PURE FAITH

Purity means choosing to love God more than you love anything or anyone else, and expressing that love by wholeheartedly devoting your life to God. It’s important to pursue purity because the more pure you become, the more you’ll grow into the person God intends you to become.

It’s crucial to pursue purity in order to grow closer to God, because purity leads to holiness. So people of faith often talk about purity – but usually, only in the sense of avoiding sexual immorality. Believers try hard to achieve purity in that limited area, and despite their best efforts, many still end up failing.

Keep in mind that you’ll ultimately harm yourself if you look for pleasure in relationships that don’t please God, who is worthy of your honor and who wants the best for you. Decide every day to give all of your devotion (not just part of it) to God, placing your relationship with Him at the center of your life and revolving all of your other relationships around it. Doing so will help you avoid double-minded relationships (focused partly on serving God but partly on serving yourself or another person), which are impure and unstable. Recognize that God’s goal for your relationships is much more than that they make you happy; God wants your relationships to help you become more holy. With that in mind, regularly evaluate your relationships to honestly consider whether or not they’re drawing you closer to God or farther away from Him. Ask God to give you the courage and wisdom to set boundaries in your relationships to protect yourself from people who are tempting you to sin. Never pursue a romance with an unbeliever, no matter how attracted you may be to him or her.