I am sitting here before the computer screen debating on what the topic should be today. We are closing in on the last days of this Thirty-three Day Challenge. There is the porn issue, the masturbation issue, the how far is to far issue, but the fact is in all these “issues” the answer is the same… “yada” so I am just gonna hit on all three today.

The enemy of your soul will use all of the above issues to steer you as far away as possible from yada, from God’s design, from God’s best for your heart.

If Gods word for sex is yada and yada means to be deeply known and deeply respected… then this in itself answers these issues and in truth most of these issues are related to one another and if you deal with one you indadvertedly deal with another.

If we remember to live by love and not by law… if we remember that Christ is in us, and with us, and sees us… if we remember the reality of His presence… then these issues can become non-issues in our lives.

Day Thirty

The porn issue:

Here’s the thing in a nut shell. Men like naked women. God presented Eve to Adam and when God did Eve was naked… and Adam liked it. However, Eve was Adam’s wife, not just “any” woman. Adam would care for Eve, would love Eve, would forsake all others for Eve, would walk with Eve, would talk with Eve, would hold Eve, would have children and raise a family with Eve… He would KNOW Eve.  And Eve would know Adam and she would deeply respect him as a man and as her husband.

YADA.

Can whatever you are viewing, or reading, or listening to, or fantasizing about, that brings you to sexual arousal deeply know you or respect you? Can you deeply know or deeply respect what you are viewing, reading, hearing, or fantasizing about? Do you feel deeply respected and deeply known when you are in the porn issue? Are you excited to call all your friends and tell them all about your porn issue? Ladies, do you deeply respect this unknown man that you are using to fulfill your own sexual and emotional desire?

The truth is it is hard to deeply respect a man who is involved with porn. Whether he is the man you are viewing or whether he is the man viewing it. If your husband is involved with porn and he sees no issue with it, and maybe even you have not had an issue with it… let me ask you to seriously think about the respect level in your marriage, for him and yourself, and how has it truly affected your ability to submit to him as the head of your household… even if this is something you view or have viewed together.

Many men and women think the porn issue will just go away when they get married… but marriage doesn’t fix sin. Only confession, crucifixion, and daily washing of the Word fixes sin. If porn is a part of your marriage then it needs addressed and confessed.  It needs dealt with before it destroys you and your marriage. It drives a wedge between you and your spouse (or future spouse) and it drives a wedge between you and your Christ.

The masturbation issue:

Is this not usually a response to the above issue… not guarding your eyes, ears, and heart from things that sexually stimulate you. You are a sexual being. God gifted you with your sexuality so that you might desire and enjoy your spouse. Sex is designed by God to bring you into an exclusive relationship with your spouse. You can’t be in a relationship with yourself. Sex is not a solo sport.  Masturbation can bring you release from sexual tension… but it leaves you empty and unfulfilled… and cold.

Please know that God is mindful of sexual tension. He created your body to deal with it. Yes, I am talking about the “wet dream”. However… you are not to go to bed purposely preparing your mind to go there because that brings you right back to the above porn issue.

If  you struggle with this… tell someone. Do not let the shame you feel keep you from seeking help.  God did not save you, and redeem you, for you to remain in darkness and shame, and seeking help keeps you accountable. Ladies, we need each other to hold our feet to the fire of holiness.  Many men and women think, like the porn issue, that the masturbation issue will just go away when they get married… but once again, marriage doesn’t fix sin, only confession, crucifixion, and daily washing of the Word fixes sin.

(Here is a recent post that Dannah Gresh has written a recent post on how to satisfy your sexual desire in singleness. I am about to read and review her new book Pulling Back the Shades that deals more deeply with this topic.) 

The how far is to far issue:

This issue has been discussed before in this challenge as we looked at living by love and not law. If you have to ask “is this too far” then it is. If you are asking just how much can I get away with…then you are asking the wrong question. You need to be asking how close do I get before I feel my emotions kick in and create a desire within me for more. If you have a desire to go further just from looking in his eyes… then my guess would be that kissing him is gonna get you in a lot of trouble.

