REST WELL

Sometimes in our foolishness or our jealousy over the sexual pleasures that our peers get to taste out there, we race on over to the darker, more sensual side of the street. Though Christian, we no longer seem to "care about the land of the living Son." Who could tell by the way we're living anymore?

Have you been "aching for a dance"-or already been dancing-on that wilder side? Perhaps you've slipped away from Him, and you've "run from the water" of life to have your fun. "But you must be staging this romance." You couldn't have forgotten so soon, could you?

After all, "you drank some" already. You're born again of that same water, and you're His bride. "It seems you are spoken for."

"Do you know where I'm coming from?" That's right. It is too late to run, but you're running anyway, just like Gomer ran from her husband Hosea in the Old Testament. The Israelites once ran like Gomer, too:

There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only...adultery; they break all bounds....A spirit of prostitution leads them astray; they are unfaithful to their God....A spirit of prostitution is in their heart; they do not acknowledge the Lord.
Hosea 4:1-2, 12; Hosea 5:4

Look hard at your level of sexual purity. Do you have a spirit of prostitution in your life? Look hard at your eyes. Perhaps your adulterous heart has given birth to a pair of adulterous eyes, much like the men that the apostle Peter spoke of in the early days of the Church:

With eyes full of adultery, they never stop sinning;...These men are springs without water, and mist driven by a storm...and by appealing to the lustful desires of sinful human nature, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity-for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him. If they have escaped the corruption of the word by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs....
2 Peter 2:14b, 17-21b

The reason why it is worse to turn your back is that adulterous eyes and hearts always end in emotional frustration, just like they frustrated the guy in my opening chapter of Tactics. Once there, you'll no longer be able to ignore your heart's deep poverty:

Ever since, you can't keep that memory off your mind, and your conversations with Heather are filled with inside jokes-mostly dirty. And you've wondered a lot, Why am I playing all these games with God and abusing His grace? Why can't I just love and obey Him? Tears pool in your eyes. When is this ever going to end?
Tactics, page 7

I don't know when it will end, but I do know this. Even before you recognize that poverty yourself, Christ will begin to call you out on that poverty and frustration inside you. "Come on, try and tell me that you're happy without Me!"

He hears the cry of your heart even before you hear it, and He'll sing in truth, "I know you're waiting for the chance to let Me know" that you aren't happy anymore. I know you're "feeling all alone. I know the places you roam."

But you can barely hear Him. You're focused on something else, wasting all your time "contemplating whether you should really feel a kiss" coming from Him. All you can see is that you don't deserve it. You aren't nearly worthy. So "you close your eyes to hear the rain, hoping it could wash away" the "pain you put you through." That's just hoping against hope.

The real hope is that He wants you to receive that kiss from Him. It's His idea, and His gift. But I've fallen too far!

That's simply impossible, and as proof, let me present the following testimony from a Christian brother presently living in federal prison. He began his letter to me with a little joke. "You were really slacking back there in your younger days, Fred. You could only handle four girlfriends at once. I had nine at one time, and I was sleeping regularly with all of them!"

I had to chuckle at his joke. What could I say!

His next sentence quickly chilled my soul and wiped the smile off my face. "But for me, it wasn't one of the nine that did me in. It was the tenth girl, and she wasn't even my girlfriend-I simply raped her. I've asked myself a millions times why I did it. Who knows? I guess I just couldn't get enough sex. Anyway, she pressed charges, and now I'm in prison."

My heart broke for him, but real joy rush into its place with his next words. "It turns out that prison was the best thing that ever happened to me. If I were still out there, I'd probably still have all those girlfriends, too. But I got saved just after coming here, and it wasn't long before one of the chaplains gave me your book, Every Young Man's Battle. As I read it and looked back over my life, I was overcome with conviction. What you said was the truth, and I knew it.

"Because you were faithful to tell me the truth, I just wanted to be faithful in return by telling you that God really got my attention. It's still even hard for me to believe it, but do you want to know something? It has now been ten months since I've last masturbated! Thank you so much for everything. I don't know when I'll ever get out of here, but at least I can live purely for the Lord now while I'm here, and hopefully I'll have the chance to live purely for Him on the outside, too, some day."

So, what do you think now? Do you still think you've fallen too far to turn back to the Lord? Not on your life. Christ is forever standing "here in front of you with the chance to take it slow" and to "feel a kiss" from Him, just as Hosea stood up and gave that chance to his adulterous wife Gomer:

You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with You."
Hosea 3:3

He bought her back, and she turned back. They took it slow. The Israelites will one day turn their hearts back to the Lord, too:

Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the Lord and to His blessings in the last days.
Hosea 3:5

In Rest Well, Christ sings, "No, I won't let you fall to the floor, my darling." How tender! And as for those confusing, frustrating tears pooling in your eyes? "They won't be. No, not anymore."

He'll never give up on you. Why would He give up on you now that you are His bride when He didn't give up on you when you weren't His at all?

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Roman's 5:6-8

The Lord's love has been demonstrated, my friend. He's not going anywhere:

You're His son, and He'll be with you every moment as you learn how to win. He's there to restore you, and He will embrace defeat with you all day long, because He knows He can use it to restore you, to encourage you, and to help you love Him more.

Remember, this call to purity has always been more about your relationship with God than anything else. That's why we were created, and that's why He sent His Son-that we might walk with God in the garden in the cool of the day, shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart.

Never forget that this call to purity is about much more than stopping masturbation. It's about experiencing God in those moments that would have been dedicated to sex. It's about finding God and His help in the midst of every struggle, every failure, and every frustration. It's not about extinguishing masturbation as much as it's about igniting a new passion for God, with your sexuality integrated into your life in a balanced way. It's about embracing suffering and loss, because it deepens that yearning to look Him in the eye again.
Tactics, page 25

It's about relationship. It's about the Lord "illuminating providence through you." He'll never "let you fall to the floor." You are what He's been longing for, and He "is what you've been searching for."