Month: January 2013

From the LYWB.com team: It’s our fifth birthday here on the blog. To celebrate, we are featuring the “best of” the blog all month. This vlog was part of our series from The Jesus Storybook Bible. With more than 100 comments and over 1,000 YouTube views, clearly many of you know what it’s like to feel like the girl that no one wants.

From the LYWB.com team: It’s our fifth birthday here on the blog. To celebrate, we are featuring the "best of" the blog all month. This blog on exposure to evil was one of our most popular posts ever. It was originally posted around Halloween, but even after that holiday has come and gone, clearly many of you are wondering if you’ve ever been exposed to satanic activities.  

Where I live, there are skeletons hanging in the grocery store, zombies at Walmart, and lots of opportunities to attend events and movies that are dark and scary. I bet the same is true in your neck of the woods.

A trip to the

movie theater turns up the same scary results. Invitations to attend these movies or watch scary movies at home may well be coming your way along with opportunities to go to haunted houses ripe with depictions of the "un-dead" (think zombies, ghosts, and mummies).

I posted a "Lies guide to Halloween" with my thoughts on how to best navigate this spooky holiday, but long before the trick or treating begins it is important to consider what God’s Word says about dabbling (that doesn’t necessarily mean participating!) in things like witchcraft, sorcery, and the occult.

Deuteronomy 18:10–12 says, "There shall not be found among you … anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD."

Leviticus 20:6 says, "If a person turns to mediums or necromancers … I will set my face against that person."

Let me translate. Divination is telling the future (fortunetelling). Sorcerers communicate with evil spirits. Necromancers seek to communicate with the dead for the purposes of magic.

I know that sounds like some pretty trippy stuff. The reasons to stay clear are many, which is why the Bible warns so strongly against it. But it is important to be aware that these things might not show up as overtly as you might think.

Almost all of the girls I interviewed for Lies Young Women Believe told me that they had never been exposed to satanic activities, and yet a study of girls who were actively involved in their youth groups found that in the previous three months:

• 72 percent of young women had looked at or read their horoscopes.
• 28 percent had their palm read.
• 42 percent had participated in psychic-related activities.
• 82 percent had watched supernatural and spiritual themes in movies or on TV.

I imagine that these numbers likely represent many of you, meaning that you have been exposed to satanic activities, maybe in the past few weeks, and you don’t even know it.

That’s why the lie, I’ve Never Been Exposed to Satanic Activities made the list of the top twenty-five lies addressed in Lies Young Women Believe.

Nancy and Dannah wrote about it this way:

It’s easy to become comfortable with evil when we are exposed to it casually or repeatedly. And while casual exposure alone may not destroy your faith and values, you need to be aware that exposure plus a lack of awareness of what you’re exposed to can be dangerous…. Be aware of what you are getting close to and what God says about it (Lies Young Women Believe, 64).

If there is one month out of the year when you are most likely to experience casual and repeated exposure to satanic activities, it’s this month. In response, put things like divination or sorcery on your list of things to stay clear of.

What can you do to guard your mind against casual or repeated exposure to evil this month (and all year long)?

From the LYWB.com team: It’s our fifth birthday here on the blog. To celebrate, we are featuring the "best of" the blog all month. This blog on homosexuality was one of our most popular posts ever. It received 90 comments. If you’ve struggled in this area, this post is for you.

I love it when you ask tough questions. Digging into God’s Word to find answers about the complex issues you are thinking about and dealing with is one of the best perks of my job. That’s why this week I want to tackle an issue that many of you have written to us about—homosexuality.

Here’s a quick look at some of the comments you’ve sent us on this subject.

I’m a lesbian. I’ve known I like girls since I was four. I believe in the power of Christ and accept Him into my heart, but I also believe that the love between two women is in no way inferior to the love between a man and a woman. I know the Bible says homosexuality is a sin, but I pray that Jesus will love and accept me as I am. I have never liked guys, and I’m not going to live my entire life pretending I do to please Jesus, though I love Him. Just wanted to share a different perspective.

Just as the color of your hair or skin, your sexual preference is decided by your GENETICS. People who identify as being gay or homosexual do not have a choice in who they love. It is unfair to try and force a person out of a trait they cannot change. Imagine for a moment why, for any reason, you have the right to judge another person for the way that they LOVE another person. Homosexuality does not harm any aspect of this world, economy, or marriage. These are real living people who are as dedicated to each other as the oldest couples you know. Please stop spreading the prejudice toward individuals who identify as homosexual. Please don’t let your personal opinions choke another’s right to live and experience.

