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How to End the Disconnect between Our Head Knowledge and Our Lives

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There’s a deception going around the Body of Christ that breaks my heart. We have seen so many lives ruined because people believe this lie. To some degree or another, this lie is at the start of every deceptive road a Christian goes down.

“I Know It’s Sin, But I’ll Be Ok”

Abortion-minded clients come into our local crisis pregnancy center and identify as Christians. Even after seeing an ultra-sound, sometimes they leave still determined to have an abortion, saying, “I know it’s a sin, but I’ll be ok.”

That breaks my heart. But I see it all over the place in the Body of Christ. It’s our favorite line to justify our sin, whether it’s abortion, pornography, or cheating on taxes.

Does any Christian man doing porn really not know it’s sin? I doubt it. Does any Christian couple living together, acting like they’re married without really being married, not know it’s sin? I doubt it.

So, why? There are many reasons, many ways to get caught in a web of deception. But they all have an element of, “I know it’s sin, but I’ll be ok.”

No, You Won’t Be Ok. You’ll Be Alive, But You Will Not Be Ok.

It’s like saying, “I can cut my arm off. Everybody’s doing it. Lefty is the new cool. I’ll be ok.”

No, you won’t be ok. You’ll survive, you’ll still be alive, but you’ll be far from ok. Just think about this absurd example of actually cutting your arm off. You’d never be able to tie your own shoes or cut your own meat.

“But all my shoes have Velcro and I’m going vegan.” You’re missing the point. You can try to mitigate the consequences however you want, but life will never be the same. Sin destroys. You will not be ok.

“No One Will Know:” An Example from a King Who Was Not Ok

Look at King David. His sin, “secret” adultery with Bathsheba, did not leave him ok. He probably thought, “Look at that hottie taking a bath. I’ll bring her over to the palace for a quickie. No one will know. Yeah, I know it’s sin, but I’ll be ok.”

Yes, he was forgiven. Psalm 51 is a beautiful picture of David’s repentance. And God was with him through all his subsequent troubles, including having his daughter raped, 4 sons die, including running for his life from his own son, whose death he had to pretend to celebrate. David was far from ok. (You can read the whole story in 2 Samuel 11 through 1 Kings 2.)

The Problem: A Disconnect between Our Head Knowledge and Our Lives

We show what we really believe by how we live. If we say we believe something, but don’t live it out, we don’t really believe it.

We go to church every Sunday. We read the Bible. We’ve accepted Jesus as our personal Savior. But when it comes to situations in our life, do we give ourselves a bye on what we know is right?

Do we risk following Jesus and doing it God’s way when it’s our own life? If not, we don’t really believe it.

Intellectual assent is not Christianity. The only person we’re fooling is ourselves.

The Solution: 3 Choices

There is a solution. It’s a series of 3 choices we, as the Body of Christ, need to make.

Choice #1: Repent of Our Idolatry

“I know it’s sin, but I’ll be ok.” That’s idolatry at the deepest level. It’s not ok, and you won’t be ok. Although God will be with you through the consequences, God’s grace is not a license to sin. The book of Romans was written to address this fallacy.

We cannot tolerate any secret sin within ourselves. We notice it, and we cry out to God in repentance until he removes it. We design our life to keep us away from that thing as much as possible.

You get the idea. Repentance isn’t just tears and confession, although confession is certainly part of it and tears often come. Until we make a practical life change, we haven’t really repented.

Choice #2: Speak & Teach the Hard Truths

I went to a church for many years where, in his sermon every Sunday, the pastor wove in something about sexual integrity, tithing, or TV. Even if it was just a sentence, it was there. Every. Single. Sunday.

As churches, we need to stop taking for granted that people know how to live righteously. Even people in the church, who have been Christians a long time, often don’t. And it’s our fault for assuming they do and not regularly teaching on it.

As Christians, we are God’s voice of love to the world. It’s not love to watch destructive life styles devastate people and not say anything. The world desperately needs us to speak the truth in love.

