The Promise to God

There is so much practical information to write on purity and I will soon get to that, but I think it’s important for me to write about my experience because I want you to know that you can do it too…

My church used to have morning prayer at 7 am and my friends and I would try our absolute hardest to make it, before school or even on our days off, and we often did. I’d sit on the floor in a random aisle of chairs and enter the secret place. It wasn’t easy for me to focus at first. My mind would often wonder and I wouldn’t get into deep prayer until the last few minutes of the hour. But then it became easier and easier. When I entered the secret place with God, I would see myself sitting on grass in front of a castle, staring up at the tower. I didn’t see God, but I knew that’s who I was staring at.

My secret place vision changed when I became a young adult. I started going to the prayer meetings held in the evenings and once again it was becoming difficult to focus. But I would come and seek God, and my vision turned from me sitting on the grass to me dancing in a meadow. I was wearing a white dress and my hair was loose. I would dance before God with the most genuine smile that could my lips could ever form. I loved being in that meadow with my God.

At some point, when I was still seeing myself in the meadow, I heard a song that perfectly described my secret place encounters.  The entire song, “Dance With Me” by  Evan Earwicker is beautifully profound, but these are the words that are hidden in my heart: I want to be romanced by the King of the Ages. I don’t want to sing of a passion I’ve never known. I want to get lost in the beauty of Jesus. To dance through the night around Your throne. 

You see, it was the love of Jesus that captured me. Of course the love of Jesus is the basis of our salvation and everything He has done/does for us, but the love Jesus brought me out of a pit so dark full of rejection, insecurity, lies, loneliness, and anything else that has to do with feeling unloved and unworthy. The love of this Jesus renewed my mind and healed my heart. To me, dancing before this King Jesus was the most special thing I could experience; so pure and so beautiful.

I’ve written about encountering God and intimacy with Jesus and this is exactly what happened. You see, when you go to the secret place, amazing things happen. You are developing a relationship with your creator, the one who knows every detail about you. The one who knows your likes and dislikes. The one who, if you allow Him, will hold your life in His hands. But you also learn about Him. You learn about His dislikes and likes. You learn about what He delights in and what He hates. You learn His character. It’s like any relationship, and both parties are involved. I am telling you this from experience, get to know Him and you will fall in love with Him.

Of course God commands purity, and sex only inside the marriage of one man and one woman, and this can be achieved by fear. In my earlier years I was terrified because my dad always told me that if I ever do anything wrong, God would tell him. But I want you to see purity from love and desire, which I learned and I’m currently living. When God pulled me from the pit of despair, His love literally transformed me. Every time I sat in the grass He was changing me. Every dance in the meadow He was dancing with me and teaching me to be loved the way I was created to be loved, pure and unconditional. How could I come out of the secret place and settle for anything less than what God has for me?

So I promised God I would wait and be pure. Pure not only with the opposite sex, but pure in my living; how I dressed, how I spoke, how I behaved, etc. Everything I did and now do must be a reflection of what God has done in me. It’s a promise to live a life set apart and walk in obedience to the loving and holy God.

I don’t know if God will take you to a meadow. I don’t know if you’ll see yourself dancing with Him. I do not know how it will look for you. It’s different for everyone, but I encourage you to seek Him and get to know Him and come to the point of making your promise to God. That’s what matters. His standards are the only ones that will matter when this life is over. He is the only one who will love you the way you are meant to be loved. He is the one you will spend forever with. Seek Him and make this promise to/with Him.

This promise to God is holy and something that you will not take lightly. It is tied to the inner most parts of your being where His Spirit lives, but it is so pure and so beautiful.

Until next time,

Love, Sarah Lynn

“How can a young person stay one the path of purity? By living according to Your word.” Psalm 119:9

Father God, I thank you for your presence. I thank you for the secret place where we can come to know you and seek your face. I pray that we would have an increasing desire to get to know. I pray you would open our hearts to receive whatever it it you want to give to us. Lord, I lift up this promise of purity to you. Keep us on the path of purity as we so desire to be obedient to you. Help live with heavenly standards. Teach us to live a life set apart. I ask that your Holy Spirit go with us and speak to us wherever we go. Amen.