Chapter 6 Part 8

Because of our freedom of choice, we as men and women can choose to ignore God. A lion cannot choose not to be a lion, but a woman can choose not to be identified as a woman. A man can choose to no longer be identified as a man. This ability to choose sets us apart from all other members of creation. We can use our choices to glorify God or to glorify our own selfish desires. This “so called” independence is really a separation from God and from one another. What those who participate in fornication do not understand is that the very things they think it will resolve (loneliness, lack of love, etc.) are the actual byproducts of fornication. After you have committed it you become separated from God an feel guilty. That guilt causes a separation between your partner and you. You both begin to see each other in a different light following the act. The man looks at the woman as a whore and you look at the man as a dog. A relationship begun in this manner cannot succeed for long. There will always be a deep seated animosity on the part of both people. As the relationship continues and there are more disappointments, that resentment grows. In the heat of an argument these resentments come to the surface and we say things we later regret. Where do these things come from? I believe they come from those early feelings of guilt spawned by fornication. The man thinks if she were truly a "good woman" she would not have let me have sex with her and the woman thinks if he really "loved me" he would have wanted to keep me pure.

“Now Jacob kissed Rachel, and he lifted up his
voice and wept. Now Jacob loved Rachel;”
Genesis 29:11,18

The above passage describes how Jacob traveled five hundred miles without a map to find the wife that God had chosen for him. And when he found her, he wept. She touched his heart and he feel in love with her. When they met and married she was pure, a saved woman. Their love was to last for many years and through many tribulations. Through it all their love instead of diminishing it grew stronger. Instead of resentment, they had respect. Women if you only knew how men would treat you if you only would remain pure. If you would choose abstinence over sinfulness and worldliness, the desires of your heart would be met. The man that you desire to find would be there. A man that would love you and cherish you as a special treasure, because you would be special. What is special about someone who has been with everybody or even anybody for that matter? What it says about you is that you respect yourself enough to wait, that you have something special worth waiting for. When you lay down in fornication, you are making the ultimate compromise with your most precious gift. What you lose in the moment (purity and innocence) can never be gotten back. Once you give it away its gone. I have countless stories about women who were pressured into fornication only to regret their decision later. By then it is too late. Do not allow the morals of others to dictate to you what is right and wrong. You are a child of light, walk in the light.[1] The only way to overcome the world is by faith in God. We can never defeat sin of ourselves, it is too powerful and cunning. The Bible says, “We battle not against men, but against dark unseen forces.”[2] If we could defeat these forces ourselves there would have been no need for Christ and His redemptive death. For us to resist the overwhelming tide of this permissive culture we need the belief that God not only rules in heaven, but also in this earth as well. Your choice will depend on what you know and believe about God. The Bible says, “Greater is He that is in us, than he that is in the world.”[3] But faith alone is not enough, we must put that faith into action. Our actions demonstrate if we indeed have faith. Our choices demonstrate whether we have true faith.

Do not believe that because you have fallen that you must remain in that state. Because we serve a God of second, third, and fourth chances, we always have the opportunity to repent and return to God. A good case in point in the Bible is the prostitute Rahab. Though she was a fallen woman and not a member of the tribe of Israel, her faith in God placed her in God’s community. Her faith in God allowed her to be included in the lineage of Christ. She was also the great grandmother of King David.

“Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by
works when she received the messengers and sent
them out another way? For as the body without the spirit is
dead, so faith without works is dead also.”
James 2:25,26

You see Rahab was a citizen in the city of Jericho, in the land of Canaan. The promise land that God has promised Israel, her people were the current possessors of that land. She lived in a heavily fortified city with twenty foot walls, but when the spies of Israel came into her house she had a decision to make; whether to trust God. She made the choice to trust God more than the fortified walls of her city, more than her people, more than everything around her. She chose to have faith in what she could not see despite all evidence at the time being against that faith. She found the courage to go against her own society to follow God, just as we must do. We should also find the courage to go against what this society is telling us when it goes against what God has told us. She had heard of the power of God, that He had delivered the children of Israel from Egypt. Here is this unbelieving pagan prostitute willing to gamble her life and the lives on her family on a belief in a God she had only heard about. And God seeing her faithfulness rewarded her and her family. How much more will God reward you and your family because of your faithfulness to Him? For our faith to be rewarded we must make decisions based on that faith in our everyday lives.

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[1] Ephesians 5:8

[2] Ephesians 6:12

[3] 1 John 4:4