Equipping Eve Episode 8: Erasing the Grey

Is the church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus? Well, it's true, there's no shortage of candy-coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies.

But beyond Sunday morning, are Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed Eve in the garden? In an attempt to address the need for trustworthy, biblical resources for women, no compromise radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies-only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.

My name is Mike Abendroth and I'm pleased to introduce your host Erin Benzinger, a friend of No Compromise Radio and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's word.

The Need for Biblical Equipping of Women

Ladies and welcome to Equipping Eve, the show that seeks to equip women, Christian women, with fruits of truth from God's word so that we can stand strong and firm on that foundation of truth when we are confronted with, oh, Satan's age-old tactics of twisting and distorting and questioning God's word.

When we know the truth, we can recognize the error. And so that is what we seek to do here. I'm your host, Erin Benzinger. I'm so glad you're here joining us today. I think we're going to have a good discussion today.

Before we get started, just a reminder that Equipping Eve does have a Facebook page. Please stop by and give it a like. I'm still not really, you know, totally comfortable with the whole Facebook thing.

I got off of Facebook several years ago and didn't miss it at all. But when the show started, decided to rejoin and start up a page for Equipping Eve. And it's been fun. It's been fun to interact with you ladies a little bit on there.

And hopefully in time, maybe I'll be a little more active on there. We're also on Twitter. It's at Equipping Eve. And of course, you can visit the website equippingeve .org or .com. Both of those addresses will take you to the same place.

There's a blog there that's updated at the very least biweekly when the show airs. You will have a link to hear the audio of the show as well as see links to any resources or articles or sermons or anything that might be referenced or mentioned in the show for that week.

So I hope you'll stop by and visit that as well. If you need to get a hold of me, probably Twitter is the quickest way, but you can always drop me an email at any of those places and we'll chat that way.

So it's been fun. It's been very encouraging to interact and see all of you ladies listening. And so I'm very appreciative of that and excited to see what the Lord will continue to do with the show and this ministry.

Why Fifty Shades of Grey Became a Christian Concern

So hey, as you are listening to this, as I'm taping this, actually, it's February already. And you know, February, it's like spring is almost there. But as you're listening to the show, it's actually February 14th.

Oh, it's Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day. Love or something like it is in the air, isn't it? So what's been really big this Valentine's Day? Surely you know where I'm about to go with this. Shades of gray.

Yep, 50 of them to be exact. Fifty Shades of Gray. If you have been paying any sort of attention to any type of media, internet, television, radio, I'm sure you are aware that the Fifty Shades of Gray movie released yesterday.

And I have no idea as I tape this how successful that movie is going to be. But if it's anything like the book, it will be a blockbuster. So what are we to think about that? You know, what do we think as Christian women who love the Lord, who have been purchased with His blood?

What do we think of something like Fifty Shades of Gray, be it the book or the movie? Is this something we should be excited about? Is this something we can go see with our girlfriends? How do we approach this?

It's a big topic out there today. And so I thought we'd just take a look at Fifty Shades and kind of material like it, if you will. We're not going to be reading any excerpts or anything, so you don't have to worry about that.

You can, for the most part, I think, keep the kids in the room if they're there. We're going to go to the Word of God today, as we always do. We don't need to taste rat poison to know that it can hurt us.

And so it's okay that we haven't read the book, if we're going to talk about it. It's okay that we haven't seen the movie. We can still identify the problems and we can still address them from the Word of God.

And so that is what I hope we'll learn today. So what is this whole Fifty Shades of Gray thing? Just a little bit of background for those of you who might not be very familiar with it. It was written by a woman named E .L. James.

I'm not really sure what the E and the L stand for. It's actually a trilogy of books, which I didn't realize when I started the research for the show. I had no idea there were three of these books. So that's just really terrible.

But yeah, there's a trilogy of these books and it's one of the biggest criticisms of the book has been that it promotes violence against women. And so it's a very sexually explicit book and there's very intimate scenes described in there and they contain violent acts as well.

