We need to guard what we see, hear, and think. Here are 5 good steps to keeping our lights shining brightly for God.

How do we keep our minds pure?

1. Love God
2. Renew your mind
3. Guard your thinking
4. Have  battle plan
5. Have kingdom friends

 Love God

“Your passion for the LORD is the power for persistence in purity”

How do we set our hearts on Jesus? How do we love God? Spending time with him in prayer and Bible reading is a great way to do this.

Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God. (2 Corinthians 7:1 NIV)

Our “reverence for God” is a motivator to keeping purity in our lives. As we spend time with him, He shows us what is important to Him. We honor Him as we live our lives in ways that reflect who He is and what His values are.

This was probably my first step in choosing to strive to live a life of purity (though I wouldn’t have said it that way at the time). I chose to love God back with my whole life when he saved me from a physical assault in college and my life flashed before my eyes. 

Every choice you make toward purity is another decision to worship the Lord in your life. Every time you make a choice for purity, you glorify the Lord. You say Yahweh is my God. My feelings are not my God. Sensuality is not my God. The world is not my God. Things are not my God. The LORD is the only God of this life.

Purity is frequently only looked at as sexual purity, but it really is only one part of purity. Sexual purity is sometimes the biggest area of temptation that Satan loves to use against us because it is possibly the earthly thing that comes somewhere close to the feeling of being perfectly in God’s will & his presence. Every step we make to act in purity sexually or otherwise is an act of worship, while every step of uncleanliness in sexual purity or any other part of purity is an act of worshipping something else–in setting something else above God. It is a counterfeit.

We must love God whole-heartedly to sustain choices that honor him and lead others to see him in our lives.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. (Romans 12:1 NIV)

Jesus gave everything he had for us. What better thing can we offer him in return than our very lives? 

Renew Your Mind

The second key to living a life of purity for the LORD is to renew our minds. How  do we do this? We need to know God’s values by knowing and reading His word. We do not automatically know what God values–lining our values up with His is a continual, ongoing process. As we read the Bible daily, it is like a daily antivirus scan. We are letting the Holy Spirit tell us where we may have thinking out of alignment, and then we need to take action if it is needed.

As I think about my faith walk, I recognize this was a second step toward a life that shone for God. When I was a young adult, I decided I really needed to read through my Bible to understand more about what I believed. As I read my Bible at a bagel shop every morning, God would meet me and talk with me through His word, convicting me, encouraging me, and making me realize where I needed to change. Romans 12:2 tells us that as we refresh our minds with the ways of God, we will be able to have better discernment about what he says is good.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2 NIV)

As you renew your mind, you’ll find your identity as a citizen of heaven. Realize you won’t fit in here. When I dated a non-believer, he very plainly despised my choice to live a life of abstinence until marriage and mocked it. I literally felt like I stepped into a whole new culture because my friends all valued God’s principles like I did. Your values will be challenged. You will be mocked for your heavenly values in this world. (By the way, this was not a wise decision to be dating an unbeliever. You cannot fully run hard after God if you’re tethered to someone running the opposite direction.)

Guard Your Thinking

We need to guard our renewed minds! If we are going to keep our lives pure, it begins with our minds. If we keep our minds untainted by the world, we can walk in victory over the world. What does guarding our minds look like? It is the act of not letting garbage in, and if it has already gotten into your life, taking your garbage out. 

Guard what you let yourself see–don’t choose to watch shows with bad language and sexily dressed people, or where people are being intimate with each other. What you tolerate becomes part of who you are. Minds are like potting soil–if we poison the soil, good things don’t grow. Likewise, guard what you hear–choose songs and podcasts that reflect God’s values. Stay away from shows, podcasts or music that contains cussing, sexual language, or ideas that are simply ungodly. The first step of self-control is wisely choosing what shapes you. 

Sometimes we have to take out garbage–either music, books or movies we own that don’t glorify God or that lead us to wrong thinking. At one point in our marriage, my husband had a bonfire. He burnt books, movies, and magazines that had been around the house from before he gave his life to Jesus–things he felt didn’t honor the LORD. When we get rid of these things, we are removing things that influence us away from God and his ways.

What we think about is as important as what we choose to do with our physical bodies. Jesus said in Matthew 5:28 “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (NIV) We can sin simply by our thoughts. Our mind is a training ground either for good or for evil. The more we practice godly ways of thinking, we are paving pathways toward good choices. Obviously, the opposite is true as well.

