How did I get here? (Good Christian girls did it too)

Good Christian girls did it too.

       Good Christian girls still do it.

We had Christian friends, and worship music, and were leaders in our student ministry. We led Bible studies, had daily quiet times, and watched God answer our prayers. We fed the homeless and confessed our sins at retreats. We shared a devo at FCA and obeyed our parents. We kissed dating goodbye. We dressed modestly most of the time. We knew not to have sex before we were married because true love waits. We pledged in our hearts or with rings or necklaces to be pure and wait for God’s man for us. We loved Jesus.

We knew Truth and we knew better.

And we “did it.”

Truly we felt strong in our faith, solid in our love, and tried to do right and be good. Yet, at some point, we look around at how far we've tumbled from some spiritual high place or mountain top, and in a battered, messy heap at the bottom we ask...

“How did I get here?”

We aren't left there without answers. God shows us in His Word that at the height of faith, love, and obedience, we can fall into sexual sin. He reveals this in the story of David. You might know David as King David, or the story of David and Goliath. If you were raised going to church, you may know about David’s anointing by Samuel, David being chased by Saul, David and Johnathan, God’s covenant with David—and at the height of an extraordinary relationship with God, at the apex of victories, mercy and might, at the pinnacle of a “mountain top experience”—

David and Bathsheba.

I scoured the Scriptures trying to figure out how a man with such a relationship with God could end up falling headlong into sexual sin.

A few verses imply the state of David’s heart. God’s commands for kings in Deuteronomy 17 included that Israel’s king must not multiply, or have, many wives. The consequence for ignoring this command? His heart would be led astray.

David should have had a personally handwritten copy of the law. He was to read it daily so he would know it front to back, and know God as he followed His ways. David knew the command for the king was one wife. David knew Truth and knew better.

David had seven wives. (2 Samuel 3:2-5, 13-14)

David did not BASE jump from the mountain top into sexual sin with Bathsheba. With each choice from his heart to ignore God’s Word, with each new wife and relationship, David’s heart slowly turned from God’s desires and ways for him, to his own.

Heart led astray. 

I believe those words mean slowly, step by step, passively controlled and overpowered by something, to a place you are not supposed to be.

According to Deuteronomy 17, God was supposed to be his first love, his deepest desire, and the One David would rely on to meet all his needs. Instead, he ultimately turned to wives, women, and his own prowess. Yet, having more didn't equal being satisfied. His desires took control, luring him down an ever-darkening path towards unchecked indulgence, destruction and heart break.

How was your heart led astray?

Was there a slow step by step path paved with desires and choices that led you towards sexual sin?

For me, it was a slow progression, one I honestly didn't realize was happening. I was a good, churched girl with a mountain top experience, yet I also had deep needs. And, I didn't know that God could truly meet all my needs, or that I could turn my needy heart towards Him. I think I knew through church of how to do right and be good, but I could not figure out why those things weren't fitting into what I was experiencing in my own life. Lofty Bible things played out for other, better, holier, prettier, less needy people.

I gradually began to explore how to have my needs met through my relationships with guys. My needs became chained to deep desires that were satisfied momentarily, but they were never fully met. So I kept hungering, kept seeking, kept offering more and taking more.

My heart was being led astray. His Spirit was convicting me, calling me to stop, turn around and come back to Him. But, at some point I chose to ignore to the Voice in my heart, the One calling me back to the simple truths I knew about God and His way. My needs and desires and finally, demands for indulgence drowned out the sweet call of the Spirit—the same Spirit David must have heard calling to him. I found myself in places I shouldn't have been, and I fell into sexual sin.

How did we get here? The “path of heart led astray.” This is part of David’s story and I am thankful God chose to tell all of David’s story in Scripture. God’s story also tells me that He wasn't done with David after his heart was led astray. It didn't end with a fall or a messed-up heap. Since He wasn't through with David, we can trust He isn't done with good Christian girls who knew better and did it anyways.

Just another seed of my faith,

Ginny

A few thoughts from a free woman on 50 Shades

All across my social media has been this conversation about the opening of Fifty Shades of Grey this weekend. Old Matt Walsh posts surfacing, lots of psychologists viewpoints and statistics being shared, and many women voicing personal concerns or excitement over seeing this film. The same happened with the book.

Because we're friends I'll tell you that I have a few thoughts, but I have only read  reviews and articles regarding the book and film. I have not actually read Fifty Shades of Grey. 

Why?

Four reasons.

First, I am fairly picky about what I read because I have so little time to read. Second, if it's popular, I question it. Wildly popular? I'll probably not pick it up. (Left Behind? Never read it.) Third, I understand enough to be able to stand against things like glorifying violence, abuse, emotional pornography, actual pornography, degrading women, and degrading sex. And fourth, because I'm free. 

I also won't see the film, because I'm

Free.

Women have shared strong views on why they can't handle what the hype is all about--it's just reading a few books or just seeing a movie. It's way outside their reality, it's just escaping into a story for a little while. Besides, women can be sexual any way they want to. If it includes a bit of consensual bondage, being dominated, or hurt that seems scintillating, so what? Women have the right or are free to experience what they want, so what's all the fuss? 

