what not to think aboutDon’t think about pink elephants.

Let me guess: you’re thinking of pink elephants, right? This is a pretty simple concept. When we try our hardest not to think about something, we end up thinking about that very thing. We do the exact opposite of what we were trying to do.

Sexual purity can be a lot like this, especially when we tend to focus on not doing certain things, only to fall into past behavior again. Why? The same reason why you thought of pink elephants a few sentences ago.

Focusing your life on not doing something will lead to either despair or pride. Both are destructive. You fall into despair because you fail at not doing the certain thing, so you live in defeat. Or you fall into pride because you no longer fall into that sin and therefore believe you live above those who struggle. Either way, you’ve hung your spiritual and emotional health on a particular action.

But instead of focusing so hard on a certain sin, you should be focusing on Jesus (check out Hebrews 12:1-2).

See, the temptation is to direct our gaze toward our behavior instead of the one who redeemed us from it. Our pursuit of sexual purity is not really a pursuit away from action we despise but is instead a pursuit of wholeness, of grace, of the redemption we can find in Jesus.

When we think of purity, we tend to define it by the things it doesn’t do. But what does it do? That’s the kind of life we need to keep in front of us.

So what are your eyes fixed upon? Does the direction of your gaze need to be corrected?

 

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