“Silence does not interpret itself.” – Father Frank Pavone, Priests for Life

When the church doesn’t regularly teach about practical righteousness, or when Christians don’t speak up about what we know is wrong, we’re leaving our friends and children to the influence of the world.

Choice #3: Trusting God: Prepare to Die

One of my favorite memes is from the movie The Princess Bride: “Hello. My name is Indigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

If we’re really serious about being Christians, and not just playing church, we need to live this version: “Hello. My name is Jesus. You follow me. Prepare to die. To yourself.”

(NOTE: I’m not talking about suicide here or being martyred, or giving up on life. I’m talking about living the life God’s calling us to live, dying to our own selfish desires that don’t honor God.)

When disaster strikes, we need to be prepared to follow God’s ways no matter what. Because in the heat of the moment, the lie is, “If you do it God’s way, it’ll kill you.” And in the heat of the moment, we believe it. From where we stand, looking at this mountain in front of us, it looks true.

And maybe it really is. Ok then. Time to test our belief in the afterlife. Here we die.

The truth is, even if we actually die following God, that’s not really dying. You just passed the test and now are in glory. Small price to pay, looking back on it from the other side.

But the truth also is, the vast majority of the time, you won’t die. God will come through. And not trusting God, doing it our own way, actually brings the disaster we tried to avoid.

Your Turn

What are your thoughts? Tell us your story in the comments. Did this post strike a nerve? Or did it resonate? And please share if others need to read this post.

How to Turn A Negative Vulnerability into a Positive Strength

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We all have them.

Vulnerabilities. Weaknesses. We hide them. We ignore them. We pretend they aren’t there. We’re embarrassed by them. They remind us of our small, frail, mortality. The last thing we want to do is deal with them. But that’s exactly what we need to do. And if we do it wisely, we can actually turn those vulnerabilities into strengths.

I’m talking about the secret sins. Pornography. Small cheats on expense reports at work. White lies. They don’t hurt anybody, do they? Yes, they do. They hurt you, and the people in your life. Every. Single. Time.

The worst thing we can do is ignore them. I can handle it. No, you can’t. Because here’s the thing. Sin is not static. It never remains at the same level. It is either increasing in our life or decreasing. If we think we’re “handling it,” keeping it at bay, we’re not, it’s secretly increasing.

And that’s a dangerous place to be. Because by the time we’re finally aware of it, it’s often too late. It’s exploded into our lives and it’s no longer a secret. 

The tsunami we’ve unleashed in our lives is upon us. The pornography has turned into an affair. Small “inaccuracies” on expense reports have turned into full-blown embezzlement. White lies have turned into perjury.

You’re most vulnerable when you don’t think you’re vulnerable.

And the tsunami doesn’t just hit us. No tsunami in history has ever drowned just one person. The wave hits our entire family and everyone close to us. There’s no such thing as a victimless crime.

So often we think we’ve safely hidden it away in a private corner of our lives. But seeing the devastating aftermath on our loved ones, we wish we could roll back time. If we’d known what it would cost them, we’d have dealt with it long before it got to that point. 

Look at King David and Bathsheba. His “secret” adultery (2 Samuel 11:1-5) unleashed this tsunami in his life:

  • He has to murder one of his most loyal soldiers, Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, to keep it secret. (2 Samuel 11:6-27)
  • The son born from the affair dies. (2 Samuel 12:1-23)
  • David’s son Amnon rapes his daughter Tamar. (2 Samuel 13:1-19)
  • Another of David’s sons, Absalom, kills Amnon and flees to another country. (2 Samuel 13:20-38)
  • When Absalom returns, he stages a coup and David has to run for his life. (2 Samuel 15:1-14)
  • Absalom sleeps with David’s concubines in broad daylight, so all Israel knows he’s the new king now. (2 Samuel 16:20-22)
  • When Absalom is finally defeated, he’s killed by Joab, the general of David’s army. (2 Samuel 18:9-15)
  • For the sake of his army, David has to pretend he’s happy about his son’s death. If he lets his true emotions out, his army would perceive David mourning the victory they risked their lives to give him, and they would desert him. (2 Samuel 18:33-19:8)
  • Even years later, the devastation in David’s family continued. His son Solomon (of Bathsheba) had to kill another of David’s sons, Adonijah, to secure Solomon’s throne. (1 Kings 1:1-2:25)