I see something in the broader story and in the broader reaction that actually reminds me I am indeed free, but not like the blog and article responses suggest. We want something beyond our story, beyond our experience, and what this invites us into is that "beyond" means sly contracts, bondage, domination, hurt, confusion, unmet relational needs, and yet still an attraction to go further. 

In very plain language, without any BDSM attached to it, we have already experienced this. 

So many of our stories include that somehow, somewhere along the way we were enticed within a relationship. Maybe we were enticed to have our desires and needs met, enticed by how different he was, enticed by risk or change. At each point along the way, even before we ever had sex, we were agreeing to go down a path with our spirits and souls, and eventually our bodies joined. We may not have even realized it. Many of us could name now that in the end, we realized that what sexual sin did was bind us. We felt overcome, overruled, dominated by our sin, our struggle, and our desire to have what we deeply needed or desired. And when sex and that relationship didn't deliver, pain flowed, hurt abounded, and we were left confused. Many of us were willing to go further down the dark paths of sin and brokenness, hoping we'd finally find what we needed and wanted. 

So I don't need to see it. It is not thrill, excitement, and harmlessly outside my own experience. It is my experience. And experiencing "beyond" has nothing to do with something outside of me and everything to do with Christ's work inside me. Beyond my experience isn't Fifty Shades of Grey, it's freedom.

Freedom from a deeper hunger and thirst for things men could never give me, freedom from offering my body to take part in and be mastered by ever darkening shades of sin and shame, freedom from hating my body, freedom from degrading my soul, freedom from the weight all this bore on my ever shattered spirit. I was freely loved, freely given grace, freely made new, freed. Freedom in Christ means I am free to know my Savior and how He meets my needs, free to offer my body in worship and righteousness, free to be whole--spirit, soul, and body, free to be me, free to love and let a man off the hook for not being God, free to never go back, free to embrace His story in my life, free to live beyond. 

Free.

Just another seed of my faith,
Ginny

Am I forever marked by my past?

As I was searching for what it meant to really live beyond my past, I looked for stories that seemed finished. Ones that would give me hope and some kind of picture of how this could be. I’ll be honest with you, what I remembered of Rahab was that she was a prostitute. Not really the poster child for living beyond.

If that’s how I remembered her, is that how God “remembered” her? Is she just forever marked in Scripture as Rahab the prostitute?  Did she really get to live beyond her past?

To give you a quick answer, she did! She became a wife and a mother and a follower of God. There are some great scriptures and stories of her legacy, but for us today, we’ll consider three scriptures that answer our deeper question.

Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,
Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth,
Obed the father of Jesse,
and Jesse the father of King David. (Matthew 1:5-6)

A woman who came from a sexually messed up culture and a past of sexual sin—a woman who was rescued and made whole—is forever linked to the Messiah! That list in Matthew is Jesus’ genealogy, and she is one of just five women listed! It highlights her story in Jesus, and Jesus forever in her story. What’s more, God delights in showing off His glory and grace—that glory and grace over Rahab that coursed through the veins of the Savior that poured out His life for us.

Rahab’s story confirms there is real life beyond Jericho (our pasts) for all of us. But consider that in living beyond her past she would have to look at her full story. She and the Israelites knew the story. She was from Jericho and had been a prostitute. She was the only one with faith in Jericho, the walls came down, and she was made whole. Who could ever forget that story in its fullness? Because didn't even stop with being made whole--her full story was an invitation to her and the whole Israelite community to see her deliverance and their deliverance as a picture of greater things to come. We know those “greater things” as Jesus Christ and the Great Rescue—the Gospel!

We have to look back on our pasts through the lens of God seeing us all along and look forward through the lens that He brought us out to live new lives, ones that reflect His full Story. See how God views her full story.  

 By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient. (Hebrews 11:31)

 In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? (James 2:25)

 These verses specifically point out her faith. Rahab is remembered for her faith! And while both of these verses remind us that she was a prostitute, they don’t remind God that she was a prostitute. He includes that for our benefit, not His. He does so only to show us that in the midst of our darkest places, faith can happen! Rahab believed God, not when she was cleaned up and “holy”, but when she was actively living in Jericho and in sexual sin. Do you know what that means for you and me?

First it means faith is yours to receive, by grace, right where you are. If you have not believed Jesus for salvation and His ability to rescue you out of sin and make you whole, you can! If you have not yet trusted Christ as your personal Savior, do it now! Otherwise, you cannot heal. You will not know what it means to fully, wholly live beyond your past. There are no more steps we can take together without your salvation. Jesus is calling to you—come, believe, live!

For those of us who have believed Christ to be our Savior, Rahab’s full story proves to us that God does not remember us as we were in the midst of our sin. Our sexual sin is not forever the label or “scarlet letter” we have to wear (or conceal). God’s story in Rahab tells us that we are not labeled with our old lives. Our faith is all that remains, therefore our full stories point to the Giver of Faith, the Rescuer, the Caller of All Things That Are Not As Though They Were, the I AM--and the Gospel in action. So really all that remains is God and His glory, center stage.

With that truth active in our lives, “Rahabs” like you and me get to live beyond our pasts in the new life He has given us with Him. We get to live as God has made us: whole.

Just another seed of my faith,

Ginny