Setting Boundaries

Purity of Body: Day 38 - Setting Boundaries

1 Thessalonians 4:3-8
God wants you to live a pure life.  Keep yourselves from sexual promiscuity.  Learn to appreciate and give dignity to your body, not abusing it, as it so common among those who know nothing of God.  Don't run roughshod over the concerns of your brothers and sisters.  Their concerns are God's concerns, and he will take care of them.  We've warned you about this before.  God hasn't invited us into a disorderly, unkempt life but into something holy and beautiful - as beautiful on the inside as the outside.  If you disregard this advice, you're not offending your neighbours; you're rejecting God, who is making you a gift of his Holy Spirit.

Read more...

Pure as Snow

Purity of Body: Day 37 - Pure as Snow

Isaiah 1:18
"Come now, let us reason together," says the Lord.  "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool."

Read more...

Humble and Pure of Heart

Purity of Body: Day 36 - Humble and Pure of Heart

Matthew 5:8
God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God.

Read more...

God of my words

Purity of Body: Day 35 - Pure Speech

Ephesians 5:4
Though some tongues just love the taste of gossip, Christians have better uses for language than that.  Don't talk dirty or silly.  That kind of talk doesn't fit our style.  Thanksgiving is our dialect.

My words are something that I have had always had a problem with, I talk too much and more often than not I don't think before I speak and this is something that I really feel like God has been challenging me with recently.  Over the last couple of years, I would like to think that I have learnt the power of keep secrets I am entrusted with, and I would also like to think that more often than not I use my words to encourage and build others up.  But I know that there are often times when I say thinks I shouldn't, I seek information that I shouldn't and I choose words that I shouldn't.  Sometimes I ask myself if God was standing with me (which he is anyway, but if I could see it in the flesh) and the answer 9 times out of 10 is no.... So I guess I need to knuckle down and focus on using my tongue better rather than as a weapon of the devil, as harsh as that sounds. 

Read more...

Safe, Healthy & Empowered

Purity of Body: Day 34 - Safe, Healthy & Empowered

Titus 2:3-5
Guide older women into lives of reverence so they end up as neither gossips nor drunks, but models of goodness.  By looking at them, the younger women will know how o love their husbands and children, be virtuous and pure, keep a good house, be good wives.  We don't want anyone looking down on God's Message because of their behaviour.

Read more...

You Are Loved

Purity of Body: Day 33 - You are Loved

Luke 15:20
When he was still a long way off, his father saw him.  His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him.

Read more...

Looking for Love

Purity of Body: Day 32 - Looking For Love

Matthew 9:35-36
Jesus made a circuit of al the towns and villages.  He taught in their meeting places, reported kingdom news, and healed their diseased bodies, healed their bruised and hurt lives.  When he looked out over the crowds, his heart broke.  So confused and aimless they were, like sheep with no shepherd.

Read more...

Waiting for Self-discipline

Purity of body: Day 31 - Waiting for Sex

1 Corinthians 6:12-13
Just because something is technically legal doesn't mean that it's spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever i thought i could get by with, I'd be a slave to my whims. You know the old saying, "first you eat to live, and then you live to eat"? Well, it may be true that the body is only a temporary thing, but that's no excuse fir stuffing your body with food, or indulging it with sex. Since the master honours you with a body, honour him with your body!

So here is the thing... even though the point if this devotion was about waiting for sex, I think what I got out of it was something completely different... I am sure that I have read this verse before but I perhaps not this version (the message) or with my current eyes because I had never put eating the way I do and sex in the same indulgence category.

This past week I have been in Sweden at the World Youth Convention, Raised Up and a lot of the convention was focused on Holiness and what it means to live Holy.  I think one of the things that hit home heaps this week to me was the fact that part of holiness is self-discipline and self-control.  These are two things that I particularly struggle with, especially with my food and something, with my upcoming nuptials, amongst other things I would really like to get more of.  

I guess the good news is that in 2 Timothy is says "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, love and self-discipline", so really this self-discipline that I am seeking is a promise of God's Holy Spirit, so I just have to claim it...

So here I am, God, asking that you would give me some self-discipline, help me to practice this and to honour you with it.

Read more...