That is one, crazy, jacked up story! But that’s what sin does in our lives when we think we can handle it. If David had known all that would happen — his daughter would be raped, 4 of his sons would die, and he’d flee for his life from his own son, whose death he’d have to pretend to celebrate — do you think he’d have chosen differently on that warm, fateful, seemingly innocent afternoon in Jerusalem? 

Yes, David was forgiven. Psalm 51 is a beautiful picture of David’s repentance. But he still had to live with the consequences of his sin the rest of his life, even though God stayed faithful and was with him all the way through it.

David thought he could handle it. The graves of his children say otherwise. You can’t handle it either. Neither can I.

So how do we keep from falling prey to our own vulnerabilities?

There are two big steps we can take to keep from being swept away by what we thought we could handle but couldn’t.

1) Set Boundaries

Billy Graham’s ministry never had a scandal. And it’s not because he was so righteous. It’s because he realized he wasn’t. He instituted a rule that no one in his ministry, including himself, ever traveled anywhere by car with someone of the opposite sex alone (except their spouse, of course). This wasn’t legalism gone mad. This was a godly man realizing he was vulnerable and putting boundaries in place to protect his heart. And, because he knew he couldn’t handle it, sexual integrity became a strength of his ministry.

When you admit you’re vulnerable, you’re not vulnerable. You set boundaries to protect yourself from your vulnerability. 

Billy Graham knew affairs didn’t just happen overnight. So he set boundaries, for him and his staff, so nobody, himself included, would even come close to starting down that deceptive road. If the situation required two unmarried people of the opposite sex to make a trip, I think he’d have canceled the event rather than put his people, or himself, at risk.

This is what Jesus so graphically talked about in the Sermon on the Mount.

“If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” — Jesus, Matthew 5:29-30

No, Jesus doesn’t want a bunch of one-eyed Christians called Lefty. He’s saying not to put yourself into a situation where you may be vulnerable.

For example, has pornography been a weakness? Avoid movies with nudity and even TV shows with sexual promiscuity. Avoid music that glorifies sex outside of marriage, reducing women to objects of entertainment rather than human beings and daughters of the King.

2) Get Support. Tell Someone. Get Help.

This is not “accountability.” No fair making the other person responsible for your behavior. This is you, sincerely not wanting to be devoured by sin, asking for help from someone you trust.

Tell someone. Not someone who has a problem in that area also; there’s no point just commiserating together. But preferably someone who’s been through it and overcome it. Someone who’s either won the battle, or, if they lost it, come out the other side and received healing. 

We have authority over what we’ve been set free from. Find someone who either:

  1. Has never fallen in that area, not because they’re self-righteous, but because they realized they are vulnerable and set boundaries, or,
  2. Has fallen but recovered. It was years ago, and they’ve been clean at least a decade. They’ve received healing and are walking in it.

The good news is, Jesus is more into this than we are. He wants to help us walk in his ways so we avoid the self-made tsunamis in our lives. In this fallen world, they often happen without our help. We don’t need to make more.

But in all of it, whether we brought about the tsunami ourselves or not, if David’s story teaches one thing — it’s that God is faithful. Through it all. Always.

How About You?

How have you realized your own vulnerability and set boundaries? Or have you gotten hurt by not realizing your vulnerability until it was too late? Tell us your story in the comments — it will help someone else. And please share this post if it would bless someone else.

