A Penny for Purity

Last night I finished reading a book about purity. It brought tears to my eyes as it gave deeper insight to the importance of staying pure and the battle involved. As a Christian I have always abstained, kept myself from the world and the ways that it involves. I had never really thought about why, I was just being a good Christian boy following the rules of the religion. But as we all know, Christianity is in fact not a religion. It's a relationship. Over the past few months I have learned more about what that means and what it pertains. My life is not dedicated to holding to a standard set by the church. I am not alive to be pointlessly stubborn about going against the typical world system. I am alive to fall in love. There is one who made me to be with me. Jesus Christ lived and died so I could live with him forever. He doesn't set rules for me to make my life miserable. He wants my life to be full of love and joy. Now how many know that's exactly what purity is all about. Purity is not a set of rules designed to set us apart from the world just so we can have something to struggle with that makes us different. Purity is a vicious battle to prove to ourselves and to another that we are willing to fight to keep ourselves whole to dedicate the fullness of our love to one single other person. We were created for relationship and everything about who we are longs for relationship. The purpose for our lives is to spend it preparing ourselves to be united in marriage to the one who truly loves us. Everything about the life of Jesus parallels the marriage ceremony. He is crazy about us and sits in heaven yearning and longing for the day we will be united for eternity. He is ravished daily by our process of falling completely in love with him. He gave us this life so we can fall deeper and deeper in love with him by our own free will. This is the testing ground for our spiritual purity. He set the stage and made the sacrifice for perfect forgiveness so no matter how far we fall we can always be 100% restored. The battle we face in the spiritual realm to keep our lives wholly dedicated and pure is perfectly mirrored by our fight in the physical. The relationship we seek in a spouse is the same physically as what we seek spiritually in Jesus. Purity is something we fight for to keep intact for the one we are going to spend the rest of our lives with. The reason we fight is because that person is going to be worth everything. The battle is something priceless and maybe I speak for myself but I am going to fight with everything I've got. Through the thick and thin this person is going to be worth it and I mean to put my entire self into it. I am not going to withhold anything from her and am going to be passionate about keeping everything for her. Even as I'm writing this I see more of how our pursuit for relationship on this earth beautifully represents how Jesus wants us to be after him. I believe that the process we go through for our spouse has a lot to teach about how we should live for Christ. When you commit the rest of your life to another, I'm sure you would want to be certain you are ready for it so you can experience it to its fullest. I ask the Lord daily to continue to work on my heart so I can be fully confident that when I find my wife I am going to be perfect for her. As I walk with the Lord in my pursuit for marriage I am excited to learn all the ways it relates to my relationship with him. If it takes my whole life to be perfect for that person, I will wait patiently with my first love and not be discouraged by anything. I will be satisfied with my life not if I do get married, but if I find the walk of life that teaches me the most about my saviour. As I study what it means to keep my purity I see how much love and joy there is to be found in marriage and can't forget that God is love. God is love! Where there is love, there is God. What a truly amazing concept that is. Impossible to understand but exciting in every way. As much as my human nature longs for a companion I am beginning to learn to train myself to look for marriage not to feed my emotions, but to find God. As I fully admit my heart is not completely ready to be who I want to be for my wife, I am super excited to be with her. Right now I am setting my heart before the Lord, recognizing how off I am from who I should be and excited to walk this process with him.