Designed for Purity

A dusting of snow covered the church parking lot. For this Floridian, it was a bitterly cold Indianapolis winter, but that didn’t stop 1,100 teens from packing the auditorium for the first-ever Pure.Truth. conference. I was thrilled by the turnout, nearly four times as many as I had hoped for, but I was burdened that not a single one should miss the message.

“God is the Creator and Designer of life. Without that simple fact, nothing else makes sense.”

In ten-plus years of ministry I had learned that teens need a fresh approach to sexual purity. Many churches teach abstinence or “waiting” until marriage, but the message often seems to stop there. The Bible’s message of purity goes much deeper. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8, emphasis added). Purity involves our actions, but it reaches all the way to the thoughts and emotions we entertain in our hearts. Purity is not just about waiting, it is about being.

But even churched teens are asking why. “Why can’t I look at pornography?” “Why wait until marriage to have sex?” If they don’t know why, telling them to wait is at best confusing. The why begins at Creation.

God is the Creator and Designer of life. Without that simple fact, nothing else makes sense. The creator is the owner. If God owns us, He has the right to say what we can and can’t look at, what we should and shouldn’t do. But purity is much more rewarding than just following a list of dos and don’ts.

Furthermore, a creator has a purpose for his creation. An iPhone wasn’t made to run Android applications; it doesn’t work. In the same way we weren’t created for sexual impurity. When we misuse what God designed, we can expect problems. But purity is about more than the negative—when we follow our God-given desires the way He designed us to, we enjoy life to the fullest, without guilt.

Best of all, a designer has a deep, emotional connection to his work, which he loves and cherishes as the apple of his eye. Because God made us in every detail, He loves us and has a plan for us that goes beyond anything that we could ask or think (Ephesians 3:20). God’s commands for purity were not given because He wants us to miss out on all the fun. When we are pure, we can experience God’s greatest fulfillment and fellowship. Knowing God and living life to its fullest—that is what we were made to do. We were designed for purity.

To schedule a Pure.Truth. event at your church or find out where to attend, go to puretruthconference.com