What exactly does the Bible say about homosexuality? I know it says stuff against it in the Old Testament, and I don’t believe it’s right, but I was wondering which specific verses talk about it.

Before we go much deeper, we need to establish this baseline—God sees homosexuality as sinful. His point of view on this issue is stated clearly in His Word. In fact, I dedicated an entire post to this subject several months ago. You can read that post here, but here are some key verses to keep in mind.

Leviticus 18:22 says, "‘Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.’"

Leviticus 20:13 says, "‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.’"

First Corinthians 6:9–10 says, "Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God."



Since God’s Word is so clear on this subject, why has the issue become so cloudy in the minds of so many? I think the first two readers I quoted hit on a key area of confusion—the common belief that homosexuals are born gay. You might be shocked to hear that the Bible actually agrees, but not on the terms that the world gives. You see we are all born with a bent toward sin.

Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me (Ps. 51:5).

In Romans 7:18, Paul said, "For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out."



We are all born with a desire, a tendency, and a capacity to sin. For some the tendency is to abuse substances or to have angry outbursts or to act promiscuously in heterosexual relationships. For others, possibly as a result of family history, environment, and poor choices, the tendency might be to gravitate toward homosexuality. But just because it feels natural doesn’t mean it isn’t sin or even that it is in our best interest. Sin is our nature, but that doesn’t negate the fact that it always wreaks havoc in our lives. 



So to you, sweet girls, who are struggling with an inclination toward lesbianism, let me offer you this hope. Jesus came to break the power of your sin nature in your life. 



In Romans 7:25 we read, "Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin."



You may have always had homosexual feelings, so much so that if feels like you were created a homosexual. But that’s not what God’s Word says. The Bible acknowledges that yes, you were born sinful, but you were also created as a child of God, redeemable by His sacrifice on the cross. God asks you to throw off your sin and run the race of life for His glory (Heb. 12:1). 


I know this is a complex topic, so let’s keep talking about it. And let us work together to satisfy our natural inclination to sin less and to honor our powerful God more. In what other areas of your life do you naturally gravitate toward sin? What verses do you rely on to remind you of God’s truth in this area?

From the LYWB.com team: It’s our fifth birthday here on the blog. To celebrate, we are featuring the "best of" the blog all month. This post on sin was one of our most popular posts ever. It received over 100 comments. If you’ve sinned (we all have!), we hope you will be encouraged with these truths from God’s Word.

In response to our posts on love and romance, many of you have written to us to tell us that you’ve messed up in the area of purity. When it comes to being physically and emotionally pure, clearly many of you feel like you’ve blown it. You’ve shared with us that the end result of bad choices has been disappointment, pain, and heartbreak.

I know for sure that one way the enemy seeks to take young women out is to trick them into making compromises in their romantic relationships. He tells a million lies like "purity isn’t possible," "it’s okay if you love him," and "everyone else is doing it" to get young women to forfeit emotional or physical purity. The end result is devastating.

I wish that none of you had to wrestle with the pain caused by messing up in the area of romance, but since so many of you have bravely shared that you’ve made mistakes, I wanted to write a post to give you hope.

I’ve talked to many young women who mistakenly believe that once they’ve compromised, they cannot stop or turn back. Having already lost their virginity or given away their hearts, they see no way to get it back, so they decide it’s too late for them and keep making things worse by perpetuating their sinful behavior.

If that describes you, I want you to know that it is absolutely not too late for you. If you’ve sinned sexually, it’s true that you can never become a physical virgin again. If you’ve failed to protect your heart, you cannot undo the pain that’s resulted. But that’s water under the bridge. God can wipe the slate clean.

It is not too late to turn and go in a different direction. God has made a way for you to experience His love and forgiveness and to turn away from your past sin and patterns of behavior.

To do so requires you to take specific action.

1. Acknowledge your sin.

Don’t say "I blew it" or "I made a mistake." Don’t come up with excuses. Call your sexual or emotional activity what it is—sin. This step is called repentance. Repentance begins with agreeing with God that sin is sin with no rationalizations or intent to commit it again.

2. Confess it.

In 1 John 1:9 we read, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

3. Accept Christ’s forgiveness.

For many young women this is the most difficult step. In 1 John 1:9, God promises that He will forgive us of our sin and wipe the slate clean. But young women who have stepped outside of God’s boundaries for relationships often feel cheap, used, and unworthy of God’s love, and so they continue to sin. If you’ve fallen into this kind of thinking, the reality is that you have given up on God’s forgiveness. When you refuse to forgive yourself and to approach the throne of God to seek His forgiveness, you are saying that God is a liar and that Christ’s sacrifice is not enough. When you consider yourself beyond forgiveness, you are saying that God is not all-powerful and that He is unable to cope with the magnitude of what you’ve done.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

God’s love for you and His forgiveness through Christ’s death on the cross is far greater than anything in your past, present, or future. The basis for your forgiveness is not the level of your sin or even your feelings about what you’ve done. The basis for forgiveness is Christ’s death on the cross.