Have a Battle Plan  

In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.

One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home. The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.” 2 Samuel 11:1-5 (NIV)

I bet King David was tolerant of letting things into his mind. He looked down over his kingdom and could see everything. He didn’t avert his eyes when he saw Bathsheba bathing. At best, he violated her privacy. I want to suggest that this is similar to what we have available as we use our technology. We have a view of anything we want to. But we need to have the self-control to know how to properly use this power. We need to know where we can look and where it might be more dangerous to look. 

I think it is possible that Bathsheba was bathing in an area where people did do their bathing. So, if David had been so wise as to guard his mind, he might have regularly avoided looking here altogether. Avoiding trouble areas of the internet or certain places where we are likely to find temptation is having a battle plan. I have found that it is easier to not eat chocolate if you don’t go to the store and buy it.

Sometimes we run into temptation that takes us by surprise. There are occasionally commercials that pop up on our TV that aren’t appropriate. We need to be ready to look away, turn the screen off, or navigate around it. This can take some time to train our brain! If you get used to following God’s standards, this can be an automatic response that doesn’t require thought but is more like reflex. David didn’t do this. He let his mind wander and his eyes linger.

If we don’t have a plan for purity, we are open to compromise.

Kingdom Friends

Who we spend time with also influences us. In this story, David called on his servants to ask who the woman bathing was. This means that he possibly brought others into his danger zone of viewing someone. Watch who influences you. Make friends wisely. 

David wasn’t hanging out with his battle buddies. That would probably have kept him on track–especially when hanging out with his friend Uriah. He also didn’t consult his prophet friend Nathan if he should sleep with this woman–only his servants. 

Friends can help us get unstuck–My best college friend, Becky and I once were walking through a muddy construction zone after a rain–on our way to get coffee. I somehow got stuck in the mud…my sandaled foot sunk deep. Becky gave me a hand to pull me out. I am sure the mud made that slurping sound as I escaped, but my shoe was left behind. After a lot of work (and laughing), she helped me retrieve my shoe as well, and we went back to her house to clean up and formulate a better plan. Friends are helpful to have around us to make sure we are on the right path and to help us out if we aren’t! And hanging out with someone with similar values of the Kingdom sure cuts down on temptation.

Do you remember how we talked about renewing your mind? I wonder if David had been hearing God’s word lately. His servants told him that the woman was another man’s husband. That should have stopped him right there. A knowledge of God’s laws is so important. Even better is loving God’s values because we love him. This helps us to keep his standards in times of temptation.

When we choose to live a life of purity–a kingdom life–we will absolutely look different than the world. It is not easy. Some of the things we value will be trampled on. We will be mocked. 

I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. (John 17:14—16 NIV)

If we have given our life to Jesus, we are not of this world – not of this kingdom. What empowers us to live the standards of our heavenly citizenship?

Passion for God is really the only thing strong enough to keep us from pollution of this world.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:1—2 NIV)

Pastor Greg Mohr said,”It takes real courage to be a Joseph in your generation. And what you do with the issue of purity will make a difference in the lives of others and will determine whether you fulfill your own potential and operate in God’s best.” David led an entire nation into passion and pursuit of God. But he didn’t attain all the blessings God intended for him because of his step outside of purity as he dealt with Bathsheba.

Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’  (2 Samuel 12:7-10 NIV)

I want God’s best for me! How about you?

There is good news! We are offered grace every time we fail. Romans 8:1 says that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” When we fail like David did, we have already been forgiven because of Jesus. David was given God’s forgiveness after his sin, and he was still known as being a man after God’s own heart despite his moral failure in the situation he created with Bathsheba. 

I want to be a Joseph, a Daniel, an Esther or Ruth of my generation, don’t you? We are supposed to shine our light for others to see and reap the benefits of our life.

Every choice you make to live purely is an act of worship to the LORD. When you choose to speak life into someone else even when they ridicule you or your values, it is an act of worship. Every act of keeping your mind pure by avoiding sexual images is an act of worship toward the LORD. Every time you choose a life of abstinence until marriage as a single person is an act of worship toward the LORD. When you do not imagine intimacy in your mind with anyone but your spouse, it is an act of worship before the LORD. When you choose to turn off a device or change what you are viewing to honor God’s values, it is an act of worship to the king of the universe as you offer back your life as a living sacrifice.

The more we love Him, the brighter we will choose to shine like a star in the universe as we hold forth the gospel of life to others. Shine, friends, shine!