Lust/Chastity

Lust.  I think most of us are pretty clear on the definition of this word. What I want to explore after listening to the message on Sunday is, “now what?”  What is chastity?  What does that look like in my life or in yours?

I think as a culture we are saturated with sexual imagery and innuendos.  I believe most of us have a hard time looking at our world from any place of purity.  This realization – that everything around us has informed our way of thinking on sexuality – is where the discussion of chastity has to start.  Nothing is pure in our culture anymore.  Every relationship is suspect.

I think chastity is purity in any relationship. Chastity is the willingness to renounce any claim you feel on a person and honor them for who they are – not for what they can do for you.  For a single person, this may mean not entertaining sexual fantasies of the opposite sex.  For the married person, this may mean fidelity in the physical AND emotional relationship with your spouse (like honoring your marriage vows, not only by honoring the promise you made, but by following the intent and emotion of when they were said).

Between friends this could mean not being afraid to be who you are around the opposite sex, and this is where I want to focus because I hope you are making friends at Imago Dei.  How do we honor those friendships?

I do not believe that anyone should have to check their gender at the door when they enter a room.  God gave us gender – he gave us sexuality, and it is good, but it is not all that defines us.  Many times I see walls put up between the sexes because we don’t know how to be chaste.  I hear things like, “I don’t want him/her to take it the wrong way.” True friendship is thwarted because we don’t know how to even try to approach it from a place of purity.  If our minds are already saturated with what our culture has told us about sex and relationships, we have to willingly cast off our way of thinking.  We have to do the hard work of shifting the way we think about those around us.

I firmly believe that God reveals himself in our relationships with others.  I believe that God made us for connection with each other and not just connection with a spouse and others of our gender.  If we continue to approach people through the filter of their gender, we stand to miss out on a multitude of opportunities to see the face of God and have real connection with those around us.  Don’t let fear or filters rule how you interact with others.  Ask God to give you a chaste mind in your relationships with others, and I think he will help you start the long journey of weeding out the base and replacing it with the divine.

About Vicky Brown

Vicky Brown is a part of the Imago Dei leadership team. She and her husband, Cory, live in Peoria with their three kids.