I believe we can find the right answer to how far is to far in Scripture.

Do not sharply rebuke an older man, but rather appeal to him as a father,

to the younger men as brothers,

the older women as mothers,

and the younger women as sisters,

in all purity. 

1 Timothy 5:1-2

So ladies… if you wouldn’t do it with your dad, if you wouldn’t do it with your brother, then you shouldn’t do it with him… because in Christ, until he wears the title husband, he wears the title of father or brother.

I am teaching my girls to save that first kiss for the man that will be their husband. I do not know as of yet if they will heed my teaching… I pray they will. I pray that they choose to wait on the boy that falls in love with their hearts… not their face.

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So there is just a quick run down of these three “issues”. As we grow into women of emotional and sexual integrity these are issues we must address. We can’t pretend that they are not out there. If we want to raise our daughters to be women of emotional and sexual integrity then we can’t stick our heads in the sand and pretend that they will never face any of these issues… because they will.

Ladies, your challenge today is to continue to examine your hearts and see if any of these issues are a struggle that you need to bring before the throne of grace. Are they a struggle that you need to talk to someone about. And if you are a mom… these are issues you need to be able to talk about with your children. Do you need to do it now?

Then do it.

And do it with grace and truth.

Don’t do it with condemnation and hell fire and brimstone so that your child hides any future struggles with this out of fear and shame.

We live in a world where we walk in “religious” freedom. We or our children may never be faced with the struggle with whether or not we have to choose physical death over renouncing Christ, but the enemy of our souls has taken our world of freedom and used it to his advantage.

If he can’t cause us to face physical death, he will cause us to face emotional and mental death. Don’t think that one is worse than the other.

One is inside, one is out…

I would go so far too say that the dying on the inside is far worse… wouldn’t you.

“Everyone’s story is different.” That’s how Rachel began hers. “I grew up wishing I was a man.” She went on to share a memory from her early childhood when she…

I am not going to finish the story.

I am not going to finish it because I want you to be able to do that if you need to.

Day Twenty-Nine 

By the way, Rachel grew up in a Christian home. She knew God loved her. She knew He’d made her. She just felt like a boy trapped in a girl’s body. She played with boys and had very few friendships with girls… As time moved on, she grew into a young adult- and discovered that sex is emotional. “It was very easy for me to manipulate friendships with women who would become emotionally dependent,” admits Rachel. “Women who have never had a same-sex attraction would allow themselves to become physically intimate with me because I fed that emotional attachment so much.”

All the while, Rachel made her way through youth group and graduated from a Christian college…

No one knew.

All the while she knew her feelings were not right.

All the while she wondered why God would not make her feelings go away if they were wrong.

All the while she kept silent about her struggle. She let no one in her church know about her struggle… She didn’t want to say it out loud.

Silence didn’t help.

Finally she mustered up the courage to talk to her Pastor’s wife… and now Rachel is walking in freedom and has moved beyond her struggle with same-sex attraction and is being used by God to help others with theirs.

Are you a Rachel?

Let me share some news that might shock you. I have served in the area of children and youth ministry since the Lord called me to be wholly surrendered, during one of these times of ministry I was talking with a group of jr high age girls… this was a group, not just a few, every single one of these girls broke out in nervous laughter of agreeance that they had already struggled, or at least wondered, if they were a lesbian.

This is real. 

Do the young women (and men) around you have the freedom to come and share their struggle in homosexuality with you and not be condemned… or maybe you are reading this and you are someone like Rachel who needs to let the Light into your dark silence?

Rachel says that when she starts working with a teen who is struggling, she refuses to let her use labels. Don’t let the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transsexual movement slap a label on you. And don’t let Christians who judge your struggle to be more scandalous than theirs label you as somehow less precious in God’s eyes.

You are not gay. You are a daughter of Christ. Struggling with same-sex attraction is a symptom of life lived in a fallen world. Stop labeling yourself.

It has been my experience that when someone struggles with homosexuality it can come down to two main things.