3 Conversations We as the Church Need to Have

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Church is the place where we come together as a people and celebrate all that God has done for us. Yes, we celebrate our salvation, but the cross was meant to be the beginning of our freedom. God has done miraculous things in all of our lives and continues to do so. Janet and I have received tremendous healing from the Lord, and we know many others who have as well. I bet you have, too. It makes sense to find a lot of happy, joyful people in church. As it should be.

But we shouldn’t only find happy, joyful people in church and, truth be told, none of us are happy and joyful all the time. Janet and I still have significant pain in our lives, and I bet you do, too.

Yes, our joy is rooted in who Jesus is, so it’s deeper than our circumstances. Yes, he imparts supernatural joy in the middle of horrendous circumstances. I’ve experienced his peace in the midst of tremendous pain, in circumstances that should’ve been anything but peaceful. But sometimes he doesn’t bring joy. Not always; not all the time. You can’t box him in or predict what he’s going to do.

What do you do when you pray, when you worship, when you read your Bible, when you’ve done everything right, and you still feel depressed? What if you still have lustful thoughts? Even suicidal thoughts? What if you still feel the pull toward the old addiction?

We shouldn’t feel like we have to pretend we’re happy and joyful when we’re not. We all continue to go through tough stuff. Jesus promised us we’d have trouble as long as we’re in this fallen world (see John 16:33).

What happens all too often is we sit in church thinking, “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be full of joy like all these people all around me? Just look at all these happy people entering into God’s presence. Why does God come through for everyone else but not for me?”

Want in on the big secret? Many, many other people in the room are thinking the exact same thing. And we probably all have thought that at some point.

What if you’re grieving a loss in your life? Maybe a loved one? Even if they’re saved, it’s never easy. What about a child? What about a marriage? A job loss? A home?

What if you’re caught in a mess of your own making? What if your addiction is crashing your life? What if you’re in a crisis pregnancy? What if you’re going to go to jail, maybe a DUI, shoplifting, drugs, or domestic abuse?

If you can’t go to church when you’re in crisis, where can you go?

Some churches are not safe places to be when you’re hurting. They question your faith if you show any signs of human frailty.

There are conversations we as the church need to have that we’re not having. Let’s go there.

1) Depression

Why are some chemical imbalances acceptable in the church today while others are not? No one would tell a diabetic not to take their insulin. But do we look down on people who need medication for depression as “unspiritual”? Why do we expect God to heal depression but not diabetes?

Everyone is different. We can’t fit people into formulas. Sometimes depression needs counseling, inner healing, and/or deliverance to address the root causes. But what about the people who do all that and still feel suicidal? More counseling? Maybe, maybe not. What’s God doing in that person? Sometimes the person needs medication to be leveled out enough to receive inner healing or deliverance. Sometimes it’s a legitimate chemical imbalance just like diabetes.

I’m not that person and I can’t tell the difference, so who am I to judge? I think I’ll leave that one up to God, and just be their friend, brother in Christ, and let them know how loved they are.

The sticky wicket comes when our method of choice, be it counseling, inner healing, deliverance, or what have you, doesn’t work. Do we blame the person? You don’t have enough faith! You just need to embrace your healing! How dare you break my perfect formula! That’s an injustice that needs to stop. When things that should work don’t work, it just means God’s not done and wants to do something even better in the person. We need to encourage them, not shame them.

We need to have this conversation. How do we act around people who suffer from depression?

2) Post-Abortive

One in three women has had an abortion. Of those, 70% identify as regular church attenders. Janet and I volunteer at our local crisis pregnancy center here in Fredericksburg, VA. The ones that break our heart the most are the ones who say, “Yes, I’m pro-life, but I have to get an abortion because I can’t tell my church.” The shame is too great. This is an injustice that needs to stop.

And it’s not just a women’s issue. Do the math. One in three men has fathered an aborted child. Abortion cuts to the heart of a man’s identity as protector just like it does the heart of woman’s identity as nurturer.

