Today’s challenge just might be the hardest yet…
It might be the most humbling, the most humiliating, the most harrying, but also the most helpful and most freeing… if you have the courage to face it.
Are you willing?
Are you ready?

Day Nine

We are fixing to dig deep ladies… so very deep. We are going to take a walk through our past and quite possibly our present.

Today your challenge is to at some point and time between now and March 17th… I am not asking you to do this today because I know personally how hard this will be for some… so just some time between now and March 17th I want you to get physically alone with God. No one else around. No time limit. Just you and God and a sheet of paper… or a couple of sheets of paper. Get alone and undistracted and pray that God would lead you in this challenge.

The challenge I am issuing you is the same challenge that Shannon was given as she sought healing. I will share the challenge in a bit, first let us go back to the garden.

It’s somewhere between 6000 and 8000 BC and Adam and Eve are at peace in a beautiful garden. God comes and walks with them and they are naked and unashamed before each other and God. All the world is at peace… except for one.

There is one who has become full of pride and violence and lies. He sits lurking in the darkness, awaiting his opportunity, his perfect opportunity to steal authority over this world so that he might wreak havoc in it. He’s been watching Adam and he’s been watching Eve… and he sees his open door.

Eve is alone.
She is vulnerable.
He has figured out her weakness.
She gets giddy with the right words.
She gets intoxicated by what she hears.
You see it wasn’t the serpents smooth handsome face and physique that caught Eve… it was that smooth tongue. He spoke words that went to her head and moved her emotions and he deceived her and she did eat.

She then, quite possibly, slithered and slinked up to her husband in her new discovered false sense of power and Adam, dumbstruck and mouth gaped at the visual pleasure of his Eve, forgot truth… forgot holiness… forgot what was right… forgot God… and he listened to the seductress not his God.

Their life would never be the same… consequences came… they always do.

Adam and Eve lost their relationship with God, severely damaged their relationship with each other, lost their authority over Satan and over this earth. They traded acceptance for rejection, belonging for loneliness, competence for inadequacy, equity for exploitation, identity for confusion, security for anxiety, significance for worthlessness, and transcendence for a spiritual void.

The serpent was cursed, Adam was cursed, the land was cursed, and yes… Eve was cursed.

Let me a share a little something with you. My heart was broken over and over again by boys that I wanted so desperately to want me, to like me, to love me, to think I was beautiful. I wanted them to desire me and I was willing to go to whatever extreme just to get that… even if it was only for a moment. The desire was rooted in the heart of a little 2nd and 3rd and 4th grade little girl who wasn’t pretty enough and the boy said he didn’t want her anymore and went off holding hands with another girl. The desire was rooted in the shame of a date rape that I blamed myself for and never told anyone about. The desire was was rooted in wanting the approval of a man…the affirmation of a man because I felt so unattractive and unwanted compared to other girls. The desire was rooted in the curse… your desire will be for your husband. 

Then one day I got tired of being hurt and I realized that I could be the one in control. I realized I could say and do certain things and I could have power and I learned how to use it. I grew cold. The last thing I wanted was a relationship with a man. I just wanted to control him the way I had been controlled by the desire to be loved. He was not going to rule over me. I would rule over him. The problem was… I still got hurt… it was just in a different way.

“I believe a woman’s desire and the issue of rulership or power are related in a way that unwraps some of the mystery behind a woman’s sexual conduct (or misconduct, rather). I believe that the desire for power (and the belief that men possess the power women crave) is what causes many women to seduce men, as well as what prompts some to use sex as a bargaining tool in their marriage. It’s not as much sex or love that these women are in pursuit of as it is the power behind bringing a man to his knees with her charms.

When we discovered as young women that our curvaceous bodies or pretty faces would turn heads, it awakened us to a form of power that we may have never known as preadolescence girls. For some of us, that power was intoxicating… perhaps even addicting.”  

“Most of my single days are a tragic testimony of a young woman striving to gain some sense of power through inappropriate relationships with men. Rather than use what beauty God had given me to bring glory to Him. I used it as bait to lure men into feeding my ego. Rather than inspiring men to worship God. I subconsciously wanted them to worship me, and if I was successful in hooking a man with my charms, I secretly felt powerful.” 
~ Shannon Ethridge

So my dear sweet sister… what have you used what beauty God has given you for? Has it been to inspire men to worship God… or to inspire them to worship you? Why have you had the relationships you have had?

Why do you think so many women degrade themselves with photographs? Why do you think magazines are full of thousands of articles about how to manipulate and control a man through sexual positions and seductions? Why do these women pose for these pics and play these parts in the movies and dress that way and dance that way?

Because they have scanned the room and though there are eyes that condemn them, that pity them, that are embarrassed for them, that truly love them, they instead choose to lock eyes only with the one they realize that they have power over… the ones that are affirming them… these eyes they are addicted to and these eyes they will continue to degrade themselves over for this very moment… this moment of being “worshiped”.

Shannon shared the confession of a young women named Jennifer who admitted that she realized that even when she went to church she dressed herself to be seen. She said she walked in the sanctuary and she scanned the room to see if there was anyone whose eyes were on her. You see she came to church not to worship God… but to be worshiped.

Oh… honey there is only one that is worthy of worship.

It’s time to share the challenge.
I’ll let Shannon introduce it.

“I was seeking to understand why I still felt tempted outside of my marriage, so my therapist asked me to spend a week making a list of every man I had ever been with sexually or had pursued emotionally. I was shocked and saddened to see how long my list had grown through the years. 

At the next visit, she asked me to spend a week praying and asking myself, “What do each of these men have in common?”

“As I searched my soul to discern why such a common thread existed in my relational pursuits, the root of the issue became evident: my hunger for power over a man.”
~ Shannon Ethridge  

Ladies this is the challenge: create a list of the men you have had sexual experiences with, pursued emotionally (or allowed to pursue you), or fantasized about, the point is to find out what common threads surface as you do this.  

When you discover it… go boldly before the throne of grace and seek help in your time of need and ask God to meet this need in you. Seek His forgiveness.

Then if you need to… seek your husbands forgiveness if you have been using your sexual relationship with him as a means to control or manipulate or punish him.

*(PS- destroy this list after you have done it… it is the past… we are working to put it behind us… and not bring it into our present or future any longer)