The Power of Purity

How can Christians live lives of purity in a world that has become so sexualized? Who sets the standard for purity: the culture, Christians, God? It doesnt take a lot to recognize that we live in a highly sexualized culture. Billboards and store fronts use sexual messages to call us to buy their products or services. Magazines and newspapers assault us with sexual ads. Turn on the television, computer and specifically, the internet and the sexuality becomes even more blatant often...
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How can Christians live lives of purity in a world that has become so sexualized? Who sets the standard for purity: the culture, Christians, God? It doesnt take a lot to recognize that we live in a highly sexualized culture. Billboards and store fronts use sexual messages to call us to buy their products or services. Magazines and newspapers assault us with sexual ads. Turn on the television, computer and specifically, the internet and the sexuality becomes even more blatant often crossing the line into pornography. Sexual messages showing an abundance of skin are used to sell everything from lingerie to beer. As if that wasnt enough, there are advertisements for erectile dysfunction, penile enlargement, breast augmentation and all manner of birth control on television, radio and in print. People have become numb to the boldness of these messages and no longer blush. We are boiling in a sexual stew and like the proverbial frog in the kettle, we are being cooked as the heat rises and societys standards are lowered. Are Christians immune from all of this? Were that it was so! Christian men, women and teens are called to be in the world, not of it. Romans 12:2 Yet, by being in the world, many have become conformed to the world. Instead of serving as thermostats and changing the culture, many have become thermometers reflecting the culture in which they live. The culture uses sexuality in ways never intended by God. As the poster picturing gears, chains, sprockets and wheels all tightly strung together wistfully muses, God made us plain and simple. My how we have complicated things. God designed sex to be plain and simple. His original design was for sex to be for procreation and pleasure. His original design was for men and women to use sex to carry out His command to be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth Genesis 1:28. Sex is to be the glue of marriage sealing the marital covenant between a husband and wife. As a veteran pastor for over thirty years, Dr. Irv quot;Sargequot; Woolf, provides quot;battle-testedquot; practical answers as he shares God's design for sex in a sex-saturated world. Irv takes us back to that original blueprint, back to sex as God originally intended it. He describes the God of holiness and God's standard for holiness. In warning us about the enemies of purity, he describes how the world, the flesh and the devil have corkscrewed sexuality and twisted it into a self-serving distortion of what God intended it to be. Irv identifies the key weapon of the enemies arsenal: sexual immorality. Finally, Irv shows us the clear difference sexual purity makes in the life of a man, a woman, a marriage and a family. Irv is no ivory tower theologian but a man who applies the Word of God in practical fashion to the everyday world of temptations. He understands what it takes to live in purity. As a former pastor who launched Every Mans Battle For Purity in his home church, Irv is eminently qualified to write about this topic. Gods hand is upon him and his ministry to purify the Bride of Christ. May the Lord use him. The Church desperately needs purifying.