Hey! This is Important!!

We have successfully switched over to Wordpress with the help of our technical team ( A.K.A Joey). But for all our readers, this means you will need to go to our new URL http://purityfullyclothed.wordpress.com . Do this ASAP because our next post will be on our new blog, and its going to be a really good one. So switch over, or you will be left out when all the other kids on the playground are talking about the latest post on Purity Fully clothed. I hope you like the new blog as much as we do, and continue to read our posts and drop us some comments.
Click here for the Blog

BOYS!!! BOYS!!!BOYS!!!

What do guys think about Purity? Have you ever wondered that, girls? Well we have the answer!!!! We have interviewed different boys in our youth group about what they're perspectives on purity are, and everyday this week we will be posting a different guys answers. All the guys we are interviewing are Christian, between the ages of 14-25, and are from different walks of life. So they are a pretty good representation of our generation. I hope you find this weeks posts interesting and please give us some feedback.

Purity.....Lifestyle or Achievement?

I was thinking the other day, why do we do what we do? Why does purity need to be preached in this generation? Is it so parents can sleep better at night, or is it really a nessecity? Well obviously it is a nessecity because its in God's word, which makes it important. But what makes me and Leana the ones to stand on this issue? Have we already achieved purity? As I pondered these things I realized, that the way we view purity is wrong. Its not something you are, its something you strive to be. I think because we tend to view purity as an achievement we make some people feel ashamed who haven't been completely perfect. Though this isn't intentional, I don't think its the way God would want us to go about it. We should be bearing with one another in our struggle to remain pure because its not a gift to some and struggle for others, it should be a desired lifestyle for all. So we don't write to you as "holier than thou" people but as girls who know that we all need to live pure and encourage one another to do the same.

Thank you God for tampons and monsters

This week it seemed like every time I was watching tv this commercial was on and it got me thinking. Its the "always" commercial about the girls in Africa when they are on their period and they don't have any pads or tampons so they have to miss a week of school and then they get behind and end up dropping out. When I saw this, first I thanked God for tampons and that they are available to me so I don't have to eventually drop out of school. Then I realized how spoiled this country and generation really is. Today in one of my classes I heard these girls talking and one girl was complaining about how she got her cell phone and ipod taken away by her parents because they caught her sneaking back in to the house drunk. Hearing this bugged me. While girls in Africa have to drop out of school because of something totally natural and unavoidable, we are here complaining about getting out cells and ipods taken away. From all of this I decided to thank God for two things other than him that I need to get through life. I'm thankful for monster energy drinks that make life bearable in the morning and tampons that make my blessing as a women livable.

"The Situation"-Krystal Meyers

This is song by Krystal Meyers called "The Situation". I think the lyrics are pretty powerful. The line "but she knows she wants to feel beautiful" really embody how a lot of girls measure their worth by how a guy is interested in them. Then, in the second verse, the line " suck it up and be a man" is right on, the sense that a lot of guys feel that sex defines their masculinity. So I hope you like this song as much as i do and I encourage you to buy the whole album " Dying for a Heart".

"She's finding love in the back of a car

When is it too late, have they gone too far?
She's having trouble drawing the line
But she knows she wants to feel beautiful.
She struggles finding self-respect
She'll wake up feeling regret
Her purity's been compromised
But she knows she wants to feel beautiful.

A promise made to treasure, you don't have to give it away
Falling for the pressure, you can't mend a vow when it breaks
Explain your hesitation, Jesus can be your escape
Don't taint the situation, this love was made to wait!

He's living life out on the edge
Gotta make a move, move it on to the bed
Temptation whispers in his head
Believe the lie, Suck it up and be a Man
He'll trade her heart for a trophy, put it on a shelf so his friends can see
He has what it takes to get what he wants
Tonights the night
Suck it up and be a Man

A promise made to treasure, you don't have to give it away
Falling for the pressure, you can't mend a vow when it breaks
Explain your hesitation, Jesus can be your escape
Don't taint the situation, this love was made to wait!

Whats wrong ?
I can see the fear behind your eyes
Your scared you might walk away unsatisfied
God's love is the only one to fill the void
He's reaching out
Just turn around and hold on

A promise made to treasure, you don't have to give it away
Falling for the pressure, you can't mend a vow when it breaks
Explain your hesitation, Jesus can be your escape
Don't taint the situation, this love was made to wait!"

I Want to be Anorexic, Half-Naked, and Fake!

