Read Psalm 119:33-48 aloud, and after reading, pray out the verses to God. Thank Him, express your amazement, express your desires.

Personal Challenge #2 What shaped your views on sex and sexuality?

For about 10 years, I believed and lived in what the world said about sex. When I came back to God in 2010, I needed to go back to the beginning and hear the truth. I had been thinking my sexuality was wrong and something that I had to keep away from God, rather than acknowledge it is a gift from God to be expressed in His way and in His timing.

These simple truths turned everything I thought I knew upside down:

  • God thought up and created both sexes. *
  • God made your body.
  • God thought up sexuality.
  • The devil has never desired sexual fulfillment for anyone. His only intention is to bind us and destroy us.
  • God only says no if He has a logical or loving reason.
  • We will never get fulfillment through sinning – only bondage and destruction.
  • In the Garden of Eden, God said, “It is very good.” Do we really think that God made a mistake when He made naked man and naked woman with fully functioning hormones? No. It is good. Don’t call it bad.
  • Where is it more appropriate to talk about sexuality than in the presence of the One who thought it up?

Challenge (Prayerfully think about these questions, and then make a plan to talk with your friend and share and pray together):

1. What does sex mean to you?

2. What do you think God intended for sex?

3. How have your experiences compared with God’s plan for sex?

4. Who or what shaped these experiences?

5. Are there any lies you believed that influenced your thoughts and actions?

6. Is there anyone you need to forgive? Do you know that you can forgive someone even if they never ask for forgiveness? Forgive them, by faith. (Note that Day #23 we will be forgiving any past sexual partners).

Deliverance: 

If at any point during this Purity Challenge you feel God is leading you to needing deliverance, please follow his leading! If you have that available to you already, great! If you don’t, please message us. Jesus came to save, deliver, and heal!!!!! This is what is available to each and everyone of us. 

Extra:

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 Him 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 was 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 ‘he 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, once I had sex once, I thought my subsequent sexual choices didn’t really matter. I believed that there was no value in turning back since I 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 gender 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.
Testimony: “Forgiveness by Faith” (5:39)

*These points are from “Sex, Love, and Relationships” by Dean Sherman, YWAM.