Read His Words Before Ours!
Song of Solomon 4:1-8
Song of Solomon 2:1-4
Ephesians 5:1-20 
“As a lily among brambles, so is my love among the young women.”
I began my freshman year of college as a broken and hurting seventeen year old. I was bruised and felt like damaged goods… “trash” echoed in my mind when I shut my eyes at night. About a week before school started, my parents and I were traveling from Southern Utah to Birmingham, Alabama, and took a pit stop in Kansas City to visit some friends. At church, we stood in the pews, looking like a normal family attending a Sunday service. But, if you could peel back the layers, you would see so much hurt.
And there we were. Swaying and singing along. Until a man came up to us.
“I have something to share with you,” he said.
“I looked at your family and the Lord gave me a picture.”
He turned to my parents and proceeded, “You have a beautiful flower you have watered and fertilized and watched grow. But now, that flower is withered. It is wilted and almost doesn’t look like there is much life left to it. But you need to know, that flower is not dead! That flower is very much alive! And it will blossom and bloom and become even more beautiful than it has ever been before.”
My parents and I held each other and wept.
Three and a half years ago, my husband and I got engaged. We were madly in love, full of anticipation of the future and, ironically, attending the same church my parents and I had previously visited. Shortly after our engagement began, Matt attended a prayer meeting with several men from that church. Matt announced our engagement, and they took time to lay hands on him and pray. One man said, “Matt, the Lord gave me a picture just now. You are protecting a beautiful flower. He gave you this flower and has charged you with taking care of it. Water it, treasure it, protect it.”
The man who shared the word with my parents, and the man who shared the word with Matt… was the same man, who didn’t know me.
And Sisters, as cliché as this is going to sound,
we are all beautiful flowers.
We are beautiful flowers who are loved, adored, and admired by our King Jesus. We’ve discussed before, how marriage is the physical representation of a spiritual relationship with Jesus. Anything outside of that biblical design for relationships, is not what Jesus desires for us.
Song of Solomon paints a stunning picture of what a relationship between a man and a woman is crafted to be. A man and his bride. Two people who are madly in love with each other. He adores everything about her. And basically, if you read just a little bit of Song of Solomon, you get the picture that they’re pretty excited to make love. It is beautiful. It is romantic.
God designed sexual relationships to be between one man, and his bride. Just as He designed our relationship with Him, to be between one Man and His bride.
But sin.
That nasty, gross, infecting, and destroying thing called sin.
Sin says sex outside of marriage is ok.
Sin says sex with multiple people is ok.
Sin says joking about our bodies and sexuality is ok.
Sin says watching other people perform sexual acts is ok.
Sin says using our bodies to sexually attract other people is ok.
Sin says watching TV shows that joke about pornography and promiscuity is ok.
Sin says listening to sexually explicit music and objectifying women is ok.
Sin take the amazing gift of sexuality and turns it into something He never intended.
Now let’s pause and chat about that “P word” for a minute.
Pornography…
It can be a bit of a taboo subject among Christians. Many of our brothers struggle with the temptation of porn, and many are exposed to it at an incredibly young age. Many of our sisters struggle with the temptation of porn, but aren’t sure how to address this struggle because many people don’t recognize it as something women can struggle with. Many of our brothers and sisters have been hurt by the powerfully negative effects of porn. They aren’t able to maintain a healthy relationship with their spouses, they have low self esteem, or they struggle with depression.
Pornography is a great injustice because it robs men and women.
It takes away the chance that men have to passionately love their wives, because they struggle with an unrealistic image of what that “love” is supposed to look like. It robs couples of the gift of pleasuring solely each other.
Pornography is a great injustice because it robs God of His glory.
People cannot fully enjoy His gift to us when we try to seek that pleasure outside of the good boundaries God gave us.
Pornography is a great injustice because it takes away from God’s creativity.
God’s design for sex is incredible! So much detail has gone into this act that binds a man and woman together. When we try to recreate that gift by adding our own human spin on it, it is comparable to ripping up the Mona Lisa and trying to piece it back together with tape.
Pornography is a great injustice because it objectifies God’s children. Humans are created in God’s image. We are beautifully made and the Lord has a purpose for every life. When people are viewed as objects, only existing to bring about pleasure, then we are using, and abusing, the masterpieces God has created.
Pornography is a great injustice because it destroys relationships. Viewing porn is typically done alone and in secret. Alone. We were never meant to be alone. And when someone believes that they can be just as satisfied without their spouse, their relationship will crumble.
We were made for community.
Flying in the face of this injustice, grace beckons and delights.
Grace is offered when the world whispers “trash”.
Grace is held out when we live in the prison of comparison.
Grace reminds us we are treasured flowers.
You, flower, are delighted over!
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Ready to fight injustice of pornography?
Fight the New Drug helps shed light on the effects porn has on the brain, relationships, and everyday life.
Pure Intimacy is a Focus on the Family site that offers resources to helping families with spouses and children who struggle with all forms of sexual brokenness.
Covenant Eyes is an Internet accountability and tracking software to help hold families accountable to what comes across their computer screen.
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