1) You are a Rachel… something happened in your early childhood to plant a “lie seed”. Maybe it was as simple as being picked on for being “eewwww a girl”, maybe it was a sexual molestation by a trusted friend or family member, maybe it was being exposed to pornography and your sexual awakening happened in the oh so wrong way. It doesn’t matter what “lie seed” was planted… but you never told anyone about it… so the Enemy of your soul has spent years and years watering it for you and he’s been feeding it and it’s been growing inside of you in the dark and now it is choking out your light and your hope and the truth that you once could at least see a little bit of…

2) Or may be it’s the Lie we talked about on Day Sixteen. Maybe you just are drawn to a person because they catch your attention and the lies you have grown up with have convinced you that when someone gets your attention and now has your affection… then you must want to have sex with them… and once again you never told anyone about this thought, this feeling, this lie… so it grows inside you…

Ladies, do you remember Day Sixteen: Getting to the Heart of the Matter:

Now in attraction you become familiar enough with the person to know you are drawn to him, but you are not yet familiar enough to act affectionately toward that person.

Both attention and attraction are not limited to men but include a wide variety of things: the kind of clothes we like, the style of house we prefer, and the type of food we crave.

When you go to church or business meetings, you probably are drawn to certain individuals but not to others. The woman who became your friend is probably someone you run to when you need a hug or have really good news to share.

Society has twisted our minds into thinking that if we are drawn to someone, we must want to have sex with them. But attraction isn’t necessarily sexual. 

(Personally I believe this lie and twisting of attention and attraction and affection is one of the tools that the enemy has used to convince many that they must be homosexual or bisexual to feel the way they do. We will discuss this in more depth later in the challenge)

When we find ourselves attracted to someone we then begin to move into showing that person affection. 

And ladies do not forget what we have learned about our God given desire for yada.

Could it be that maybe the struggle in lesbianism for some is just that their heart has been broken over and over and they just want to be known and understood and this other girl does because she has really been there, she knows how you feel, how you think, what you mean… 

So instead of choosing to believe the truth and trust God to heal your heart and wait on Him you seek shelter in her “understanding” arms instead of His?  

Maybe you never meant or intended it to become a sexual relationship, but it has and now you don’t know how to walk away, you feel trapped because you are on this road and you don’t know how to get off, and you’re scared of what you will go through, what others will say about you, if you do.

Then please do not ever forget the truth to see you through the temptation that we learned on Day Seventeen: Aroused Attached Addicted

Finally, seek a trusted friend or counselor to hold you accountable through this season of temptation. If you know you are going to have to answer to someone else- whether it is your husband, a friend, or a counselor- about your thoughts, words, and actions, you’ll try harder to limit them to things you wouldn’t be embarrassed to admit. Getting real and honest with yourself and with someone who can keep you from falling into the pit of compromise is the best lifeline available.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another,

and pray for one another so that you may be healed.

The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.

James 5:16

My experience has been that if you starve your desire to be emotionally intimate with a man, it eventually dies. The more you control your appetite for forbidden fruit, the more dignity and satisfaction you will feel about yourself and your ability to be a woman of sexual and emotional integrity.

I truly believe if you starve  your desire to be emotionally and sexually intimate with a female and (and is the key word here) and share your struggle with a trusted friend or counselor and flood your soul with the Word of God… you will have victory in this struggle as much as any other you face…

This is not the one sin in Scripture that God refuses to help you with, it is not the sin of eternal damnation nor is it the I was just made this way sin so it must be okay.

It is a battle between good and evil that is raging in your mind, heart, and soul… but in Christ you have been given the victory… but you gotta fight. Stop believing the lie and come at the father of lies with the Sword of Truth and cut his head off so he will shut his lying mouth and his lies will not progress within you and control you.

Dannah shares in her book the progression of a lie:

1) We listen to a lie. We frequently get close to messages that are contrary to God’s truth.

2) We dwell on a lie. We converse about those lies and consider deeply and regularly what is said without dwelling on truth or asking the advice of others who know God’s truth.

3) We believe a lie. We believe that the lie is more trustworthy than what God says in His Word.

