Okay ladies here’s the thing, we have a couple more days of trash take out and then we are going to begin to dig even deeper… the easy part is taking out the obvious trash. The hard part is when we begin to do inventory on all the rest. The hard part is when we have to discern on what’s good, what’s useful, what’s relevant for our life today, what needs to be passed on to someone else, what needs to be put away in the attic, and what might be discovered as trash after closer inspection.
Don’t panic, this is not just a “Thou Shall Not” challenge… we are just clearing out the clutter so we can see more clearly.
Today’s trash take out might be a little more difficult… tv shows and the chick-flick. Aren’t you glad I waited till after Valentine’s Day to initiate this challenge..
This challenge has to begin with waking up your senses. Shannon Ethridge shared about an experiment she does with youth as she teaches on sexuality. She records twelve minutes of prime time tv (she chose Friends and Seinfeld) and asks them to watch and count every sexual innuendo they see or hear. She said the group always did the same thing, they caught the first three or four but then would get caught up in the humor and jokes and would forget to give the sign, most would end up with eleven or twelve sexual innuendos. When in reality in that twelve minutes there were forty-one.
Shannon writes, “As a society, we have become so desensitized by sexual messages that we often unscrew our heads, put them under the Lazy-boy recliner, and tolerantly allow the television to fill our minds with worldly scripts. Once our minds are corrupted, our hearts memorize these scripts, and then they seep into our lives.”
Everything you choose to take in through your mind can be stored up in your heart, and it is your heart that determines the direction you will take and the choices you will make in the future when confronted with temptation. If you fill your mind with images of sexually compromising comments and situations, you will become desensitized to similar scenarios in your own life. ~ Shannon Ethridge
I used to love Friends. There were several shows that I used to love to watch and would laugh my butt off… but on December 9, 2001, I wholly surrendered my life to Christ… and when I sat down to watch these shows after this date, this moment, I was appalled and embarrassed by what I saw.
I could not watch it. I had never heard or seen it through the eyes of Christ and now as I watched it… I couldn’t laugh. I was laughing at the things that my Jesus went to the cross for. It just wasn’t funny to me anymore.
My sweet sister… you have a choice. For the next thirty-one days view your tv through the eyes of Christ. If you ask Him, trust me He will let you see. He came to bring sight to the blind… but first we must admit that we cannot see.
Now we must discuss the chick-flick.
If nothing else, for this next thirty-one days as you fast from the flick, look at how much money you can save from not spending the funds on a movie and popcorn 🙂
My husband and I rarely go to the movies. When we do go we are diligent to check out the movie thoroughly on Plugged In before we go see it. I don’t care what Hollywood rates it… if it is full of sexual content that exists outside the marriage bed, even without nudity, we do not attend.
You see I don’t find this sacred act between man and wife as a joke to be ridiculed and demeaned by people who are trashing it up and making it of no more importance than going to the bathroom. I also am not going to waste my time watching two strangers exchange bodily fluids. I most definitely am not going to pay to see that.
Anyway.
The chic-flick, ladies here’s the thing. Let’s get serious. For the married woman reading this… I used to hear married people say this, “It doesn’t matter where you get your appetite as long as you eat at home”. When I was living apart from Christ and unmarried and I heard that I thought, well that makes sense… but now as a married woman and surrendered to Christ… THAT IS ONE OF THE MOST STUPID THINGS I HAVE EVER HEARD!
Marriage is about true intimacy, you can’t have intimacy if your mind is having sex with one person and your body with another. My husband wants all of me and I want all of him. I want him to be aroused and fulfilled by me alone and he deserves the same from me. I don’t want him comparing my body to the latest top model and therefore I am not going to compare him to the leading man’s scripted words in the latest love story.
Men are designed to be aroused visually… ladies we are designed to be aroused emotionally. When a man says the right things and is able to smile the right way… How do you think Eve was deceived? She was emotionally manipulated and the words of the serpent captivated her and then she partook of what she knew was wrong. Unable to walk away.
Let me ask you… what fruit was dangled before you in the last chic-flick movie you watched? Did it make you appreciate your husband, or did it make you wish he was more like so and so? Did it make you long again for the excitement of that first kiss, that first date, that unknown angst?
We must guard our hearts.
We must guard our emotions.
Single ladies… that goes for you too.
Hollywood glamorizes the start of a relationship and then leaves you with this false expectation that this is true love… it’s not. True love is a love that stays after the excitement of the new wears off and stays long enough to have that excitement pop up and surprise you over and over again because true love is patient and it endures all things. We need to protect our marriages and if we are single, our future marriages “by resisting any thoughts that may evoke feelings of disillusionment and disappointment with reality” (Shannon Ethridge).
Shannon has a little check list to ask yourself before you watch, read, or listen so that you may be proactive in protecting and guarding your heart so that you might become a woman of sexual and emotional integrity.
Ask yourself:
* Does this glamorize ideas or situations that oppose my Christian values?
*Is it uplifting to my spirit, and does it make me grateful for what God has given me, or does it make me depressed and dissatisfied?
*Does this cause me to think about things that build my character, or does it tear it down?
I know this post has been a little more forceful than the last two… but it comes after a night of Awana T&T when I had 4th-6th grade girls who were too distracted talking about little boyfriends and singing “I got passion in my pants” and “I’m sexy and I know it” to be putting the Word of God in their hearts… it was already too full of trash…
Just think where their little hearts will be at your age if they continue down the path they are on… guess what you are leading the way… so what path are you going to walk? When the little hearts around you follow you where will you lead them…