Marveling Modesty

written by Carrie Christopher

Disclaimer -- This article contains some content geared towards the fashion pulls of America.

We live in a time and culture where lust and infidelity are swarming the lands of our hearts, highly trafficking the avenues of our minds. They are unavoidable. Colliding with us through the media, lustful advertisements are plaguing God’s goals for us in this generation.

The warm sunshine hits our backs, giving us great delight as we arrive at the outdoor shopping mall. The wind slips through our fingertips and we are excited, simply put, for new shoes. As we walk down the paved path, the storefronts plunge our minds into darkness. We feel the lures of lust as the disrespected human body is used as wallpaper for storefronts. The enemy entices the human population to look at women as objects, as means to an end, taking the focus away from our true purpose, to have hearts that pursue after God.

The images and advertisements that hang in boldness disrupt our holy peace. Flashing nudity shouts as it sits in the storefront displays. My heart pleads with the Lord that He would remove from my mind the tempting images that speak lies about my purpose, identity and worth. Even more importantly, my heart is alarmed in protective care over my children. The inward tears of fear well up inside my heart as my children are exposed to this lust-filled imaging. A simple shopping trip is marred by disruptive, adulterous, sexual impurity.

Satan’s ploys and weapons against us are not in the flesh but operate in the Spirit. In this spiritual battle, the enemy curses the earth with an unadulterated disrespect and disdain for the matters of the heart, turning our focus solely to the outward appearance, leading us to believe that it is the crux of our identities.

While I know the words streamed in this column won’t fix this broken world of sin, my hope is to plant a seed of stirring in your hearts, causing questions to arise in you such as, “How do we as the Church live in purity, passion and Holy Spirit power in all ways and in all things?” and, “Where can we gain strength to resist the lures to look like the world in outward appearance?”

We, the Church, are supposed to look different. Secret seduction sneaks even into the Church, capturing many in this pattern of sin. I have seen the lives of some of our own sisters being infiltrated by the seductive worldliness of the enemy. You see, the world promises love in revealing more skin and curves, through the use of our outward appearance.. Flaunting and flaring, screaming for attention, the hearts of mothers and daughters alike are crying out to be noticed, validated and loved by giving in to the objectification of their bodies. This should not be so inside the abode of God, the Church. Temptations trickle down to our own brothers in Christ, evoked by the revealed bodies of their sisters within the walls of what is supposed to be a safe place for godly growth.

May I lament these sins of ours, our adornment of a decorative array of worldliness that we wear in order to look skinny and to be outwardly beautiful? May I confess the need we often feel to cover up our own insecurities and to attempt to cure our own wounds by enticing and seductive outward beauty driven by fashion? May I challenge us, as women of God, to turn our hearts, hands, and earthly attire back to Him, desiring to fully and wholly honor Him before man, above our own selfish insecurities, above anything else? You see, sister, if we truly love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, minds and souls, then we as the Church will desire to please Him first.

May we dress for our days in earthly attire that honors Him. May we hold our temples of the Holy Spirit’s dwelling as sacred and as holy, blameless and pure.

Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So, glorify God in your body.

1 Corinthians 6:18 (ESV)

Christ is preparing His church, the purity of His bride. May purity and love for Him go before us as we walk in holiness and His love. May this column and the future writing thereof give us courage to live honorably and purely in our attire and in our purpose, desiring most to please Him who paid the price for our sin and loved us unto death.