Dear reader,
Today's blogpost is from a guest-writer, Mr. Owuor Kuyoh who has written for Pen Strokes before. His writing is one I admire and his ministry is one that inspires. We are of the same body, same doctrine and same spirit with Kuyoh. This particular piece I highly recommend to anyone experiencing sexual struggles, especially those in the body of Christ.
Happy reading,
Ernest
50 SHADES OF GREY*
By Owuor Kuyoh
By Owuor Kuyoh
*A disclaimer to begin with, this article has no relation with the
literary work by E.L. James!
JJ is a worship leader, darling of the church and a number
of girls as well. He got his girlfriend (she sings BGV), pregnant - by mistake
(yeah right), and he had to shed tears of apology and confession in front of his
church. That was in July. After waking up when September ended, they were
banned from said church because it’s like a horrible disaster movie trying to
explain what went down (obviously their pants!). You know? The type of movie
whose end credits have a more exciting storyline than the 2hrs you spent
fiddling with the stop button. Cue
Twilight meets Battleship. Now
that’s Titanic right there. That ship is going deown!
Box office aside. For some reason, JJ opened up to me on his
issue at hand and he wanted some advice on what to do, or what not to. When I
look back, I’ve often learnt from the mistakes of those who took my advice.
*evil laugh*
This
conversation I had, it kinda made me think about sex…noooo, not like that…just
hear me out. I’ve always wanted to know “What
percentage of unmarried, self-identifying evangelical young adults (ages 18-29)
have had sex?” Well my short
stint at Google University revealed estimates around 80%. Whether those stats
are accurate news or inaccurate no news to you, it suggests that for the vast
majority, chastity is a virtue just as difficult to live out for Christians as
it is for anyone else. The
reality is few single Christians talk about sex, yet much more are having it or
have had it. It’s hard not feeling like we’re just subscribing to a confusing
legalistic standard that is unnecessarily keeping us from ultimate happiness in
life, right? Or maybe we’re just driven by fear from the class of “you’ll get
pregnant herpes!” or “dude, if my mum found out! I’m dead!” The bible says that
your body is a temple but some of us treat it like a bar and restaurant. It’s
not treated with respect, it’s used for recreation. What you do with or to your
body reflects your understanding and value of it. So for example if you have the
body of a goddess you’ll probably it treat like the idol it is. It defines you
and more often than not is an obsession rather than an instrument…but more of
that in the next episode.
We live like we are in charge of who we are and what we do
with our bodies. You’re not in charge, you’re just responsible for it and
there’s a big difference there.
News Flash: God cares about your genitals!
Has the Christian community failed to find a compelling
reason to set an example that the Christians themselves feel all alone in the
attempt to live chastely?
“I’ve had sex even
before this, and I suffered some consequences but I don’t really think I
understand what sex out of wedlock does to me or the other person. I just don’t
understand why God wants it that way.”
In as much as unmarried Christians have been given practical
steps and reasons to remain pure, I think we lack that compelling vision that
God designed sex for marriage. It was either never sold to us or if it was, we
never bought into it coz that’s not what we were looking for. Does God really
have to satisfy your expectations for you to obey? Probably not, but why does
He want us to “preserve the marriage bed and keep it holy?” Well, sex is an act of sacrifice, like
worship. It’s what God intended it for. Because it’s supposed to build and
fully express intimacy. Not just to each other but more importantly to God. You
give yourself to someone else willingly to see and experience the very essence
of you, that’s why victims of sexual abuse feel robbed and ashamed. When you
give yourself out of the context of marriage you rob yourself and your future
wife/husband of something that God created for only them to enjoy- intimacy -
and soon enough you can’t even remember who you are any more coz you no longer
enjoy this and you want out but don’t know how. God didn’t create sex for the
selfish reasons. I guess that why sexual abuse evokes such fury. Coz it’s
self-seeking, self-serving and degrading.
God wouldn’t create something that goes against His character and sex
has God in its DNA. He created sex to be enjoyed, to be an expression of
covenant between a man, his wife and God. Period. You are united by sex; the
fundamental nature of ‘becoming one’ is sealed by this act.
Dude, you know all
this time I’ve felt so distant from God. You know that feeling of being so far
removed, so alone, like I was behind the glass of God’s memory museum. I’m on
stage watching others have an encounter with God; eyes closed, hands raised,
knees to the floor. I tried. Maybe it would work if I did the same. It didn’t.
Maybe God is behind closed eyes. He isn’t. Then it hit me, that the hands I was
raising were the same ones I used to unhook her bra yesterday.
