– one thing led to the next. As he wanted more and more from me, I completely blocked out all feelings of terrible guilt and horror. When he asked for sex, I gave in. I chose to fall deeper into sin rather than face up to the absolute mess I was in. I wanted to run away from home and live with him, and I promised him my love and loyalty – even when he threatened to kill me if I told anyone about our relationship. The next day he disappeared, and I never saw him again.
Plagued by depression, I considered suicide. My head and stomach ached incessantly. I felt I was going insane. I was obsessed with sex; I didn’t see how I could go on without a man to “love” me. I went for one boy after another; two of them were even engaged to other girls. I grew desperate and wept secretly for hours. Through it all, though I felt like a prostitute, I tried to show my family and friends a happy and confident image. . . .
My double life could not last forever, and eventually I was caught in a lie. I realized then that God was giving me another chance. I might never again have such an opportunity to break out of my sin. Giving in, I turned to my parents and confessed everything. The devil was not quick to let me go, tormenting me in my sleep, but the depth of God’s love became very real to me in the following weeks and months. There were constant prayers and love from my family and church, who never lost hope for me. I believe prayer drove away many evil spirits that often seemed to hover around me, especially in those first weeks.
After months of hard-fought struggle, my bondage to evil was finally severed. Then came the unforgettable moment when the forgiveness of all my sins was spoken out by my pastor, in God’s stead. The power and joy of that moment knew no bounds.
When we are burdened by sin, it is a tremendous gift to find someone to talk to about it. Pouring out one’s heart to another person is like opening a sluice gate in a dam – the water runs out, and the pressure disappears. If confession is honest and heartfelt, it can bring a deep feeling of relief, because it is the first step on the road to forgiveness. But ultimately we have to stand before God. We cannot run away or hide from him, as Adam and Eve tried to do when they disobeyed him. If we are willing to stand before him in the light of his son Jesus, he will burn away all our guilt.
Just as God gave the first man and woman peace and joy in the Garden of Eden, he gives every believer the task of working toward the new creation of his peaceable kingdom. To carry out this task, we must joyfully accept the rule of God in our lives and be willing to go the entire way of Jesus – to start at the stable in Bethlehem and end at the cross on Golgotha. It is a very lowly, humble walk. But it is the only way that leads to complete light and hope.
Jesus alone can forgive and remove our sins, because he alone is free from all stain. He can stir our consciences and set them free from impurity, bitterness, and discord (Heb. 9:14). If we accept the stirrings of our conscience, take responsibility for the choices we have made, and embrace God’s judgment and mercy, it does not matter how far we have strayed or how corrupt we have been. In Christ, the conscience that used to be our enemy becomes our friend.
Forgiveness has power to transform our lives.
The forgiveness Jesus offers is so powerful that it will change our lives completely. Everything that makes us fearful or isolated, everything impure and deceitful, everything that prevents us from showing and receiving love, will yield if we give ourselves to him. What is up will come down, and what is down will come up. This change will start in the innermost heart of our being, and then our outward life, including all our relationships, will also be transformed.
Whether or not a person has experienced such redemption shows up most plainly when he or she faces death. Those who have been at the bedside of a dying person will know how absolute, how final in its significance, is each person’s inner relationship with God. They know that in the end, when the last breaths are drawn, this bond is the only thing that counts.
It is the life-task of every person to prepare to meet God. Jesus tells us how to do this when he says, “Whatever you do for the least of them you do for me.” He also says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” I have personally experienced at deathbeds that if a person has lived for others, as Jesus did, then God is very close to him in the last hour. I have also experienced at the hour of death the torment of those who have lived selfish and sinful lives and refuse to repent.
All of us, whether married or single, need to grasp more deeply the eternally healing words of Jesus: “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). In Jesus there is life, love, and light. In him our lives and our relationships can be purified from all that burdens us and opposes love, and God’s image in us can be restored.
6
Sexuality and the Sensuous Sphere
For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.
1 Timothy 4:4–5
The Bible speaks of the heart as the center of a person’s inner life. In the heart, decisions are made and the direction is set as to what kind of person we become (Jer. 17:10). But God also created us as sensuous beings. To the sensuous belongs everything that we perceive with our senses, including sexual attraction. The scent of a flower, the warmth of the sun, or a baby’s first smile brings us joy. God has given us a great gift in our senses, and if we use them to praise and honor him, they can bring us great happiness.
Yet just as the area of sensuous experience can bring us close to God, it can also mislead us and even plunge us into demonic darkness. All too often we tend toward the superficial and miss the might and power of what God could otherwise give us. In grasping at what we experience with our senses, we forget about God and miss the possibility of experiencing the full depth of his will.
Lasting joy is found not in our senses, but in God.
To despise the living senses is to reject God and his handiwork (1 Tim. 4:1–3). The Holy Spirit does not want us to ignore the body or its emotional powers. But we should not forget that Satan seeks to undermine every good thing; he is a twister of the truth and is always waiting to deceive us, especially in this area.
Admittedly, the soul is drawn to God through the spirit, but it is always joined to the physical through the body. Our physical being is not the real enemy of the spirit, and it must never be rejected. The real enemy is Satan, who continually tries to attack the human soul and sever it from God. God’s will is that every part of life – spirit, soul, and body – be brought under his control for his service (1 Cor. 10:31).
In and of itself there is nothing wrong with the sphere of the senses. After all, everything we do, whether waking or sleeping, involves a sensory experience at some level. But because we are not mere animals, because we are made in the image of God, far more is expected of us.
When two people fall in love, the joy they have at first is usually on a sensuous level: they look into each other’s eyes, they hear one another speak, they rejoice in the touch of the other’s hand, or even in the warmth of the other’s closeness. Of course, the experience goes far deeper than seeing, hearing, or feeling, but it still begins as an experience of the senses.
Yet human love can never remain at this level – it must go much deeper than that. When the sensuous becomes an end in itself, everything seems fleeting and temporary, and we feel compelled to seek our satisfaction in experiences of greater and greater intensity (Eph. 4:17–19). Spending our energies on the intoxication of our senses, we soon exhaust and ruin our ability to experience life’s vital power. And we also lose the capacity for any deep inner experiences. An acquaintance who has been married for over thirty years told me:
When