Is it possible that our judgmental attitude and lack of acceptance of girls in crisis pregnancies, especially our own, is what’s funding Planned Parenthood more than Congress? Are we the ones keeping them in business with our shaming and religiosity?

We need to have this conversation. How do we act around unmarried, pregnant young women? How do we act around post-abortive people? Is it safe for people in your church to admit they’ve had an abortion? How would you react?

3) Sexual Purity

Our girls in our churches are getting pregnant with our boys in our churches because we’re not talking about sex in our churches. Sex is part of life, and we should be talking about it in church regularly, from the pulpit, not just in Youth Group. Our silence is letting the media teach our teens and young adults about sex. They’re getting a very skewed, unhealthy, lying, but very slick, deceptive and appealing, message.

“Silence does not interpret itself.” – Father Frank Pravone, Priests for Life

We need to have this conversation. How do we act around teens and talk about sex?

Are You Willing?

… to have the hard conversation?

… to have the uncomfortable conversation?

… to be friends with that person?

… to let those people in your church?

… to admit that we don’t have our act together all the time?

… to come clean about our own doubts and fears?

… to, in vulnerability, be Jesus to the ones who need him the most?

Who knows, if we as the church are willing to do that, we just might find ourselves changing the world.

Please share this post on social media if you agree with starting this conversation.

How to End Social Greed

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We all hate corporate greed. No one likes being reduced to a dollar sign. No likes being treated like a sales target. We can all feel when we’re being pitched and we hate it, especially when it’s clearly disingenuous and false.

The reason we hate it so much is that no one wants to be used by someone else just to make a buck. It’s fine for a company to make a profit. They have to feed their families too. But it becomes wrong when they do it by lying, cheating, deceiving, false-marketing, and generally treating people like inanimate objects (ATMs) rather than human beings.

It’s wrong to use people for one’s own ends. We all agree on this. Take cigarette companies for example. They profit by selling a product they know is harmful. They are harming their customer to make a sale. Yes, the customer has a choice, but profiting by exploiting someone’s woundedness is despicable. It’s nothing but pure, unadulterated, ugly greed.

This is the essence of greed. It embodies the worst side of business – companies serving themselves at the expense of their customers rather than truly serving their customers by solving real problems. We all hate corporate greed. It is an injustice that needs to stop.

But there’s a worse kind of greed. Our culture practices it all the time without realizing it. We actually are proud of it, patting ourselves on the back for it. But it’s just as much an injustice as corporate greed.

Social greed. Using someone else for our own ends. Harming someone else for our pleasure. “OMG, that’s horrible! Who would do that? That would be so wrong!” we exclaim. But we do this all the time, we are entertained by watching others do this, and we praise it as a good thing.

We participate in the injustice of social greed when we sleep with someone we’re not married to. We are using someone else to satisfy our own need. For men, we’re often getting our pleasure from using someone else. For women, it’s often the need for relationship. But in both cases, it is still using (and harming) another person for our own ends.

Sex sets up an eternal relationship between two people. You give your sexual partner a piece of your heart. Forever. F-O-R-E-V-E-R. That’s a long time. After enough partners, you don’t have a heart left. So when you finally meet the one God has for you, you want to give your heart fully, and you don’t have a heart left to give. How tragic is that.

This is greed. Social greed. And it’s just as wicked and harmful as the greed of cigarette companies. It’s an injustice that needs to stop. And you can help stop it with these two tips.

1) Stop allowing yourself to be an object of social greed.

If you’re dating someone who says they love you and wants to sleep with you, they’re lying. Pure and simple. They may not know what real love is. But if they want to sleep with you outside of marriage, it’s not love they’re feeling for you. It’s greed. It’s hunger. They want to use you for their own pleasure. You’re an object to them, not the person you are to God. Say “no” and dump them flat.

You deserve better. Yes, you do. If you think not, please, take a season off from dating. Get healing for the pain inside that causes you to want to trade sex for hearing someone say they love you. Jesus has so much more for you.

