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    Purity: A Godly Woman's Adornment
    Purity: A Godly Woman's Adornment
    Purity: A Godly Woman's Adornment
    Ebook126 pages1 hour

    Purity: A Godly Woman's Adornment

    By Lydia Brownback

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    About this ebook

    The Christian community often thinks of purity only as it relates to issues of sexuality, but the term encompasses much more than that. We need to look closely at all it means to be pure as God intended. So what does purity mean? As modern women, how can we follow Paul's command in Colossians to "put to death" impurity? How does purity adorn a godly woman? Lydia Brownback looks to Scripture to answer these questions as she engages an issue faced by all women.
    The newest in a series of compact devotional books for women, Purity guides us to understand that our hearts are purified as we lean on the purity of Christ and his perfect work for us. These devotionals are a daily reminder to women that putting Christ first takes care of everything else.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCrossway Books
    Release dateMay 5, 2010
    ISBN9781433524110
    Purity: A Godly Woman's Adornment
    Author

    Lydia Brownback

    Lydia Brownback (MAR, Westminster Theological Seminary) is the author of several books, including the Flourish Bible Study series; Sing a New Song; and the On-the-Go Devotionals for women, and she is passionate about teaching God’s word.

    Read more from Lydia Brownback

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      Book preview

      Purity - Lydia Brownback

      Part One

      A Pure Heart

      We don’t hear the word purity much today except in descriptions of cleaning agents and snow-covered landscapes. We do hear the word spoken more frequently in the Christian community, but usually only as it applies to sexual purity. We have lost sight of all it means to be pure as God intended. So what does it mean? Purity is much more than moral behavior. Purity is first and foremost a matter of the heart. To be pure is to be single-minded. It is to have a single goal, a single focus, and a single purpose for ourselves and our lives. That is biblical purity, and from it springs moral behavior—the good we do with our bodies. At its core, purity is having a heart for the Lord that isn’t watered down or polluted by lesser things.

      The apostle James wrote, Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. According to James, a double-minded woman spends her passion going after what this world offers. In contrast, Jesus describes a very different sort of passion: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment (Matt. 22:37–38). Elsewhere Jesus attaches a promise to purity: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matt. 5:8). To see God is to know the joy of living in close relationship with him. To see him is also to enjoy Spirit-filled, biblically guided direction and guidance for all of life. A woman who is pure in this way realizes an ever-increasing ability to rightly apply God’s Word to the little day-to-day things.

      Putting Christ first is the essence of purity. That is why Jesus’ words in the beatitude, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God, are the starting point for any woman who is serious about being pure. But the beatitude is not only our starting point; it is also the place to end. Jesus’ words form the basis for the kind of purity that will endure for a lifetime. Viewing purity from a biblical perspective takes our understanding of what it means to be pure beyond mere outward conduct to a whole new level—a deeper level. And if we approach purity as Jesus describes it, we will discover that our battle to be pure in body, as well as in mind and spirit, comes much more easily.

      We women struggle, often with little success, to master particular sins—outward displays of impurity. Perhaps that’s because we have been trying to clean up our act while failing to see the impurity in our heart. What are we to do? We can’t clean our own heart. Besides, the extent of its dirt and sin is beyond our comprehension. A heart is made pure as Christ washes and cleans it. I once heard someone pray, Lord, wash my heart. That’s a good prayer. But becoming pure in heart doesn’t end with prayer. It comes as we lean on the purity of Christ, on his perfect work for us. It comes as we lean on grace. It comes as we acknowledge our utter inability to become pure women and our need for Christ to make us clean and to purify us through and through. Putting Christ first takes care of everything else.

      A Pure Woman Is Clear-sighted

      Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

      MATTHEW 5 : 8

      Jesus chose to begin his great sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, with a list of blessings. There are nine, to be exact, and each blessing is given to a specific sort of person. All too often we are quick to pass over this initial part of the sermon, which is called the Beatitudes. We want to get on to the practical parts of Jesus’ teaching, where he talks about things like marriage and money and dealing with difficult emotions (Matthew 5–7). Perhaps we are quick to skim over the Beatitudes because we don’t quite understand exactly what Jesus was getting at. The sixth beatitude, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God, is a case in point. What does it mean to be pure in heart? And how can we actually see God?

      When we think of purity, sexual purity is usually the first thing that comes to mind. But that’s not Jesus’ emphasis here in his sermon. He emphasizes heart purity. Not for a minute is Jesus diminishing the importance of sexual purity and all we do with our bodies, but he emphasizes heart purity because it is the root from which all other purity springs. If we are pure in heart, we will be pure in body too. A pure heart is an undivided heart, one with a single purpose. A pure heart is one so set on God that it isn’t watered down by lesser things. Does that describe your heart? It does if your driving passion in life is to know God and live in close fellowship with him.

      To the pure in heart Jesus promised the blessing of sight. But he wasn’t talking about a visual image; he was talking about comprehension. The more focused on God we are, the more of him we will know; and the better we know him, the more blessed we will be, because we will see that the most awesome, powerful being in the universe is also kind, loving, and relational.

      The purer we are, the more we will see. But we miss out on the blessing of sight because we don’t have pure hearts. Our hearts are divided. We want God, but we also want the comforts and pleasures that the world offers. The things of this life will ultimately never satisfy us because we were designed to find real fulfillment in God alone. A woman who is pure in heart is able to enjoy the good things God puts in her life, but those things don’t hold her heart. God alone has that place because her view of his goodness, love, and wonder is much less cluttered up with the junk of the world.

      If we are missing out on this blessedness, it doesn’t have to be that way. We don’t have to spend our lives running after lesser and short-lived ways of feeling satisfied with life. If this weren’t true, Jesus wouldn’t have given the beatitude. But he did give it, and he holds it out to us today. Do we really want it? That’s the question.

      A Pure Woman Has One Desire

      Whom have I in heaven but you?

      And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.

      PSALM 73 : 25

      There is nothing on earth that I desire besides you"—with these words the psalmist gives us the ultimate definition of a pure heart. Can you echo his words? Is there truly nothing we desire besides God? Perhaps you want to be like this, but you just aren’t there yet, and you aren’t sure how to get there. Maybe you have tasted it, but you can’t seem to hang on to it. Life’s pressures mount and close in around you, and the desire for relief crowds out the desire for God himself.

      God wants us to know what it’s like to desire nothing but him. That’s why he allows us to find such little lasting satisfaction with the world’s toys and joys. We get something we’ve always wanted, or a dream comes true, yet it quickly becomes just part of life’s routine. So what do we do? We set out to lay hold of some new earthbound pleasure. We don’t stop to consider that our inability to find lasting happiness in earthly blessings and personal dreams is because God designed us for something else. Our dissatisfaction is his way of wooing us to find our all in him.

      We don’t

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