4) We act on the lie. We sin.

You see, the patterns, behaviors, and addictions we struggle with are often the fruit of a lie that took root years ago.

Oh ladies, get this book, and read it, and share it with the women in your life. The truths that Dannah shares in her book What Are You Waiting For are eye opening and life changing because she shares God’s truth in love.

Your challenge today: maybe you struggle with this… maybe you know someone who does. Let me share with you that Rachel was able to be set free from her same sex attraction because the woman she went to for help did not condemn her. She did not pick up a Bible and hit her over the head with all the Scriptures that God shares with us about how homosexuality is an abomination… Rachel knew all of those… she grew up with them and God had already placed the law in her heart…

Rachel needed grace.

The woman Rachel sought help from did not condemn her with the Word, but at the same time she did not tell Rachel that she could just keep on living that way and God would be just fine with it. She met Rachel were she was and she chose to love her with grace and truth and strengthen her with grace and truth and guide her with grace and truth.

For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.

For the Law was given through Moses;

grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.

John 1:16-17

Your challenge… if you need that woman go find her today. She is out there. Or ladies, if you don’t need that woman today… then be that woman to someone who does.

God created man in His own image,

in the image of God He created him;

male and female He created them

Genesis 1:27

Isn’t it interesting that when God shares that He created us in His image He shares that He created us male and female. It doesn’t say in the image of God He created them with reasoning power and creative ability and power and might… no just simply male and female He created them.

Day Twenty-Eight

The Bible mentions only gender in reference to our divine design.

Maleness.

Femaleness.

Why? Because the one true God is a social being… And the unique distinction between maleness and femaleness invites us to be social beings too. Our male and female differences are what create our craving for yada. We wouldn’t long to be known if we were all alike, right? The experience of being known means we start at a place of being unknown. This places authentic humanity and sexuality in the context of male and female diversity…

…the secular worldview declares that to be human is to be an animal and, therefore, we can follow any physical or instinctual urges we might have. But a biblical worldview tells us that to be human is to be- as a distinct female or male- the image of God. His “statue.” When people look at us, they see Him.

That’s pretty holy.

Any other view of gender is little more than one of the Villian’s battlegrounds for eliminating our belief in the existence of God.

In our world today I am saddened most by this “unisex” push… I read an article once about a women who had a little child and hid this child’s gender from them and others in hope that the child would not be influenced by their sexuality.  This is absolute insanity to me. In truth this child came out of the womb either distinctly female or male. These women did not allow this child to naturally evolve into the child’s choice sexuality. No, they purposely set this child up to be confused… not clear.

They chose to manipulate this child’s emotional being at the child’s very core…

This child is only one of many deeply wounded children that are being brought up to believe such lies. Oh, how we must be about our Father’s business! Oh how our world needs truth… how this world needs real love. Our society is drowning in a media induced counterfeit love that is driven by sin and wrapped in the cords of deception.

It doesn’t matter what surgeries you go through… it doesn’t matter how long or short you wear your hair. You might be able to reconstruct your body, but you can not reconstruct your soul. You are not male trapped in a female body, and you are not female trapped in a male body. You are a human being created distinctly male or distinctly female who is under the attack of the Liar and Murderer from the beginning.

Don’t submit and surrender to his lies… submit and surrender to your Christ! Oh, please I beg you… believe HIM! He is trustworthy!

The male and female are two distinct, independent humans, but when they come together, they are one, or in the Hebrew, echad.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother,

and be joined to his wife; and they shall become echad flesh.

Genesis 2:24

Guess where else we see this type of union?

Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is echad!

Deuteronomy 6:4

Yeh.. wow!

Let us make man in Our image…

Male and female He created them.

You see God is distinctly three (Father, Son, Spirit), and yet in divine communion He is echad.  Coming together in the act of sex makes us echad. Coming together as male and female, joined in fellowship with each other and God, we are echad.

Ladies, sex is spiritual.

