Well hello ladies! I hope that the title of this one did/does not scare anyone off from reading this edition of the lady blogs. I know that purity is something that most of us have probably heard a lot about, or rather not a whole lot about since all I remember really hearing about it, until summer project, is “don’t have sex until your married”. Let’s be honest that talk is pretty lame and uninspiring, at least it was for me. Looking back on those kinds of talks I truly believe that they (generally) say actually very little about purity, especially because it’s spoken about only from the sexual stand point. This blog is not going to be one of those talks, because being a women of Lord who walks in purity and righteousness is about far more than just dressing modestly and waiting until your married to get it on, though those things are included they are basically only two of the effects that walking in purity will bring about in your life. They are not what it’s all about.
First things first, grab your bible and read through Proverbs 31: 10-30; we do this every study to remind ourselves of the attributes we are studying about. This week the theme is, “The fear of the Lord is pure, true and righteous, and the people who fear the Lord overflow with all
of those things.” Some verses to check out before we dive in are Proverbs 8:13, 16:6, and Psalm 19:9.
The first lady we are going to take a gander at is Hannah. You can find her story in 1 Samuel 1:1-28. Hannah is married to Elkanah who is also married to Peninnah. Peninnah was a jerk, but you’d never hear Hannah say that even though she was badgered and belittled by her because of her barrenness. Instead of pouring out her frustrations about Peninnah to others, the story we get is of Hannah pouring out her heart full of hurt, sorrow and desires to have a child to the Lord. She does not slander, gossip, or defile but she lays it all out before her God and trusts it to Him. She is distinguished by speaking truth and hating evil (1 Sam. 2:1-10). Let’s be honest, most of us girls would not/do not react this way when we are hurt by others. We instead find our closest friend and lay a smack down of verbal assaults about that person, which we would nine times out of ten never say to that persons face… or at least not the way we probably say it then. This is speaking evil, and does not make us “distinguished” but more so makes us very typical.
On the world race they impress upon us two very important rules, which if you break you will automatically be sent home for. The first is that you cannot start any romantic relationships with anyone on your squad or any locals while on the race, the just as important second is that you cannot defile or gossip about anyone… if you do, you go home. When I first heard about this, I thought, “dang that’s intense” but I love that intensity now because I completely understand it. If we are truly going to live in a culture which allows the Lord’s will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven”, it is not going to include any sort of gossip no matter what kind of offense occurs. It does include prayer and confrontation; we are really great at confrontations here on the race. I used to suck at it because I had a perception that it was always hurtful and bred tension, not fixing anything. All of that is pretty true for how most of us approach confrontations too. What makes things different on the race is way we are taught to approach it which is through what we call “feedback”. Feedback allows us to talk things out in a loving manner. I don’t know about you all but for me during the time I’ve lived in a Christian community I’ve become very aware of the idea of “calling each other out”. Especially during my time serving with my campus ministry at Northwest we would talk about calling each other out, but in love. We never really mastered that; rather I never really mastered that “in love” part. It more ended up me just calling that person out for whatever was upsetting me and saying that I was doing it because I loved them. Instead of calling each other out on the race though, what we do through feedback is “call each other up”. This still includes talking to whoever has offended or hurt us about whatever has happened, but it further more includes reminding them of who they are called to be in the Lord and who they are already as a child of God. We do not do this in anger or out of frustration, though we might feel that at first… that’s when prayer comes into the picture. When we call each other “up” instead of “out” we are honoring one another by reminding one another of who we are in the Lord, we believe the best of our brother or sister in Christ despite whatever wrong they did.
