The Holy Threesome (part 3): Choosing To Choose For Ourselves

We were created to worship.

Created in the image of God. And in that perfect image, created with everything of God–everything wonderful and spiritual and eternal–stamped into our DNA.

We are not just HERE, we are HIS.

And God, Himself, designed us with the desire to worship coursing through our hearts. A predisposition to our design. Inherent, and ingrained and eternal. And there was and is nothing flawed in God’s creation.

Our struggles, then, don’t originate from our ingrained desire to worship, they originate from what we choose to worship in our lives. Because it’s no mystery that we are ALL worshiping something. Someone. Some dream. We were made to exalt, but somewhere along the line we became willing to exalt anything.

So I think it’s important we first understand where our broken exaltation began. Because man never intended to be bad. We, as a culture (and often as a church), have somehow bought into the hard and fast belief that sin is as simple as bad vs. good, wrong vs. right, hate vs. love. When, in actuality, sin never entered into the world because man intentionally chose to be bad. As God’s perfect and crafted creations, we didn’t revolt with the desire to be BAD people, we revolted with the desire to be our OWN people. And all that could come from that was the bad and the broken we wrestle with now. We revolted as His people to become our own people, and through the course of humankind we’ve rarely looked back since.

The original sin in the Garden of Eden didn’t look like Eve consciously deciding she was going to be bad and sin rather than obey the instruction of God. The original sin looked like Eve curiously choosing to choose for herself, in light of the instruction of God. Identically, in our lives, our sin doesn’t always look like an intentional decision to choose to be bad, it almost always looks like a subconscious choice to choose for ourselves what is best for us, what we desire, and what we think we need.

We were made to worship. But because we are fallen, because we rebelled, we quickly chose to worship ourselves. This is where our sexual sin begins. Not in choosing to be bad, but choosing to be our own, despite recognizing we were created as His.

Sex quickly became one of the first things we chose to choose for ourselves. Created as an act of worship towards God, we wasted no time in making it its own God and worshipping at the throne of our wants. With regard to masterbation, to promiscuity, to pornography, to lust. We’ve chosen to choose for ourselves. And these are all things we want.

Don’t get me wrong, our society will work it’s hardest to convince us there’s nothing wrong with this. We have a living, breathing Word of God spelling out exactly what is best for us–exactly what will guard our hearts, what we can place our faith in and rely on, what will lead us in the way we should go. But we have a culture coaxing us to close that book, to muffle that Truth, and to instead worship our own bodies and minds whenever, however, and with whoever we choose.

We have the Word telling us: Be careful! “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately sick. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)

And we have the world telling us: No no, the heart wants what it wants. Follow your heart, trust your feelings, put all your stock in your own emotions.

We have the Word telling us: “No temptation has overtaken you that is uncommon to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with temptation He will also provide a way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13)

And we have the world telling us: The temptation and the tease is a part of the pleasure. You can’t help what you’re attracted to and you can’t help giving in to the physical desires. It’s sexual attraction. Clearly your body wants it, so why not give in to it? It’s your life.

We have the Word telling us what will lead us in the way we should go: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like those who do not know God…” (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5)

And we have the world telling us: Sexual immorality is subjective to opinion. You’re going to abstain? To remain a virgin? What are you going to wait until you’re married and never try anything sexually first? Good luck keeping a boyfriend or girlfriend if you’re not going to be physical with them along the way.

For every unchanging word of truth, we have an opinion of the world. For every call to worship God first, we have a temptation to not forget about ourselves. For every secure and loving command from God, we have an insecure world, frantic and failing, proclaiming CHOOSE FOR YOURSELF! You are your own.

And so we sit in our sin. And we desperately worship the wreckage–trying to force it to feel like enough.

God’s own people. Who somewhere along the line chose, instead, to become our own people. The world’s people.

And the sexual desires placed within us became the sexual fixation of our rebellious hearts.

Because we chose to choose for ourselves.

So what are we worshiping? Sex is a beautiful and powerful gift, in the proper context of its intent. But I wonder, today, how many of us have never known it was meant in that way? I wonder how many of us have chosen to choose for ourselves, and have recklessly given pieces of ourselves away?

I know that was my story. Never with the intent to be bad. Never with the intent to rebel. But simply with the intent to keep up with the world and what it coaxed out of me. With the intent to explore my body and allow it to be explored by others in hopes of someone praising my beauty. With the intent to pacify the urges of pleasure and lust and desire inside of me.

Not overtly, at first. Not to any great extreme. But my curiosity called me to choose for myself, and that welcomed me down a path of sexual wandering…

CONTINUE READING // Part 4: Virginity, Purity & the Gray Area In-between

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