2) Stop practicing social greed.

When we sleep with a someone we’re not married to, we’re using them for our pleasure. Sex is the greatest possible expression of love; namely, “I have (past tense) committed my life to you.” There is no greater expression of love for another person than having committed your life to them. This is the love sex expresses.

The problem is, if you’re not married, you haven’t committed your life to them. You can walk away. So you’re expressing “I have committed to you” when you haven’t. What is it called when you express something that’s not true? A lie! That’s why sex outside of marriage is a lie.

It’s not the cigarette companies any more exploiting customers for their profit. It’s us exploiting people for our pleasure, our own needs. Just as wicked, just as harmful. Social greed is an injustice that needs to stop. Wait for marriage.

When did life get complicated?

Think about it. Look back on your life. When did it get complicated? Have the broken relationships, the people you’ve slept with and are no longer in relationship with – have those added joy to your life, or have they added pain?

We see “Sex is Salvation” constantly all over the media. But it’s false advertising. Sex outside of marriage just adds immeasurable pain to our lives, stealing piece after piece of our heart. No one rolls into January 1 thinking, “I can’t  wait for 3 more broken relationships this year!”

The Good News

The good news is Jesus restores your heart when you repent. Repenting literally means “turning around and going the other direction.” It means changing lifestyles. It means committing to wait for marriage from this point forward. It means trusting God and doing it his way. And God will honor that.

So how about you? Are you ready to commit to doing it God’s way and letting him restore your heart? Tell us your story in the comments. And please share on social media if this post would help someone else.

2 Practical Ways to Put God on the Throne of Your Life

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A while back I had a good Christian friend named Nate who had a small boat we’d take out on the Rappahannock River here in Virginia. We had some great conversations out there on the water. After one of these outings, when we got back to his house, somehow we got onto a subject we disagreed on.

Nate was a pot smoker, and I was not. After we argued ‘round the barn a couple times, I realized this wasn’t going anywhere. He had all his reasons why it’s ok, and I had all my reasons why it’s not. We were at an impasse. How was I going to make progress in my friend’s life? The Holy Spirit gently but with certainty reminded me that progress in Nate’s life wasn’t mine to make. Then he gave me a download for how to wrap up the conversation.

I said to Nate, “Look, some things we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on. But there are two things we both know are true. One, you smoke pot because you want to.” He started to look defensive, so I quickly added, “Not a condemnation, just a fact. True? We wouldn’t be having this conversation otherwise.”

Nate relaxed, nodded and said, “Yeah, that’s true. I do want to. I enjoy it.”

“Ok. The second thing we both know is true is,” I continued, “God doesn’t want you to.”

Nate sighed and said, “Yeah, I know that’s true.”

“Then the question I’m going to leave you with is, Who’s going to sit on the throne of your life?”

That’s the question God has for all of us. As more and more formerly illegal behaviors become legal, who’s going to sit on the throne of our lives?

Righteous laws can make a people look more righteous than they really are. Do we do the right thing because it’s the right thing, or because the wrong thing’s against the law? Are our hearts really right before God, or do we just fear punishment? Do we as a people really love and honor God, or are we just smart enough to avoid legal consequences?

When righteous laws are removed, the true heart of the people is revealed. God wants a people who do the right thing, not because they legally have to, but because they truly want to. Because they love him. They die to their own desires, and instead choose God’s way because they are so enraptured by his love.

Wasn’t this the choice in the Garden of Eden? God’s life or the experience of good and evil? (“Knowledge” in the Bible always means “experience.”) Adam and Eve chose to experience good and evil and broke God’s heart.

We’ve all made choices that have broken God’s heart. We’ve all chosen ourselves and our desires at the expense of the people around us. But God, in his love for us that never gives up, made a way for us back to that original choice in the Garden. That’s what the cross was all about.

God never wanted to control us—that’s why Adam and Eve had a free choice and so do we. God wants to love us, and he longs for that love to be returned. He grieves over our self-destructive behavior that breaks relationship with him.