Call it what you want, catching rubs, making out, hanky
panky, doing the naughty etc. It ruins intimacy with God. See God wants our
bodies to be kept pure for a reason, that we may enjoy intimacy with Him. The
minute you share a kiss with the sweltering hot guy in that bash, the minute
your hands go under your girlfriend’s top you are ruining intimacy with God.
It’s probably why you feel guilty afterwards. Cause you feel robbed and you made
someone else feel the same way. If that feeling escapes you, if you can define
a kiss as a joyless prerequisite to getting naked then something is wrong. So you have no business knowing or
finding out what turns him/her on unless you are married. Living in a
hyper-sexualized generation doesn’t help. Our media has made sexual purity a
hard value to conform to and we have grayed up God’s standards with our own in
order to find a perfect middle ground. But there’s a problem with that…
And it started so
innocently, one day we’re seated on the couch watching a movie and it’s like
something else just took over. I can’t remember how I ended up staring at the
double line of the pregnancy test in my hand. We just kept pushing the lines, it’s like we wanted to
answer the question “How far is too far?” I think we asked the wrong
question but got an answer either way…
God doesn’t care for excellence as much as He does for
obedience. When He says that there should not be “even a hint of sexual
immorality”, He actually means it. Isn’t that too high a standard? No one can
even get there, so now what’s the point? For crying out loud, I have a better
chance finding Nemo than I do at not hinting at this purity thing! Am I right?
So isn’t it better to just have my own standards, like a fusion of God’s and
mine? Rather than have black and
white I’d be comfortable with a few shades of grey…even better, 50 shades of grey!
That way I could try out which shade is in fashion and switch the style up.
Perfect! I love it! This works for
me, I can shift my boundaries based on my preference. She likes to make out?
Perfect my fence is right by that make out. His fingers won’t do the walking?
Cool we’ll work with that. See, sex isn’t just penetration. It starts all the
way from foreplay and arousal. That’s why God has such a high standard, because
he knows that for men, our sexual needs can be met from Megan Goode on an A4
paper or Paula Patton on a 5 second screenshot; and for women a 6 inch battery
stick is guilty as charged (pun intended).
We may not understand why God set such a high bar but I
think it was to protect us from the issues that people have to deal with
marriage, concerning sex. Just imagine being in a space where you have to
confess all your sexcapades to your spouse and it’s not like you’ll be
high-fiving each other for all those frogs you played lip wrestling with. Our
example should be Christ, and it cost something to know and acknowledge Christ
but it cost a lot more to live like Him. Are you willing to pay the price of
avoiding the sensual scenes in movies, series and music videos? I once went to
this fancy restaurant and ordered for a black forest cake, unknown to me the
waiter for some unexplainable reason put in the microwave so when it came to me
it looked like melted cream and steaming beans instead. It’s like he had taken
something that was rightfully mine and robbed me of everything it represented.
From the appearance, to the taste to the thought of satisfaction to come.
Everything was ruined and I was mad. I couldn’t take that as cake and I didn’t
even want cake anymore! I wouldn’t want that feeling to be reflective of when
my wife tells me of her past and I don’t think any one of us wants that to be
our story.
“I really didn’t know
what to do when I saw those double lines and for a moment I wished it wasn’t me
in my shoes. All this time I knew we should have stopped playing bed games.
Trust me, we wanted to stop, we just didn’t mean to. It was so much fun but now
all I have is pain. We’ve gotten to that point where the pain eroded the
pleasure.”
God has called us to a life of purity not to live with pain.
A call is preceded by a command, that there should not even be a hint of sexual
immorality in us. That means
living a life with defined boundaries and let it not be one of those -how far
is too far? – boundaries. See,
obedience is a fixed standard, you can’t half obey, you either do or don’t. So
count the cost of obedience to God’s call. It’s a tall order, it’s challenging,
but it can be done (Job 31:9-11). Obedience is costly and takes commitment and
many of us will have to count the cost and commit to live by God’s standard.
Take a purity vow and commit to it. Print it out and carry it with you to
remind you of your commitment. Pick a few of your trusted friends and allow
them to hold you accountable and allow them to meddle in your life. Pray. Pray.
Pray
See, sexual impurity isn’t a demon that you go for ashes and
sackcloth, 40 day fasting and deliverance from. It’s not like a tumor that you yank out from the inside.
It’s a character issue, a habit that is built over bad decisions made in
sequence. Deliverance won’t deliver you from bad decision making. Character
needs work. So in as much as you may be free from the power of sexual immorality, you are not free from the habit of it until you make the continuous
decision to live in purity.
Jesus is knocking. He wants freedom to enter every room in
your house, every part of your life. Don’t keep this door locked.
Oh and I had chocolate fudge cake instead.
By Owuor Kuyoh
By Owuor Kuyoh