Pure Heart

R. Warren Shellie

Description

Our culture has twisted and perverted God's most intimate gift--sex and sexuality. And men are not the only ones who struggle with sexual sin. In this frank and disarming book, Shellie Warren helps female readers understand and embrace the true purpose and role of sex in their lives. Whether single or married, women must cope with issues surrounding body image, lust, adultery, sexual addiction, porn, and more. This honest treatment of a hush-hush issue will free women to experience forgiveness and renewal. Includes a foreword and afterword from XXXchurch founder Craig Gross.

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441213211
• Langue: English

Extrait

XXXchurch.com resource
PURE HEART
a woman s guide to sexual integrity
SHELLIE R. WARREN
The greatest thing God ever made was a woman.
- Shannon Sanders, Granny-winning singer and songwriter
2010 by Fireproof Ministries
Published by Baker Books a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.bakerbooks.com
E-book edition created 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means - for example, electronic, photocopy, recording - without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-1321-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture is taken from the New Century Version . Copyright 1987, 1988, 1991 by Word Publishing, a division of Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture marked AMP is taken from the Amplified Bible, Copyright 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
Scripture marked Message is taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson, copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.
Scripture marked KJV is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture marked NKJV is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Italics in Scripture quotations are added by the author.
XXXchurch.com is represented by Wheelhouse Literary Group, 1007 Loxley Drive, Nashville, TN 37211.
To protect the privacy of those whose stories are shared by the author, some names and details have been changed.
This book is dedicated to every young woman who doesn t understand the power of her purpose (yet) and to three princesses in particular whom I believe, in spite of the hands they were dealt, will change the game as we know it: Rochelle, Kristin Joyce, and Starkeisha. I see you. I m praying. I got you.
To my goddaughter, Tasia Selah Mitchell. Thank you for providing the opportunity of a do-over. I am both honored and thrilled. You amaze me every time I see you (or hear you).
To my pro-life baby, Caroline Irene Dye. Who knows what my life would have been like had I gotten the call before my abortions? Your mommy is such a warrior. You are such a miracle .
To the future children God will bless me with. You will be happy that this book came before you did . . . trust me .
And finally, if there was one verse to sum up this entire book, it would have to be Malachi 2:15: God made husbands and wives to become one body and one spirit for his purpose - so they would have children who are true to God. I personally wish I had honored it much sooner. I pray that you will.
Contents
Foreword
1. In the Beginning
2. Sex: In and Out of Purpose
3. Sexual Additives, Part One: Closet Activities
4. Sexual Additives, Part Two: Porn . . . in All Forms
5. Overexposure: Media and Sexuality
6. Confusion: The Misuse of Sex
7. Freedom: Breaking the Cycle of Sexual Drama
8. Identity: Finding (Godly) Femininity
9. Perseverance: Patience with the Process
10. Purity: Broken Beginnings Made Whole
Afterword
Notes
Resources
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Further and faster . These are the two words that come to mind when I think of porn use in today s culture. Porn will take a person further than they ever wanted to go and destroy their world faster than they ever thought possible.
When I started XXXchurch, I encountered so many people who were gripped by the addiction of porn. They had been entangled by the web and its seductive bait of the two-dimensional woman who would never say no. The majority, mostly men, had no idea how deep their depravity would take them. Few recognized their eyes would never be satisfied. That was the late 1990s.
Over a decade has passed, and we have seen the line blur between who is susceptible to porn and who is safe. No longer is porn a strictly male pastime. Women, in staggering proportions, are curiously diving headlong into blind addiction. They never expected it to grab them. In fact most were lured in through curiosity. Many slowly cracked open porn s Pandora s box to see what it was that had gripped their lover, husband, son, boyfriend, or pastor. They wanted to know who this mysterious lover was who lived only a few clicks away. As they sought to investigate, the isolation, the eye candy, the fantasy that flickered before them tickled an arousal that had never been awakened.
To counter this sad phenomenon, we have gathered experts, written curriculum, started accountability groups, and hoped and prayed for the best. In some cases we have been successful. In others we have missed the mark by a mile.
