Purity: Avoiding Golden Apples for the Greater Prize (Character trait #5)

Hippomenes was a mythical Greek young man in love with the beautiful Atlanta, known for her speed. In order to win Atlanta over, Hippomenes had to beat her in a race. As they raced, Hippomenes threw Golden Apples out, one by one, to which Atlanta would stop, pick it up and admire it and tuck it away in her tunic. She reasoned that she certainly could pick up the golden apples, and still finish the race. In the end, Hippomenes beats her and she loses.


Tom Yeakley opens his chapter on Purity with this story, equating it to the "enemy of our souls rolling 'golden apples' of deception, compromise, and sexual temptation in our path...causing many to fail to finish the race set out for them [by the Lord]".


He also goes on to say how the "heart (soul) is the seat of our mind, will and emotions. Sow a thought, reap an action. Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a life. How true this statement is.

So purity starts with us and God. Watching what we think about, and how we act on it.  Maybe it means reading less chic-lit and more Bible. Maybe it means watching "The Blind Side" and not the "Proposal." Maybe it just means connecting our hearts more to God than to activities, things, etc. That we would be closer to Jesus and live more like him.

Of course purity spans from the personal level to the relational level too. I've been talking to women recently about how purity is a choice. Its not something we don't have a say in. We choose to live with our mind out of the  gutter and focused on truth. And it also goes deeper than skin deep. Purity starts in the heart and has to be motivated out of love. Love for what or whom you may ask? Love for Christ. He is really the only thing that makes a desire for purity, well, pure.

Since I'm a single lady, and I work with mostly single ladies, I'm going to address something that I see as a singleton in the area of purity.

I've been thinking of is how purity for men and purity for woman can look different in the temptations we avoid. Though I don't want to put us all in boxes, I would say, from the statistics I've heard, often men's struggles in purity are in the area of physical lust. For single women, more than men, I think emotional lust is one of our biggest downfalls,. We can actually meet a man, and in less than 5.2 seconds we have emotionally taken a dive into the deep end, where we see our wedding dress, our kids names, and what our future home looks like. Though innocent as it seems, this can cause us to have unhealthy expectations on men who really are just acquaintances or friends, not boyfriends or husband.

Scenario (not so made-up...and by not-so made up, I mean I see this at least once a month)

Girl sees guy friend  across the room at a college ministry meeting. Girl decided last week in her heart, he is my future husband. Guy across the room is so focused on his pizza, his buddies, and his plans for basketball or school or work for the week that he doesn't get a chance to talk to girl across the room. Girl across the room waits patiently, talks with other people, and eventually leaves in a huff. She bad mouths the guy or at least thinks in her heart "What a jerk." "He didn't even acknowledge me." Girl avoids guy for the next few weeks and guy wonders "what happened?"

Pause.

Question.
When did guy friend across the room go from future husband to jerk-face?

Answer:
When girl across the room claimed her as husband and put husband expectations on a guy that innocently thinks "but we are at friend level."

Now if in real life a husband did not acknowledge his wife, after a long day apart, that would be something  where we might think the title jerk is true. But in this case, its a bad case of emotional lust.

Ladies, Let's not let "golden apples" being thrown into our path actually trip us up. Better yet, let's not be throwing the apples, which can come in the form of immodesty, manipulation, as well as other ways. And let's not let our minds dive deeper with our brothers than is pure. And may we live believing that Jesus is enough of a reason to stay pure and live purely, for he is pure, and this only can incline our hearts closer to his.

This Blog brought to you by Phil 4:8:

Finally,...whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,

think about these things.