As parents we want purity for our teenagers but often forget –  how would praying for purity can affect our toddlers?  Usually when you hear that word it’s used in the same sentence as the church youth Wednesday night Bible lesson (and what NOT to do in the back seat of a car or alone with a friend of the opposite sex).  Realistically, it is a battlefield in the mind for most of us, especially if you watch TV or movies.  God calls us all to lead a life of purity in all things.  So what does that mean?  It means ALL are responsible to seek it, even in our role as parents in the widest, deepest and most real day to day living of family life.

The price of purity is high and can come at a great cost in popularity, or by taking a stand in choosing entertainment options.  Recently I attended a college production at the request of a friend.  A mutual friend was one of the main headliners for the show.  She has a fantastic voice and does quite well in major productions so I was excited to see her in action.  The production, however, had some light moments of college humor and it included a few words I don’t normally use in my daily language.  As the play progressed, I found myself more uncomfortable.  I finally had to leave when it was intermission.  I left the company of my friends because I couldn’t share space inside my heart with the purity that God has placed by allowing what I was taking in with the college production content.

I forgot to guard my heart at the stage door.

How often do we just let our children’s minds go to places that subtly tear down the purity that we are trying to protect?  We are very strict on snacks and a healthy diet, but so lax in the diet of entertainment, popularity, and humor.  Even cartoons have become so different these days.  Living a life of purity means that we offer our bodies as living sacrifices to the ways of God.  It’s about a moment-by-moment, hour-by-hour, day-to-day offering of obedience in doing right and godly behavior.  It’s about honoring God with our thoughts, attitudes, words and actions and praying that our kids follow our actions and our choices.  It’s being intentional to live it and then applying truth to your life.   In every way, in all that we are, and all that we see, seek, and learn — it needs to come through God’s filter of purity.

Dear Lord, keep all our hearts close for you to guard and protect.  Renew our minds about what to allow into our minds – that filters into our hearts.  From our hearts come life and Jesus, we want purity to flow through our own lives and those in our families, but also those we can influence too.  Bring restoration and sanctification to our lives.  Show us where we have allowed an impure thought or a damaging choice and help us to repent and sin no more.  The evil that abounds has lasting effects on our lives and our minds. We turn away from those things that hinder our clean hearts and set afar those thoughts and make them a captive to Christ’s power. We can’t live a life of purity without you, Jesus.  We press forward towards purity and the life you have for us.  Amen.

Takeaway verses:

Titus 1:15  “To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.

Titus 2:5  “ . . . that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be dishonored.”

Titus 2:7  “ . . . in all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine . . .”

Colossians 3:5 “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”

Colossians 3:2 “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”

Psalm 119:133 “Keep steady my steps according to your promise, and let no iniquity get dominion over me.”

Romans 13:14 “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

Romans 12:2 “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”