And so, in fact, there was a scientific, I'm kind of using air quotes because I think there's probably a few holes in the study, but a study was published last year in the Journal of Women's Health. It was called, Fiction or Not, Fifty Shades is Associated with Health Risks in Adolescent and Young Adult Females.

So it was kind of an interesting study to look at and I can link to this at the Equipping Eve site if you want to take a look at it later. They surveyed females ages 18 to 24 at a local university and just kind of took a look to see if there was any correlation between women who had read these books, whether it was just one or the whole trilogy, and then if there was any correlation between reading the books or books like it and some risky behaviors such as multiple sexual partners, partners who abused them, whether physically or verbally, even things like fasting and diet aids or binge drinking.

They were looking at all of these things because those are kind of telltale symptoms of, you know, someone who's maybe in an abusive relationship. So I won't detail the study out for you. You'll be able to look it up yourself.

Some of the conclusions they drew, quote, problematic depictions of violence against women in popular culture such as in film, novels, music, or pornography create a broader social narrative that normalizes these risks and behaviors in women's lives.

Our study showed strong correlations between health risks in women's lives including violence victimization and consumption of Fifty Shades. So that was kind of the conclusion that they came to after doing a survey of these young girls and that's just really a sad thing.

You know, but the more you expose yourself to something, the more you're kind of desensitized to it and you start to think it's normal and that includes this violence victimization as they call it. And so the fact that women are reading these books like crazy, I mean, this is not something that women are hiding either.

You know, this is something they're reading down in the lunchroom. They're very freely talking about these books and this movie. It's not something that women are ashamed of consuming. In fact, I had a conversation with some coworkers a few months back when the movie trailer first released.

It really kind of caused a stir when that trailer was released. And so I was having some lunch. I was having some lunch. Which I don't do all that often. I'm usually doing homework at lunch, but I don't know.

I think we ordered in or something so I figured it was worth having a conversation that day and they were talking about this movie and it was, you know, a table full of women, younger women, probably late 20s, early 30s.

Several of them were recently married and, you know, one woman says, oh, I can't wait to see this movie. I can't wait. You know, my girlfriends and I are going to go, my husband, no, I'm not taking him.

I can't take him to see that movie. And I think, what are you ashamed of that you're not ashamed to talk about the fact that you're so excited about this movie, you probably wouldn't be ashamed to read the book down in the lunchroom, but you don't want your husband with you.

What is that? That's not normal. And that raises a red flag. So we have this violence against women that's depicted in these books. We have the fact that really these books are not that well written. I'm not going to read any excerpts to you.

You can find a few excerpts here and there on the internet. I've looked at a couple, nothing explicit. I haven't read anything explicit because I don't want to, but you don't need to read the explicit material to see that they are not well written books.

And I don't say that to insult the author. So I want to make that really clear, you know, some people write better than others. It's just, it's like anything else. So I don't say that as an insult. I say that to make the point that it is not the magnificent writing style that is selling these books.

It's something else. And it's the sex and it's the salaciousness of the content. And when you have something like that, you don't need to write the book well because depraved people will buy it and love it anyway.

And that's what's really unfortunate. And that's what we really need to consider as Christian women if we are thinking about possibly reading this book. And ultimately, as I said, these books are very sexually explicit.

This is, the media is calling Fifty Shades of Grey mommy porn. I mean, the secular media realizes, recognizes that this is explicit material. This is erotica. And Tim Challey's actually just very recently published an article called Seven Lessons from Fifty Shades of Grey.

He just kind of makes seven points as to what the Fifty Shades phenomenon can teach us. And so I'm just going to skim through these very, very quickly because I just saw his article before I started recording and so I didn't fit him into my program notes.

So if we run over, it's Tim Challey's fault. But he says the first reason is erotica is in. He says it used to be considered artsy, but it's been a popular genre for some time now and has generally been one that remained muted in the marketplace and especially when it was targeted squarely at women.

But erotica has evolved. It's moved from shop floor to shop front, from might read to must read, from late night theater to prime time theater. And he's absolutely right. Another lesson he says that we can learn from this phenomenon is that sex isn't just for men.