But with sex outside of marriage as the norm, abortion legal, sodomy legal, same-sex marriage legal (with child molestation to follow), pot becoming legal in more and more places (with harder drugs to follow), it’s easy to ask, “Where’s God in all this? What’s going on?”

God’s sovereignty is not threatened by our sin. Here’s what I believe God is doing in all this. God’s known our heart as a people all along. But by allowing us to remove righteous laws, he’s allowing us to see our own heart. God is revealing our heart to us, longing for us to cry out to him for his heart.

God wants a people who will not break his heart. He wants a people who will die to their own desires because they are so enraptured by his love. He wants a people who choose the right thing because they love him and it’s the right thing, not because they have to. But to get that, he has to allow an atmosphere where we don’t have to do the right thing. Hence, in his sovereignty, he’s allowing us to remove righteous laws, and the subsequent increase in wickedness is on us.

We teach and exalt relativistic morals in our public primary schools, and our universities are institutionalizing immorality. We’re calling good evil and evil good. Then we’re shocked when the logical consequences of our choices play out and active shooters don’t know right from wrong.

But the good news is God’s love is more relentless than our sin. He’s not interested in controlling us. He’s interested in loving us, and seeing that love returned through the lives we live for him, dying to ourselves.

Who’s going to sit on the throne of our lives? Here’s 2 practical ways to put God there, if you choose to.

1) Frequent and Regular Time Spent with God

It all begins spending alone-time with God, just the two of you. A marriage where husband and wife don’t spend regular alone-time isn’t going to last long.

But it can’t be forced. It can’t be out of religious obligation. It can’t be checking a box. How would you feel if you spouse (or your BFF if you’re not married) came and, with a heavy sigh while checking their watch said, “Ok, I’m obligated to spend the next hour with you. I’ve set an alarm on my phone so we don’t go over, and I can get back to living my life that doesn’t have anything to do with you. What do you want to do for the next hour?”

Any takers to sign up for that relationship? Don’t we want the other person to actually look forward to spending time with us, like we do with them? That’s how God feels.

2) Have lots of sex with your (opposite sex) spouse. Only.

This is crazy, and I don’t really know why, but a sure sign of closeness to God is sexual purity. There are perversions on the other extreme in other parts of the world, but in the West, almost always false teaching winks at sexual immorality.

If you’re not married, regardless of your past, from this day forward, wait until after you’re married. God will totally bless that.

Marriage is an everyday model of our relationship with God. The idea behind marriage is one spouse, for life. And we share a level of intimacy with that person that is never, in our lifetime, shared with anyone else.

That’s a picture of how it’s supposed to be with us and God! One God for us, for life. We don’t flit back and forth between different idols. We live for our one God only, and we share a level of intimacy with him we don’t give to anything or anyone else.

But in our society, we totally flit around between different idols. In our teen years we live for sex, as young adults we live for entertainment, in our working years we live for money and security, and in retirement we live to play with our toys. None of these things are bad in and of themselves. But we pursue them outside of God’s boundaries because we care more about our own pleasure then we do about relationship with him. Because we still sit on the throne of our own lives.

Put aside all the arguments and emotions for a minute. There are two things we all can agree are true. One, we have sex outside of marriage because we want to. Not a condemnation, just a fact. And the second thing we both know is true is God doesn’t want us to. So who’s going to sit on the throne of your life?

(If you want to know why sexual integrity is such a big deal to God, and *why* God’s boundaries are what they are, I’ve written a small $5 book answering that question. But I’ll send it to you for free if you email me your address at dave@IdentityInWholeness.com and ask for it.)

So back to the question. Who sits on the throne of your life? If God sits there, what has giving him that place cost you? Was it worth it? If there’s an area of your life where God doesn’t yet sit there, can we help you come to that place of surrender? Tell us your story in the comments and please share on social media if you think this would bless someone else.