and bounds. So it is on a much larger scale with our God. If you believe God doesn't love you or that he's angry and distant—like an uncaring teacher watching your every move and expecting you to fail—then you aren't going to want to stay pure.

God asks us to live pure lives. I don't know exactly why, but he has every right to lay down the rules for us to follow. It's our responsibility to follow them, period. ~Anonymous

On the other hand, if you know that God is perfect, kind, and good—and that he is crazy about you, believes in you, and delights in who you are—you'll be a whole lot stronger when the temptations come your way. You'll already know you are loved. You'll trust that your perfect God has something better for you, and even when it's a monster struggle (and it will be at times), you'll be much more equipped to win the fight. Now, I'm not saying that God's love is a magic wand in that all of a sudden you'll stop thinking about sex or guys or that you'll immediately turn away from a tempting image ... but God's love will give you a stronger foundation, a better reason, a more convincing motive to make the hard choices.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Pure Love, Pure Life by Elsa Kok Colopy Copyright © 2012 by Elsa Kok Colopy . Excerpted by permission of ZONDERVAN. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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