A Call to be Set-Apart

Greetings blogging world. I was recently burdened to write again--it has been months-- and woke up yesterday feeling that burden and having some ideas but no direction. I try to be very careful with what I write because of the following I have of people, that I don't know personally, but that follow me on here. I just want to be very intentional with my words. Then, this morning I woke up about an hour before my alarm clock went off and with thoughts in my head that would not allow me to go back to sleep. This may be offensive to some or many of you. It may hurt your feelings because you have enjoyed one or both of these things. Pre-cursor... I am not here to condemn but to remind. Uplift. Encourage. And edify. This is my opinion and I know this will not be popular of the world-- but I am not supposed to be of this world anyways. So with that... here I go!

Lately, directed towards the female population, two things have become crazy popular. One is a book and one is a movie. Both are damaging. I am talking about the book "50 Shades of Gray" and the movie "Magic Mike". (Insert guarded walls flying up and angry faces forming.)  

I have grown to love reading. A good romance. A tearful ending. A plot twist. Its so easy for me to get wrapped up in these things and check out for days at a time. I've been known to read books (plural) in a week. But when I heard about this book and the fan following they were displaying I was shocked. The amounts of women I knew that were devouring this book was hard to believe. I even heard about someone's grandmother being on the library's waiting list. It always made me twinge a bit when I would hear people talk about it, but it wasn't until recently that I have become completely sickened by it. Because... let's not beat around the bush... it is porn ladies. It may not be visual, but it is giving you images in your mind that will be stuck there. As a Christian woman, desiring and striving to be set apart,  I cannot support or promote this book. Let's look at it from some of your vantage points (I'm not married yet). Imagine you were cleaning your house and you stumbled across your husband's stash of porn or Playboy magazines... you would, most likely, be hurt, upset...maybe even get mad and yell. Men are visual.... that is why this appeals to them. Books like these appeal to women's minds.

I'm not married. I hope to be someday. I desire to be a Proverbs 31 woman and love and cherish my husband. I long to be his helpmate and come up alongside of him and do more Kingdom work together as one than we could apart. But if I... even now as a single woman... read stuff like this I will have an unclear, and tainted idea of what a marriage looks like. I will have these images in my head of what my husband should do for me physically and take away the desire I have for my husband and place it on something that is fake. So if I have in my head that this is okay because I don't have a husband I am justifying this and lying to myself. I'd be finding my desires from an unnatural source. It is porn. 

Next, the movie Magic Mike. This was really convicting for me because some of my favorite actors are in this movie. I love Channing Tatum... and this movie is a reflection of his life. He was a male stripper before making it in Hollywood. But all of this goes along with everything I wrote above. It's taking things that we should not be looking at and putting them out there for everyone to see. I have seen teenage girls that are 17... that I taught in Sunday School a few years ago... going in groups to see this. It breaks my heart because this will only lead to a long road of destruction. I have situations from 6 years ago, and images in my head that I cannot get out to save my life. I never intended to see them-- but you better believe that Satan has used those images and situations in my life. Jesus is good and I am His forever... but we were never promised an easy life. We knew difficulties and trials would arise.

In 1 Peter 5:8 it tells us... "Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour."  We are to be on watch... it this case the devil comes in the form of a man named Christian Gray and a handful of strippers. He uses this to take our eyes off of and steer us away from Jesus. It's terrifying how simplistic his tactics can be. By reading a book? By watching a movie that's rated "R"? How can that truly harm me? It can and does...Jesus warns us to avoid the very APPEARANCE of evil. Every form of evil. And to guard our hearts, for they are the wellspring of life (Proverbs 4:23). In Galatians 2:20 it says "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and have himself for me!"

So stray from these things. Be set-apart and remember that Jesus desires us to think on eternal things... not things of this world. "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." -Philippians 4:8

"How can we love sin, when we remember that because of our sins Jesus died?"

-J.C. Ryle"