He says in recent years, a great deal of attention has been focused on pornography, especially internet pornography. And he's right. And he's also right when he says, unfortunately, almost all the attention has been given to men.

But the Fifty Shades Phenomenon, says Tim Challey's, highlights the fact that women are sexual beings as well and that women have sexual struggles of their own. And so this is creating a new battleground, says Tim Challey's, for the hearts and minds of women.

It's normalizing this type of material for women. You know, we can sit there and point fingers all day long at men and their internet pornography. But what's sitting on your nightstand, ladies? Challey's goes on, he says, erotica is dangerous.

He says, for some, the stories echo experiences they have found pleasurable in their past. For others, the narrative fuels plans for the future. For others, still, the storyline offers to fill, even if just fleetingly, the relational void left by loneliness, marital strife, or the pain of abuse.

He says, individuals enter into the narrative and join with the characters in their quest for pleasure or pain, both of which figure prominently in Fifty Shades, and in doing so reinforce the wayward tendencies of their heart.

And he's hitting on points here that we're going to talk about very, very soon from the scriptures. Challey says erotica is in among Christians. You know, we love to think that that's the world and us Christians, we don't do that.

But Challey says recent research suggests that up to 20 percent of Christian, I would add, professing Christian women are indulging in regular or occasional online pornography. Twenty percent engaging in regular or occasional online pornography.

Erotica wounds our walk, says Tim Challey's. How many single Christians, he asks, have leafed through the pages of Fifty Shades and found that it merely increased their discontentment? How many buy into the lie that premarital sex is better than God's good gift of celibacy?

He goes on, he says erotica harms us all. You know, the church is called to be pure, is what he's talking about. And how can the church be pure if its members are engaging this type of material? And he says erotica shows we need Jesus.

He says we serve a savior who is willing to pour grace upon grace into his children's lives. And that really is the ultimate. If you've engaged in this type of material, this type of behavior, even, Jesus Christ still saves.

And if you repent of your sin, turn away from that sin, trust in Jesus Christ and his perfect life that you cannot live, his atoning death that you deserve and his resurrection from the dead. If you trust in that for your salvation and not any work of your own, repent of your sin, he will save you.

Jesus Christ saves people who are addicted to pornography. But that does not give us license to sin, does it, ladies? So I mentioned that survey earlier, that scientific survey, if you will, that was done.

Another survey was conducted recently by a friend of mine, Landon Chapman, over at EntreatingFavor .com. Thanks, Landon, for giving me access to the results of this survey. And as I'm taping this, I don't think it's been closed yet.

So if you go look at Landon's results when you're listening to the show, they may be a little bit different than what the numbers that I'm giving you today. So just be aware of that. But he sent out a link to the survey, just wanted to know about Fifty Shades of Gray and Christian women.

So the overwhelming number of respondents said that they were Christian. And actually, as I'm looking at this, he has almost 300 responses and most said they were Christian and most said that they had not read the book Fifty Shades of Gray, which I thought was a pleasant surprise.

Actually, I was I was really happy to see that. And then I scrolled down and I saw his question that says, Do you have any issues with a Christian woman reading these books? Forty two percent said yes.

Thirty five percent said no, that's not that big of a difference in the grand scheme of things. Thirty five and forty two percent. It was it was close enough to make me pause that the majority of these women answering the survey say they're Christians, but they would not have so many of them would not have an issue with a Christian woman reading these books.

So then Landon's next question following that was to please explain your answer in this question. So what I did is I filtered out the answers and I filtered it down to just women who answered that they were Christian by whatever their definition of Christian is.

And then I filtered down to those who said they did not have an issue with a Christian woman reading these books. And from there, I looked at the responses as to why. Why would you not have an issue with a Christian woman reading the book Fifty Shades of Gray?

So I just want to run through some of these. I am not going to read all of them to you. Do not worry. But you're going to see a pattern in the reasons women were giving for why they have no problem with a Christian woman.

Maybe not them, but another Christian woman reading these books, it says, I think here's one. This is completely anonymous. If you're listening today and you answer the survey, I have no idea who you are, who gave these answers.