.......Not really, but with those three words, I just described all the women in Hollywood. These are also the women that our society calls "role models". I am disgusted when I think of the fact that many younger girls look to these women as examples, but then I got to thinking. How many times do we look at the fashion magazine and seen how beautiful these women can appear to be and think, "maybe I should do my hair like that", or "wow, i should buy pants like that" . Even though we KNOW these women are lost and pretty conceited, we begin to fashion ourselves after them. Now, this isn't sin, but what I want to know is why aren't their enough godly women, dressing and acting like godly women, to show us something different! What we need is a strong and secure example of what a women should be, to contradict everything that world tries to show us. In our church, we do have strong godly women, but we need more. So I write this as a challenge to the young ladies. We need to be that example for the next generation, let us be the change we want to see in the world.
" I desire that the men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting; in like manner also, that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing, but which is proper for women professing godliness, with good works. "-1 Timothy 2:8-10

Are You Ready?! Cuz We Are!

Dear Readers,
Well its the beginning of a brand new year,and Leana and I have decided to accept the challenge of stepping it up in 2008. Our goal for this blog was to spread the the fullness of what Purity is and take a stand on matters that defy this, in our generation. Although 2007 was a time of laying essential ground work, we plan to begin to commit ourselves more to the purpose of Purity and spreading the Gospel.

Some Things to Look Forward To:
*More Posts
-we are working on getting series of posts on purity from the point of view of a guy!
*Change in Format (we will be switching to WordPress, yeah WordPress!)
*Covering More Topics (Sex, Drugs, Rock N' Roll, + many more!)
*Videos ( we want you to see us in action!!)
*We have a Myspace Page! We need Friends!

I Have a Confession.....

Many teenage girls are sick with promiscuity and immodesty. This is usually because of the lack of a father or the lack of a father who showed them the love and support they needed. So because they lack that love, they search to fill the void with the love of another man, which turns into the wrong man or many men. But what they find is not love, but lust and infatuation which quickly boils down to hurt and loss. So when we talk about purity to girls this is usually a topic we hit on. But I'm here to say that I am one of these fatherless girls!!!!! Its true, my real father chose not to be in my life, and even though a man stepped in to that position, i never felt that love from him. As a result, something in me wants to feel affection from a guy even though my mind knows its a cheap imitation of love. Its my flesh. For some reason I feel if i get affection from a guy, its going to fill that void that I have. So why am I not out there being promiscuous? Because I realized who God is and how perfect His love is. I had to make a conscious decision to go against every feeling I had. It's been tough and its something I still deal with, but i know that if I deny myself, God has so much more in store. He promises to be a Father to the fatherless.
So I wanted to write this as encouragement to anyone who can relate. There is a God who loves us and He is the only answer to our problems.

Snow!

Its a wonderful thing! I know many people don't think it is, but I love it . Today after I made a really cute snowman, I was just laying in a pile snow and I started thinking about a bunch of stuff and a great analogy came into my head. Purity is like snow. Both are supposed to be cherished because they are 2 of the most beautiful gifts from God. If you don't think snow is beautiful, then look outside at any untouched patch of snow you will notice the little sparkles in it when the sun shines on it and you will realize how pretty it really is. Many of us take these two things for granted and we see them as burdens or curses and we don't cherish them. Our purity is a gift from God. We are lucky that God is giving us another chance, because he could easily send us all to hell, but he doesn't. He doesn't, because he loves us so much and he doesn't want us to suffer even though we definitely deserve it. Also I just want to let everyone know that purity isn't just a calling for unmarried people, its for everyone. Purity isn't just staying away from sexual activities before marriage, its many things. Its being clean of sin, so this means making yourself like God, and staying away from swearing and being like the world. Another similarity between snow and purity is that if you compare an untouched patch of snow and a patch of snow thats been walked through , which one looks better? Personally I think the untouched snow does or you could say the pure snow. That is my point, us humans mess up God's gifts. We go through his wonderful snowy creation and make it all dirty. We do the same thing with purity, we make it sound bad, hard and definitely not fun. Also, we have done this with sex! Sex was another gift from God it was originally the way to get beautiful new life and it was a wonderful thing to be shared only inside a marriage. Then humans perverted another one of God's great privileges into something dirty and we misused it. Now children are even doing it! because tv makes it look fun and exciting. Now everyone is joking about it and making is sound like its a human right to have sex with who you want, whenever you want. Thinking about this honestly makes me sad, because I realize that I have taken all of these things for granted and looked at them in ways that God did not intend for us to look at them. So I know I'm going to think about these things and ask God to forgive me. I hope no one thinks I'm trying to tell them how bad they are, because thats not what I'm doing. I just want us to cherish beautiful gifts that God has given us before it's too late and before we mess our lives up anymore.