It is another way that we can offer our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God (Romans 12:1-2), when we participate in sex within the boundaries our Creator has set instead of becoming conformed to this world. So beloved, don’t let the enemy of your soul convince you that “gettin freaky” with your husband is dirty or unholy. When husband and wife enjoy each other in the marriage bed… it is undefiled… it is holy to the Lord.

Why do you think Satan uses sex so? Why do you think it has always been involved in the worship of false gods?

Think about it.

Today your challenge is to celebrate you femaleness! Today your challenge is to help your daughters celebrate their femaleness and help your sons celebrate their maleness 🙂

Not in the worlds way… but in God’s divine design way.

This year, 2014, on the television show American Idol they had two very obviously “gay” contenders. However, when it came down to deciding which group the two would compete in, whether the boy group or the girl group, this was not decided upon according to their sexual orientation, but according to the distinctly male and female that God created them within the womb of a woman… that belongs only to a woman.

He created us in His image, distinctly male and distinctly female. He created us in such a way that we display the echad of God Himself to the world. We see this illustrated in the creation of marriage in Genesis and we also see this in unity of the called out church… so even in our singleness we are able to glorify the unity of our God.

The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.

John 17:22-23

If you have ever heard me share about the first time I read through my Bible then you most likely have heard me share about my anger as I read in Genesis 19 about the time that Lot offered up his virgin daughters to be raped as an exchange for the two male visitors…

You would have also heard me share about how I threw my Bible down when I got to the book of Judges and read about the rape and murder of the man’s concubine, that he threw out the door to be raped, in order to protect himself.

I was so angry at God for allowing that and I confused the recording of the truth of sin within the Scriptures with God’s approval. Just because it is recorded doesn’t mean God was good with it, it simply means He is not doing any sugar-coating with truth and historical fact.

So with all this rape and incest and homosexuality and other “forms” of sex… how in the world could these acts be “yada” if “yada” is God’s word for sex?

Is sex just sex?

Is all sex the same?

Day Twenty-Seven

The answer to that question is found right there in Genesis 19…

So they made their father drink wine that night,

 and the firstborn went in and lay with her father;

and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose.

Genesis 19:33

Thank God the word “lay” in Genesis 19:33 is not “yada“.

The word “lay” in Genesis 19:33 is “shakab” and it is described as a “euphemism of sexual intercourse” It’s often paired with the word sikba, which means “emission.” So basically, shakab means “to exchange body fluids”

So my friend, you see,

                            some sex is God’s sex. It’s yada.

Some sex is mere counterfeit. It’s shakab.

Makes sense now why sex outside of marriage is so unfulfilling and leaves you feeling empty and icky and awkward and dirty once the hormones have settled or the alcohol has worn off… you might as well have spent the evening spitting in each other’s mouth.

I’ve been there… I remember it… the saddest part was the way you can convince yourself that this time will be different but it isn’t… it never is and never will be.

Then the absolute worst part is the night that you have your first married sex… after the wedding… after the covenant has been formed and this is the man that has vowed to love you until death do you part and the full weight of what you gave away comes crashing on you in a wave of regret that almost crushes you… and the voice of the liar is right there ready to whisper his words of condemnation to drag you deeper into his pit.

So many marriages today begin already wounded by previous sexual mistakes… and most don’t even know that this is the root cause of the distrust, the lack of intimacy, the jealousies, the walls of self-preservation, and so on.

Oh how grateful I am for the grace of God and for His redemption and His restoration!

So maybe when you first saw shakab, you thought, well good, I can have “shakab” now and save “yada” for later…

Nope, wrong.

Sex can never be reduced to something purely physical. Eventually your emotions will catch up to you… You can try to reduce sex to a simple exchange of body fluids and treat it casually, but reality will catch up with you… Treating sex solely as a physical act has disastrous consequences that our culture rarely acknowledges in its careless approach to female sexuality.

The Miley, Britneys, and Beyonces of the world are rewarded for acting like tramps. They make millions of dollars for shocking shenanigans. But if you act like a tramp, you’ll be trashed and find yourself taking the Walk of Shame, not the Walk of Fame.

Why?

Because what our culture sells us is not real sex. It’s not yada. It’s shakab.

