Go Deeper (optional)

Over the next three days, choose from any of these videos and blog posts (at least one/day). Consider and journal through these questions as you watch the videos:

• What were key/pivotal moments that shaped your views on sex/sexuality (positive and negative)?
• Were there key/pivotal moments that led you down a path God was not leading you down?
• Ask the Holy Spirit to show you if there is anyone you need to forgive for participating in these pivotal moments.¹
• Ask the Holy Spirit to show you if there are moments where you need His truth and healing. What is He saying to you?

Here are some lies that I believed regarding sex and sexuality: (The Holy Spirit helped me see these things over a period of time. Can you see how believing the devil’s lies often end up in a trap? Conversely, believing truth results in freedom! Ask Jesus if there are any areas where He wants to replace lies with truth for you.)

• “Not knowing is shameful”: When I was 10 years old, kids at school were laughing about a sexual joke, and I had no idea what it was about. I felt ashamed that I didn’t understand the joke. I felt that my innocence and naivety were shameful. I never wanted to feel that way again, and I purposed to learn and experience what I could. I thought it was better to know everything than not to know. The irony is that in high school I became the first among my friends to start experiencing things, and I ended up knowing and experiencing more shameful things than most people.
• “Guys’ Perception of Girls’ Physical Appearance = Value”: As an 11-year old girl, I received a compliment from a young guy, “Nice legs, babe”, and it began a belief that how guys perceived my appearance was connected to my value. Subsequently, when I was being sexually desired by guys, I felt so valued; it became a drug that I became reliant on. I thought that sexual attention meant I had value, and I thought sex meant “this guy loves me”. I sought out sexual attention and sex because the gradual effect of this lie was that without sexual attention, I thought I had no value. Relying on people resulted in my sense of value going from 100 to 0 within the same day. Little by little, God showed me my value.
• “After you lose your virginity, anything you do after that doesn’t matter”: When I was 15, after I had sex the first time, I thought my subsequent sexual choices didn’t really matter. I believed that there was no value in turning back since I had already lost my virginity. After my identity as a “non-virgin” took root, starting a year after my first heartbreak, it became so easy to say yes to guy #2, #3, etc. I didn’t understand the concept of getting further and further into captivity.
• I thought sex could be casual and that the impact on me would also be ‘casual’. But treating sex casually meant I allowed guys to treat me casually. And being used by guys led me to gradually despise them, and treat them casually and objectify and use them in the same way. Objectification caused me to begin to see guys as ways to get what I wanted. I used them emotionally - I'd call exes on the phone for the only reason of using their attention to feel better about whatever was making me feel bad. I used them for money, for rides - I felt like the entire male species owed me in some way - because I hadn't forgiven the ones that had used me and hurt me. I used them sexually - used sex in a way it was never designed to be used - for myself, rather than for two people who have united to be one. Treating sex as casual and inconsequential and unimportant results in people treating one another as unimportant.

_{[1] Note: During Day 19, we will be walking through forgiveness of past sexual partners.}