So just rest assured with that. So here's an answer. I think people should have the freedom to choose what they read. Next one says the story goes beyond the sex. It's about meeting someone where they are and helping to bring to a healthier, happier place through love and understanding.

It's a woman's right to choose. It's up to that Christian how she believes. I don't think there's anything wrong with reading it. Others think it's mommy porn. Now, here's where you're really going to see a theme.

It's none of my business and not my place to judge. Not my place to judge. There's nothing wrong with reading a raunchy book. It's just a book. Free press. We are free to choose. It's just entertaining.

Personal choice. It's just a book. I believe that Christians should be allowed to choose what books and movies they would like to read or watch without being made to feel guilty. There's only one true judgment we will all face, and we will face it alone based on our own choices.

By judging others' decisions, we as Christians are committing yet another sin that we will be judged in ourselves. In other words, don't judge. It's not my place to judge other people. Women should be able to read whatever they want.

Why would what another woman wants to read be my business? It's not for me to judge. It's just a book. It's normal. It's just a book. This is fiction. No problem with them reading these books. I'm not that judgmental.

I don't think religion has anything to do with your choice in recreational reading material. It's just a book. As a Christian, you should not judge others, including what they read. They're just fantasy.

It's everyone's conscience what they read. It's not for me to judge what someone reads, as long as it doesn't affect their morals and values. Sometimes a little fantasy is healthy as long as it stays fantasy.

But can what we consume not affect our morals and values? We're going to get there. It's up to them. It's not for me to judge. Don't judge. Don't judge. I don't have an issue with it. Sex is good. It's not up to me to judge.

It's just a book. Not up to me to judge. Not up to me to judge. Are these adequate arguments, ladies? Are these women right? Who think that we should not judge what another Christian is reading? Is it legalistic?

Is Fifty Shades of Grey harmless because it's just a book or just a movie? Well, I can sit here all day and tell you what my opinion is, but that's not what we do here. So we're going to go to the Bible.

Thinking on What Is True, Honorable, Pure, and Lovely

Philippians 4, 8 says, Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

Dwell on these things. These things that are true and honorable, right, pure, lovely and of good repute. Dwell on these things. These things that are worthy of Christ. These things that are worthy of filling the mind of a woman who has been saved by Christ.

Does, quote, mommy porn fit into that category? What is true, what is honorable, what is lovely? John MacArthur, in his commentary on this verse, which is Philippians 4, 8, again, he says, whatever is true means reading, analyzing and meditating on the word of God.

Whatever is honorable is noble, dignified and worthy of respect. Whatever is right should be translated righteous. It describes whatever is in perfect harmony with God's eternal, unchanging standards.

Again, as revealed in Scripture, whatever is pure describes what God in Scripture defines as holy, morally clean and undefiled. Whatever is lovely can be translated sweet, gracious, generous or patient.

Believers must focus their thoughts, says John MacArthur, on what the Bible says is pleasing, attractive and amiable before God. Think on whatever is of good repute, describes what is highly regarded or well thought of.

The key to godly living is godly thinking, as Solomon wisely observed in Proverbs 4, 23. Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life. MacArthur also says in his commentary that the Bible leaves no doubt that people's lives are the product of their thoughts.

People's lives are the product of their thoughts. And ladies, if we are reading a book or we are watching a movie, we're allowing those things to shape our thoughts. If you think it isn't, you're deceiving yourself.

And OK, well, I just I just read the one book, you know, I don't read them all the time. OK. But why do you even want to fill your mind with such things? Does that book, does that movie fit the description that we see in Philippians 4, 8 of whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute?

Dwell on these things. Romans 12, 1 and 2 says, Therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. But if we're filling our minds with filth, ladies, how can we be renewing them?

Remember that sin begins in the mind and in the heart. And what we read is impacting our mind. So when we read about these sexually immoral activities being engaged in by two adults who are not married, so we're already then giving approval to an illicit relationship, how does that help us renew our mind?