I can but you can't

Double standards! There are a wonderful thing, aren't they? jk. Personally I hate double standards, they just bug me, but I noticed that even if we don't realize it we all have them. The only thing is that not everyone vocalizes them. But my point of this post is that I really can't stand when someone says " well I believe that it's ok if a guy does this but a girl can't". The main thing that brought this up was when someone said that they thought that purity was a good thing for girls but that it was kinda pointless for guys. Yes, this person is a guy and no this person is not a Christian. At this time I brought up the fact that unless he was plaining on compromising his purity with another guy or himself then he would be taking away the purity of a girl and he just said that he thought being pure was a good thing for girls. His answer to this was well i believe that its actually not that important for anyone and that if the girl was willing to give up her purity then thats her deal and I'm not gonna say no. I also asked him why he believed purity wasn't that important. He said because sex is an important part of all relationships and with out it you couldn't have a good connection. I just kinda laughed at this because I have heard it many times. Next, this was probably my favorite part of our conversation. He added that he believed that if a guy views porn thats ok, because its natural, normal and every guy does it. When I asked him so what if a girl did, he said well that would be odd and that would be wrong, because thats not normal. So all in all this just really ticked me off because the whole time he just acted like guys can do whatever they want but girls have certain rules. The one thing I still find funny about this conversation is that he contradicted himself a lot, but when I pointed that out he would make a bunch of excuses and add another point into the discussion. Just to clarify we do not believe that viewing porn is ok for anyone, mainly because its definitely not of God.

I'm Sex!!!

A poem

So last night I was watching Lord of the Rings and a line in the movie wouldn't stop going through my head and I ended up writing a poem. This poem has nothing to do with purity, at least not to me, but I felt I needed to share it.



Don't go were I can't follow,
Please don't leave me here alone.
All I want is to hear you again
To feel your touch
And to see you for the first time.
I need you here to guide me through my darkness.
To help me through my confusion.

I need you
The reasons are clear as black is white.
Will you still accept my ruined soul?

Don't go were I can't follow.
I don't want to be lonely anymore.
My eyes are blind,
To what you have in store.
I know I try to walk away from you
Which hammers your limbs once again.
Unfortunately nothing will take away the pain I've caused.

Don't go were I can't follow.
Please don't leave me behind.
I'm here begging for your forgiveness
Even though I don't deserve it.


So after I wrote this I read it over to see if it has anything to do with purity and I figured out it does. The first thing I realized is that many people when reading this would automatically think I was talking about a guy. Which this poem is not about a guy, it is about God. From this I noticed that many people in this generation, mainly girls turn everything into something about a guy. But this is the opposite of what God wants us to do. God doesn't want us to be like this, he wants our number one priority to be him. To me learning this is a big key to staying pure, because we have to get our minds off the world's perspective of love and keep our minds on God's path.

Dee Koester

Tonight I went to the City Wide Prayer Meeting. As I was sitting there I saw Dee, a lady in our church. This past week her husband died, but we know that he is in Heaven, right now. I don't know exactly how long they were married, but I know it was longer than I have been alive and that they loved each other very much. So Here is a woman that found the man she planned to spend the rest of her life with ( something I pray for), but now she has to be without him. As I was sitting there thinking about this, I was watching her. She was stretching her hand out praying for people, but it was the look in her eyes that got my attention. In her eyes you could see the sincere concern and compassion she had for people. So while I'm sitting here feeling horrible for Dee, she is overwhelmed with love and joy for others. I was both inspired and taken back by Dee, because I saw just how selfless her love for Don and God are. She rejoices knowing that her husband is in a far better place, and though she might be feeling loss she still reaches out to others. I think too many times, we think of love in a marriage as something we need to have and receive to be complete. This is selfishly seeking love, but, proven by Don and Dee, the love that lasts is selfless. I want to leave you with this thought..........Is it possible to seek for what is selfless, selfishly, and find it??

Her Name:PURITY

Her name and reputation are slandered and dragged through the gutter by those who have left her

She wanders the street hoping someone will pursue her.

Bruised an Battered,
She calls out to those she loves,
Her heart in pieces, caused by all the false lovers in her past.

The children that used to cling to her have left her behind in their adolescence.

Misinterpreted,
Misplaced,
Misunderstood

Stripped of her clothing,
She is forsaken.

Her Name: PURITY
Her Purpose:TO SEPARATE US FOR THE WILL OF GOD

Are You Willing To Stand?!