God in eternity past knew we would sin. So He provided for His Son, Jesus Christ, to take on human flesh and to go to the cross. Jesus had the infinite capacity to take all our sins upon Himself and pay the price. He went to the cross and said, "It is finished," meaning everything that was necessary for you to be forgiven had been done.

Colossians 2:13–14 says, "And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross."

When you accept Christ’s forgiveness for your sin, you agree that God’s grace—evident in Christ’s death on the cross—is sufficient payment for your sin.

You can make a choice that today is the first day of the rest of your life. You can step off the path of sexual or emotional sin and accept Christ’s forgiveness for your sin. But you can’t stop there.

Matthew 3:8 says, "Bear fruit in keeping with repentance." Fully embracing God’s forgiveness means making choices to keep you from falling back into the same trap. Bearing the fruit of your repentance means making choices to keep you from returning to sin. Just as sin is a choice, a renewed commitment to God’s standards is a choice—one that often takes hard work.

What’s holding you back from accepting Christ’s forgiveness and choosing a different path in your romantic relationships? What choices do you need to make to keep you from returning to sin?

From the LYWB.com team: It’s our fifth birthday here on the blog. To celebrate we are featuring the "best of" the blog all month. This post on finding "the one" got you talking. With 116 comments, clearly many of you are wondering if "the one" is out there. Here is my two cents on the subject.

It’s the stuff fairy tales are made of. One guy. One girl. Destined to be together forever as husband and wife. They are made for each other, and they fit together like two pieces of the same puzzle. They spend their whole lives looking for each other, and when they meet they "just know" that they’ve found "the one." 

Sigh.

The idea that there is one person out there for us is certainly a romantic one. But to be honest, I’m not sure it’s biblical. I’ve been looking, and I can’t find any evidence in Scripture that God creates one specific person to be our mate. I know that this has the potential to burst a lot of bubbles, but I still think it’s a subject worth tackling (I’ll get to why in a minute). 

There are lots of great romances in the Bible. Let’s start with Adam and Eve. In Genesis 2 we read that Eve was created to be a helper to Adam. There wasn’t much risk that these two wouldn’t match up since they were the only people in creation. I’m not sure God’s plan for who we are to marry outside of the Garden is so specific. 

Abraham and Sarah were happily married, but we don’t learn anything about their story until Abraham was seventy-five years old. There’s no evidence that God instructed Abraham to marry Sarah because she was "the one" (Gen. 12). 

Jacob loved Rachel, but he met her because he stole his brother’s blessing and was forced to flee his home (Gen. 27–28). Ruth married Boaz, but it was only after her first husband died. I can’t think of any examples where Scripture seems to indicate that God chose who an individual fell in love with and married. 

The Bible does indicate that God knows who we will marry simply because He is omniscient. First John 3:20 tells us that God knows everything. Psalm 147:5 says that His understanding has no limit. But knowing who we will marry and choosing who we will marry are two different things.

I realize it may seem like I am splitting hairs here, but there is a reason why I think it’s worth making the distinction. Thinking that God has created someone just for you (and you for him) sets you up for disappointment. Through His Word, God does command us to marry a believer (2 Cor. 6:14) and several passages give us helpful guidelines for what qualities to look for in a potential mate (1 Cor. 13:4–7, Titus 1:5–9). But if you’re looking for a perfect match, you won’t find him. If you head into marriage thinking that you were made for each other and will fit together perfectly, you may find yourself disillusioned when trials come and your relationship is strained. We know from Scripture that God designed marriage and He created men and women to complement each other, but it isn’t perfect. You will never find "the one" who "completes you" like a missing puzzle piece. 

Well . . . I guess that isn’t exactly true.

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding (Eph. 1:4–8). 

Now that’s romantic. 

From the LYWB.com team: It’s our fifth birthday here on the blog. To celebrate we are featuring the "best of" the blog all month. This post on leaving youth pastors sure got you talking. With 98 comments, it’s clear that many of you have felt the sting of a leaving youth pastor.

As part of the research phase for Lies Young Women Believe, I surveyed approximately 1,000 young women from across the country. I interviewed many of those young women in small groups over coffee in living rooms just like yours and mine. During those interviews, one issue consistently evoked more emotion (specifically tears!) than any other issue. Any guess what it was?

