The 3 P's {Purity}

If you are just popping by today and you didn't get the backstory of my 3 P's, I encourage you to head to yesterday's post (click here!) and check it out first. Hopefully, you'll read the other 2 P's, too. Truthfully, I was hoping for more discourse over these three topics... Are you lurking again?!

"Purity" sure is a hot topic in today's culture, isn't it? Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines "purity" as "the quality or state of being pure," and lists the synonyms of  "chasteness, immaculacy, innocence, modesty, and chastity."  Huh. Pretty big words. Pretty big concepts. And certainly NOT all directly related to the obvious definitions of purity that come to mind the nanosecond the word is uttered.  That's what stuck in my mind when the Lord gave me these 3 P's: "purity" is so much more than staying sexually pure and remaining a virgin until marriage. PURITY is a quality or a state of being. Keep that in mind as you track with me on this one.

Praying for Our Kids' Purity

Pray for your kids to carry a child-like faith and sweetness through all of their days. Pray that the innocence that brings you (and God!) such joy now, while they are young, continues to be a hallmark of their character. As our youth pastor's wife pointed out, we aren't praying for niavete. Rather, we are praying for the choice to remain innocent of the temptations to seek worldliness and "street smarts" that can lead to unhealthy choices and broken, painful consequences. Pray for a tenderness of heart that seems "other-worldly" when compared to our culture's secular understanding of innocence.

Of course, pray for your children to seek moral and physical purity in all of their relationships with others. But you can also ask God for a purity of understanding regarding the God-ordained roles of maleness and femininity. Pray for them to remain unscathed by the input of others that would seek to destroy or beat down the ideals of abstinence, virginity. Ask God to give them opportunities to speak of about the divine healing that  is available to those whose innocence has been stripped from them.

Pray for them to rise up and be a generation that honors and promotes God's plan for marriage and family.  Pray that they will stand strong in the face of the enemy's attempts to destroy the crucial foundations of our culture. Pray that they seek compassionate responses to the culture around them and act as agents of healing and restoration for those that desire to destroy what God created in the family and in the institute of marriage.

Finally, pray that they would see the world around them through the purity of the lens of The Word. Ask Him to give them eyes to see the things that He sees, the way He sees them, and be moved to speak as a voice of Truth and a seeker of justice for those who are oppressed or hurting or broken. Pray that their hearts be broken by the very things that break God's heart, that they be His hands, His voice, and His heart to the world in which they live. His heart beats with the ultimate purity of heart and we can seek God on behalf of our kids for that heartbeat every day.

Wow. I saved the biggie for last, didn't I? I know it's a potentially controversial conversation for the many different readers I have around here. But no matter. I believe that purity of heart is indeed something for which we should all be seeking God. What Scriptures can you share with us that would help us pray for our kids? I'm interested to hear your take on the topic and how you handle the conversation with your own gang.