If we expect to be a generation that is pure and separate for the work of Christ, we are going to have to help each other out! Guys, your purity is directly affected by the purity of the girls that you come in contact with. Girls, same goes for us. We need to be guarding each other's purity! Guys, If a girl walks into church dressed all hoochie, that doesn't affect her purity. She is not lusting off herself. So you should be encouraging the young Christian ladies you know to practice modesty in our culture! Ladies if you are dressing like that and making your Christian brother lust, the last thing that is going to be on his mind is making sure he treats you with the respect you deserve! What we need is ladies who are going to go against everything that society tells us a girl should be and go to the word of God. Then, we need young men who are going to stand behind these ladies and support them, not only with words but with actions. If you know you do not have self control then stand up and tell her, " I don't think we should be alone!" We as brothers and sisters in Christ need to love each other enough to stand for truth in each others lives, so that none of us will fall away from all that God has called us to.

Ladies! You are Fearfuly and Wonderfuly Made!

Identity Crisis

via Pastor Steven Furtick by sf on 9/13/07

I heard somebody on TV the other day saying that Britney Spears has gotten too fat.
And my first reaction was: "I wish I could cover the ears of every 13 year old girl in America right now."
I seriously wanted to throw up.

As a young pastor who wants to see the next generation rise above surface level spirituality, nothing makes me sadder than to imagine what it must be like for all the young ladies who are being force fed the lies of the modern media.

Should we take care of our bodies? No doubt.
Is it okay to care about fashion and appearance? Go for it.
(I personally love the way my wife works hard to dress well and look good for her man. And I try to do the same for her. That means I wear what she tells me to wear. It's that simple.)

But I'm deeply concerned that this generation of gals is beholding the wrong standards.
So I'd like to offer a few pastoral observations to my wonderful female readership about the impending American female identity crisis.

1. Nicole Richie is too skinny. Make sure you're drawing your inspiration from reasonable and truly beautiful role models. You don't get a "pretty point" for every rib that I can count. In fact, I shouldn't be seeing your stomach at all. Put some clothes on.
2. The girls on My Super Sweet 16 are not normal. They are bratty and disgusting. You should not act like them. If you do act like them, your parents should beat you. Not put you on restriction. Beat you. Yeah, I said it.
3. If you will cultivate Christ like character and pursue God with your whole heart, you'll attract guys with the right stuff. Your identity has got to run deeper than your make up and new shoes. Make guys respect you for what's within you.

I am passionate about this. I want to exalt true and lasting beauty that doesn't fade for the young ladies who sit under my teaching every week. I want them to know who they are and who they belong to. I want them to hold themselves in high regard as women who are uniquely crafted and completely loved by God. And I want them to practice selective hearing, so that the next time some talking head tells them Britney is too fat, and it makes them feel inadequate, they'll turn off their TVs and fill their minds with the thoughts of God instead.

A Meaningless Piece of Metal

What is the deal with Christians and purity/promise rings?! We seem to think that as long as we have THE ring we're good. It's just a ring! I'm pretty sure God is more concerned with whether we actually practice purity rather than us wearing a ring that says we do. But people seem to think a dinky little ring makes you holy, "You don't have to actually be pure as long as you have a ring." I know most people don't think or say this, but their actions scream it!
And the people that actually get the rings are the people who push the limits.......you know what limits I'm talking about, " it's okay if I do A-Y as long as we don't touch Z." No WAY!!! We are supposed to be honoring God with our bodies! You are probably reading this thinking," Purity rings are a good thing," or, "She has no idea what she is talking about." Well, I have a friend who just paid roughly $100 for her purity ring, she is a "christian", and is constantly looking for ways to get around actually having sex, but still have "fun." The intentions behind purity/promise rings were good, but the symbol has been exalted over what it represents. If any one is reading this and they have a purity ring, use it for something other then showing hypocrisy, practice what you claim to practice, and show God's light through your actions.

This Is What We're About!

Have you ever heard the saying" You're preaching to the choir."? Well that's exactly what we're doing because the "choir" has compromised! Our Generation has stripped Purity of it's true meaning and purpose! The "modern" definition of Purity is not having sex. Purity is so much more than this. Its keeping ourselves separated and holy from the world. As Christians we need to Purify our minds, body, souls, and heart. This message isn't for unbelieving sinners, this is for all those Christians who say they have the love of Christ and yet they look act talk and dress just like the world. We need to wake up put on the mind of Christ and go back to the true purpose for Purity in our lives!!!