Leaving youth pastors.

We talked about dating. We talked about daddies. We talked about the good, the bad, and the ugly of female friendships. We even got into a heated debate or two about cultural issues, but nothing evoked a more emotional response than the topic of youth pastors who leave.

As a youth worker myself, I was a little floored by this discovery. But the sixteen-year-old version of me wouldn’t be. When I was sixteen, my youth pastor left my church to become a church planter in a different state. I was devastated. I cried for months. More than ten years later that incident remains one of the most painful things that has ever happened to me.

Satan used that pain as an open door to lie to me about my faith and myself. Our focus groups confirmed that he has done the same for many of you. Letting those lies go unchecked can wreak havoc on your spiritual life. As we talk about the church this month, I feel compelled to tell you what I wish I had known as a student facing the pain caused by a leaving youth pastor. More importantly, as I think about the tears you may have shed or the ones you may shed in the future when your spiritual advisor leaves, I desperately want you to understand God’s truth.

Your youth pastor is not your connection to God.

Nancy and Dannah address this very lie in Lies Young Women Believe:

Your youth pastors and leaders are important spiritual leaders in your life, but we have access to God through Christ and Christ alone. Bible scholars call this "the priesthood of believers" (see 1 Pet. 2:9). In Old Testament times, God appointed certain men as priests. They led the people of Israel in worship and offered prayers and sacrifices on behalf of God’s people. Today, Christ is our High Priest. By His death on the cross, He made a complete sacrifice for our sin and invites us to come directly into God’s presence through our relationship with Him. "There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all" (1 Tim. 2:5–6).

It’s great to have an awesome youth pastor (or youth pastor’s wife or volunteer youth leader) who challenges you in your walk with Christ. But it is so important for you to realize that that person is not your connection to God. Jesus alone serves that function. Don’t let a leaving youth pastor sever your connection to God.

A leaving youth pastor provides an opportunity to draw closer to God.

Sometimes due to moral failure or strife in our churches, our youth pastors leave under extremely painful circumstances. Other times we simply lose the opportunity to regularly see someone we dearly love and want to spend time with. The resulting emotion is often a broken heart. God has a specific promise for us when our hearts are broken.

Psalm 34:18 promises, "The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."

God presses in to us when our hearts are broken. He doesn’t run from our pain; He runs toward us in the midst of it. If you are facing a leaving youth pastor, take the opportunity to draw closer to God. Press into His Word with new fervor. Use the time you are accustomed to spending learning from your youth pastor to seek God yourself through prayer and Bible study. Intercede for your youth pastor and his family as well as for your church and youth group during the transition.

Seize the opportunity to step up to the plate.

A leaving youth pastor inevitably leaves a void. But ministry must go on. Ask yourself what you can do to keep the wheels of your youth ministry turning until a new youth pastor is found. Can you head up the praise team? Can you be in charge of loading worship lyrics into the computer for weekly worship? Can you lead a group of other students to welcome visitors? Can you volunteer to teach the lesson a time or two or to find others who are willing to teach? There is probably a long list of responsibilities that were typically handled by your youth pastor. Those things still need to be done. Don’t sulk about the way things are; take the opportunity to minister to others and cast a new vision for your group.

Don’t take your ball and go home.

Many of the young women I spoke to explained that because of a leaving youth pastor, they left their youth groups or the church altogether. This is a clear example of why Satan takes advantage of situations where a youth pastor leaves by lying to us. Reacting to your hurt over a leaving youth pastor by dropping out of your church or youth group is simply the wrong decision.

Dannah writes about this very truth in LYWB:

Having been through this experience, I understand your hurt! Still, you can’t blame anyone for the choices you make about church. We are each accountable for our own actions and reactions. You can’t blame your youth pastor for any choice you may make to disconnect from the Body of Christ.

God’s family works best together. You need them, and they need you. No matter how many bad experiences you may have in church-and we know you will have them because Satan hates the church and is always attacking-the best place for you to grow, serve, and be discipled is in a local church body (Lies Young Women Believe, 122).

When we face pain like that caused by a leaving youth pastor, sometimes truth can be difficult to hear. I imagine that if someone had sent me the above list of truths when my youth pastor left, I would have been tempted to try to ignore it like a kid sticking his fingers in his ears. My pain in that season felt very real, and as a result I felt justified in acting out in lots of ways that hurt my faith and hurt others. I hope you will choose to respond differently. If you’re facing a leaving youth pastor, I challenge you to mediate on God’s truth, respond by trusting Him and loving His church, and be thankful that you’ll never have to face a leaving Jesus.