Ladies please do not think that it is just the act of Bill Clinton’s definition of sexual relations that wounds you… I hope as you have gone through this challenge you have realized how important it is to protect your heart and your mind as well as your body… if you are going to protect your soul. And it is the very core of your soul that his hurt by sexual sin.

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?

Shall I then take away the members of Christ

and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! 

Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute

is one body with her?

For He says, “THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH.” 

But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. 

Flee immorality.

Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body,

but the immoral man sins against his own body.

1 Corinthians 6:15-18

There is no such thing as friends with benefits or just casual sex… God did not wire us that way. God designed our bodies to respond to our marriage beds with addiction. Your brain is designed to crave your spouse. Your limbic system was set up to store his smell, his cologne, the way his voice sounds when he whispers your name, it was designed to crave his touch and his presence and he yours. You were designed to become one— body, mind, and soul.

When you allow your limbic system to get “addicted” to someone who is not your spouse… you go through real withdrawals. It’s the reason you keep going back to him even though you know he treats you like crap. It’s the reason you walk down the isle even though you know God is not in it. You are as addicted to him as any junkie is his drug. You become super-glued to them with dopamine and you didn’t even have to “go all the way” for the gluing to take place. It could have just been deep kissing and roaming hands, but skin to skin with emotional arousal is all it takes for the glue to stick.

Even if you never “get caught” physically with a disease or pregnancy, you will not escape the emotional pain that will follow any and all sex outside of the God designed marriage bed. No matter what the world teaches you… you do not have meaningless sex like an animal… you are not an animal… you were created in the image of God.

When God says you are playing with fire… he means it.

For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching is light;

And reproofs for discipline are the way of life 

To keep you from the evil woman,

From the smooth tongue of the adulteress. 

Do not desire her beauty in your heart,

Nor let her capture you with her eyelids. 

For on account of a harlot one is reduced to a loaf of bread,

And an adulteress hunts for the precious life. 

Can a man take fire in his bosom

And his clothes not be burned? 

Or can a man walk on hot coals

And his feet not be scorched? 

So is the one who goes in to his neighbor’s wife;

Whoever touches her will not go unpunished.

Proverbs 6:23-29

Oh and by the way, let us remember that if this is not your spouse, even if they are no one else’s spouse at the moment… chances are good they will be one day… so you are STILL messing with somebody else’s spouse.

Dannah shares about the many girls she counseled in her ministry and she says: These girls had been having fun in the moment. They weren’t abused or forced. They liked the physical act of sex, but when the guys were gone and the high from the brain chemicals wore off, they were left with the sober reality that they’d been used. The aftermath was deep depression and often suicidal tendencies. 

Sex is serious business not a sales pitch. How sad it is that we have allowed our culture to make it so…

Today your challenge is to do something.

Send a letter, an email, make a call and let these advertising people know that they are selling a product not sex. And when they sell sex, it’s not even real sex… just a cheap counterfeit.

Let them know you don’t appreciate the way they shove shakab down your throat and your children’s throat… and it’s false advertising.

You wouldn’t stand for a product to use cocaine or meth as an incentive to buy their stuff? Why are we sitting back quietly and still buying the things that use sex to sell their goods? We live in the land of options. You have a choice. This is something that is just as deadly to the future of our children… and truth be known, it’s most likely the reason many of them are caught in the web of drugs and alcohol… think about it.

I sent mine to Hardees… where’s yours gonna go?

Just yesterday, (as in March 10th 2014), I was talking with a beautiful new friend of mine about a ministry that she feels the Lord is calling her family deeper into… she attended a conference concerning this ministry. She shared that she sat in a class under a man who shared about his ministry to help rescued girls from the sex trafficking trade, and taking these rescued girls in, and working with them with hope against hope that Our God of the impossible could restore this child’s heart and soul and mind.