We knew we needed a book for women, and we knew it had to be written by a woman. Who better to understand a woman s journey than a woman? Who better to bring issues and solutions to the table than a woman? Who better to give hope and remedy to what seems to be an unbreakable addiction than someone who has lived on the frontlines of further and faster ?
What you are holding is help. Maybe it is not you who needs help but someone you love. Either way, Shellie offers straightforward advice to women about how to retain or regain sexual purity - all drawn from the powerful combination of scriptural truth and practical experience. Her casual style of writing is reminiscent of a girls night out. Her pragmatic solutions are blunt while still wrapped in compassion. If Oprah was ever to have a book club selection to speak to the heart of a woman s fight with sexual addictions, this would be it.
Read this book and allow God to apply it to your soul. Wholeness is within your reach.
Hopeful, Craig Gross
The Letter That Got This Book Started . . .
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Dear Shellie,
I know you don t know me, but I have read a lot of your stuff and I feel like you might be able to relate. I don t want to share this with anyone that I know and, as weird as it may sound, sometimes it s easier telling a stranger what you ve done than your best friend . . .
It s such a long story. Basically, I ve slept with so many men that I ve lost count and now my period is late. The worst part is that my parents don t even know that I m having sex. I m really active in my church and a lot of kids younger than I am look up to me.
I m not sure why I can t stop having sex. I just don t really feel pretty without it. I don t know if that sounds weird to you or not, but even though I was raised as a Christian, I was never really told the purpose for sex or even why it was a good reason to wait. All I heard was that fornication was a sin, a sin that could send me to hell.
I already feel like I m in hell. I currently don t have a boyfriend but I am involved with three different guys. I told two of them that my period was late and they haven t returned my phone calls. I m lost. Can you help me?
I don t know where to begin.
1 - - - - - - - - - - - In the Beginning
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:1 NKJV
Life on the planet is born of woman. Adrienne Rich, author and poet
For years, I ve said that I wanted to get married on a Friday evening. The Lord knows we can t always get what we want, nor am I the only person who can make that decision (what s up with women planning weddings without the input of men, anyway?). For some reason, when I think about the creation of marriage , I just like the beauty and order of the creation week: man and woman made on the sixth day (see Gen. 1:26-31). I thought it would be cool to someday enter into the Sabbath (2:1-3) as a wife. Talk about a whole new level of rest . . . or unrest, depending on how you look at it. Either way, a blessed state to be in (I giggle just thinking about it!).
In 2004 I wrote what I call my sex memoir : Inside of Me: Lessons of Lust, Love and Redemption . I call it a sex memoir because, like every person, there is so much more to me than my sex life. However, that doesn t mean that my sexuality is any less important than, say, my professional life, my family, or even my spirituality. As a matter of fact, one of the biggest disservices that I believe the church has done is to try to separate who we are as sexual beings from everything else about us - as if we are to just put our sexual needs on the shelf and dust them off once we say I do. Being sexual is not a curse; however, to not understand the purpose behind our sexuality can be a curse if we re not careful. Inside of Me , the book that I lovingly refer to as my firstborn creative child, is something that I hold very near and dear to my heart. It is what my mother refers to as my emotional throw up, and in many ways she is right. It helped me see where I had been in preparation for where I wanted to go. It candidly revealed what happens when you use something while having absolutely no idea what it s really meant for.
On so many levels the creation story seems like a great way to get back to what so many of us seem to have lost sight of: marriage, God s way. In the Garden, Adam and the Woman were as close to God as humanly possible. In the Garden, all of their needs were met. In the Garden, they were very clear about their purpose. And it s that last point that serves as the main focus of and purpose for this book.
This book? Prayerfully, it will pick up where Inside of Me left off - for both the writer and the reader - because the funny thing (not in the ha-ha but the aha kind of way) is that in the intro of my first book, I listed all of the reasons why sex outside of marriage was not a good idea. And all of them were dead-on. But it wasn t until 2007 - that s right, three years later - that I actually stopped having se