You know, we don't just sit back and say, OK, God, renew my mind. We are actively pursuing righteousness, are we not, as Christians who have been saved by Jesus Christ? Martin Lloyd-Jones is one of my favorite expositors of scripture, and he actually delivered several sermons on Romans 12, 1 and 2, the verses I just read to you.

And in one of his expositions of this text, he says, quote,. But what are you doing when you pick up a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey? Aren't you doing what Lloyd-Jones is telling us not to do here based on scripture?

Because it feeds your fleshly appetites. But sin begins in the mind. James, James tells us this. Chapter one, verse 14 and 15. Each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust is conceived, it gives birth to sin.

And when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. It starts in the mind. Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount. You know exactly which verse I'm going to. Matthew 5, 27 and 28. You have heard it said, you shall not commit adultery.

But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Every woman that looks at a man to lust after him has already committed adultery with him in her heart.

Every woman that thinks lustful thoughts from a book or a movie has already committed adultery in her heart. Proverbs 6, 25 and 28. Do not desire her beauty in your heart, nor let her capture you with her eyelids.

For on account of a harlot, one is reduced to a loaf of bread and an adulterous hunts for the precious life. Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Or can a man walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched?

Can a woman take fire in her bosom and her clothes not be burned? Can we tamper with these enticements of the flesh and not get burned? More importantly, why would we even want to try? Why would we even want to flirt with the temptation?

John MacArthur, on his website over at gty .org, there's an article. It's actually an excerpt from his book, The Vanishing Conscience. But the article, and again, I'll link to this at equippingeve .com.

The article is called The Danger of a Sinful Mind. And I'm just going to read this to you because I can't say it any better than John MacArthur. He's John MacArthur. So I'm just not even going to try.

So all credit to John MacArthur for this one. No sin, says MacArthur, is more destructive to the conscience than the sin that takes place in the arena of the mind. After all, who but God and the sinner ever knows about them?

First Corinthians 2 .11, who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Many people who will not do evil deeds are nevertheless boldly evil in their thoughts. A man who abstains from fornication for fear of getting caught might convince himself it is all right to indulge in salacious fantasies because he thinks no one else will ever discover such a private sin.

The sins he deliberately entertains in his mind may be a thousand times more evil than anything he would ever think of doing before others. Scripture says his guilt is the same as if he acted out his fantasies.

To indulge in sins of thought, therefore, is to molest the conscience directly. Think of that language, to molest the conscience directly. MacArthur goes on, he says, sins of the mind assault the conscience like no other sins because the conscience is their only deterrent.

Those whose thoughts are impure cannot have pure consciences. The guilt is inherent in the evil thought. When the thoughts are defiled, the conscience immediately is too. That is why nothing is more characteristic of unbelief than an impure mind combined with a defiled conscience.

Titus 1 .15, to the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. In fact, he says, nothing damages the conscience more than the habit of indulging in evil thoughts.

Unfortunately, once begun, that practice becomes all too easy. This is a sin that doesn't have to wait for an opportunity. The mind can sin anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances. So the habit is quickly and easily established.

By engaging the inner faculties, mind, emotions, desire, memory, and imagination, thought sins work directly on the soul to bias it toward evil. Sow a thought. Reap an act. Sow an act. Reap a habit. Sow a habit.

Reap a character. Sow a character. Reap a destiny. Evil thoughts thus lay the groundwork for all other sins. Sobering to think about, isn't it, ladies? Ladies, sin has power. It has a lot of power, even over us as believers, because we are not glorified.

We're being sanctified day by day, and we struggle, don't we? You know you struggle against the flesh. I mean, we know that Paul experienced this. We're not alone in this. But if we're not careful, and if we're not guarding our hearts and our minds through prayer and through Bible study, fellowship with other believers, sitting under good Bible teaching and an earnest, active desire to abstain from exposing ourselves to sinful, worldly lusts, if we're not actively pursuing that righteousness in our lives, we will fall victim to sin.

Romans 6, 14 says,. Sin shall not be master over you. You are not under law, but under grace. And ladies, no sin has greater power than sexual sin, even if it's in the mind. First Corinthians 6, 18,. Flee immorality.

Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. First Thessalonians 4, 3 to 5,. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you know how to possess his own vessel and sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God.

So when we let down our guard, when we say, Oh, it's just a book. I shouldn't judge. It's just a book. We open ourselves up to a potential of sin, even if it never leaves our mind. We just heard from John MacArthur what that sinful mind can mean.

So just because something is just a book or just a movie or just anything, does that make it okay for us to engage it? If we take that to its logical conclusion, ladies, we can rationalize any sin we want.

And that is an abuse of the grace of God. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul addressed this abuse of the freedom that's ours in Christ. And like MacArthur has said, Paul categorically rejects the ungodly notion that freedom in Christ gives license to sin.

But I mean, isn't that what we're seeing in those responses from women? It's not our place to judge. Christians should be allowed to read whatever they want. Really? First Corinthians 6, 12 -13, Paul writes,.

All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them.

Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. In Galatians 5, 13, he says, makes a similar argument and says,. For you were called to freedom, brethren. Only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another.

But I'm not sinning, you say. I'm just reading a book. Stop judging me. I'm just reading a book. Ladies, what did we just read about filling our minds with the things of God from Philippians 4, 8? What did we just see from scripture about how sin begins in the mind and the heart?

What did we just hear from John MacArthur, my voice, John MacArthur's words, about the sinful mind? It's not okay. It's not okay to read something smutty just because it's a book. It's not okay to read it because you're a Christian and Jesus saved you and so you can do whatever you want.

It's just not okay. That's just the bottom line. You can call me a legalist. You can call me whatever you want. I really don't care if you think I'm a legalist. You're wrong. You have a misunderstanding of law and grace, law and gospel, and you have a misunderstanding of justification and sanctification because it is not legalism to say that Christians should not engage sinful material, should not engage material that celebrates immorality.

It's not legalism. It's called pursuing righteousness. Now, will not reading the book help you earn your way to heaven? No, not a chance. You can abstain from every outward act of immorality, whether it's reading a dirty book or acting on the things in the books that are described in the book.

You can be the most moral person in the world, and that's not going to earn your way to heaven. Only faith in Jesus Christ is going to do that. But will choosing to not read the book, will that glorify God and bring honor to him?

Because one of his children, one of his daughters is walking in obedience and love for him? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Colossians three, one through seven. Therefore, if you've been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. You have died and your life is hidden with Christ and God. Verse four, when Christ who is our life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

Therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality. Impurity, passion, evil desire and greed, which amounts to idolatry. It is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience.

And in them, you also once walked when you were living in them. Once you did, and then you were saved by Christ. Ladies, as Christian women, as daughters of the king, purchased by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are called to adorn ourselves differently than the world.

Are we not? First Peter three, three and four, your adornment must not be merely external, braiding the hair and wearing gold jewelry or putting on dresses. Verse four, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God.

But we cannot properly adorn ourselves in this way. If we are filling our minds and our hearts with the lusts of the flesh that are advertised and promoted and celebrated and lauded by the world, we just can't.

It really is that simple. Ladies, it really is. So if you love the Lord, and if you love your husband, or if you love your future husband, and if you love your brothers and sisters in Christ, I exhort you ladies to stay away from things like Fifty Shades of Gray.

I encourage you to judge your professing Christian friends who are reading these books, and I'm using judge in air quotes. I encourage you to go to them with the scriptures and urge them to re-examine the scriptures in their own hearts as to why they even desire this material.

We are called to so much more if we have been saved by Christ. Why would we waste the precious time that he's given us on earth reading something like Fifty Shades of Gray? Or sitting in a movie theater watching something like Fifty Shades of Gray, letting those pictures fill our minds.

You can't erase those pictures from your mind. Well, I think I need to climb down off of my soapbox. Hey, you remember that? Uh, that little, uh, your amazing devotional calendar thing I have sitting on my desk.

I've told you about. Yeah, so I'm looking at, um, I'm actually looking at January 27th. It says, who am I really? Until we can answer that question, it's hard to believe we're amazing. I believe the desire to know who we really are has been placed within us by the heart of heaven itself.