As I talked with her she shared of the horror of one of their girls who had been used by her parents to get money beginning at the age of 3 and then was sold by her parents at the age of 7. Those who sold her locked her in a room with no windows and threw her food on the floor to her and allowed her to be violated for four year before she was rescued at the age of 11…

So beloved the next time you consider watching that movie, or looking at that website, or reading that book, or taking a big bite out of that Hooters shrimp or that Hardees sandwich… those that use sex to sell these things… are controlled by the same spirit that used sex to make money off this precious child… 

So beloved… write that letter… choose not to support this sexual exploitation and choose to take a real stand against it… and pray beloved… PRAY.

Yesterday we learned that the word yada is used in the Old Testament over 900 times… we talked about how it is the word that God uses when He tells us that Adam lay with Eve. It is also the same word that God uses to share that Rebekah was very beautiful and had never lain with a man. It is the word that God used to share that Elkanah lay with Hannah and He remembered her and she conceived.

(Hearing the word “lay” in God’s spectrum makes our worldly term “get laid” sound quite repulsive, doesn’t it?)

Well today we are going to talk about the relationship that God most uses the word yada to describe.

Day Twenty-Six

Ready?

Trust me this is going to be good… 

Be still and yada that I am God.

Psalm 46:10 

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So the LORD said to Moses,

“I will also do this thing that you have spoken;

for you have found grace in My sight,

and I yada you by name,”

Exodus 33:17

Is your heart pounding yet?

Do you see now how Adam and Eve were in the garden with God and they were naked and they were not ashamed?

We see naked and we usually think nudity… and that’s it.

But it was so much more than that. Yada transcends the physical. It describes the whole knowing of a person… not just their body, but their hearts, their minds, and their souls. It means no secrets and nothing is held back. Before sin entered the world Adam and Eve were naked in the garden before God. They had no secrets with each other and they were not trying to hide secrets from God…

This is the love life we are beckoned to in Christ. We can once again be in the garden with our God and be naked and not be ashamed.

I want you to go back now and read Psalm 139  again, because now you can do so with the awareness that when you read the word “know” you are reading “yada”…

O LORD, you have searched me and known me…

Psalm 139:1

Just as a young romantic dreams of his or her future lover, God dreamed of you. Before you were born, His heart longed for you. God has “before love” for you. He has sought you, and He is seeking you. Those are facts. Let’s make every effort not to confuse our lack of feeling God’s presence with a lack of His presence. And beyond that, my friend, let me encourage you to step out of- or never step into- the same pit of Satan’s lies I once was drowning in when I believed that my past made me unworthy of God’s desire and love. It’s simply not true…

Precious one, never forget who you are in Him…

                 and never forget where you were when He called you…

He loved you then,

            He loved you before then,

 and He loved you still even after then… and He loves you now.

Now, in this moment, you are the focus of the passionate and unconditional love of God. He loves you with His entire Being. You have all of His love as if you were the only human being in existence. And He loves you because you exist without reference to your behavior. Understand and live in that reality, and behavior will change in response to such infinite love that leaves us in worshipping wonder. 

~ Malcolm Smith    

Get this: The ache in your heart to be known by and to truly know one man was placed in you to be a revelation of a much deeper love. When you are in intimate physical and emotional communion with your husband, it will be a mere picture of the passionate love of a God who has been seeking your heart since before you were born.

We live in a day of artificiality.

We have artificial sweetener, artificial nails, artificial hair, artificial colors…

We have fake food, fake diamonds, fake furs, fake money, fake lips, fake boobs, fake profiles, fake friends…

We have imitation purses, imitation art, imitation wood, imitation pearls…

We live in a day of cheap fake, artificial, imitations.

We live in a day of counterfeits… and love is no exception.

Honey, don’t settle for the imitation when the Creator of the universe stands before you with open arms welcoming you into the REAL GENUINE TRUE thing. 

Don’t be wooed away from the Lover of your soul by the seductions of the world and the lies of the one who rules here… you are worth more than that. You were worth dying for… He considered you more precious to Him than His own glory, for He laid it aside to come chasing after you. He wants to captivate and capture your heart and sweep you off your feet and carry you off to His kingdom to be His pure and holy and undefiled bride.

Just spend tonight thinking about that and about Him…