One Mom's Idea

Series: The Princess and the Kiss

Leslie Basham: Walk through any store and you'll get a picture of the low opinion our culture has about purity. You'll see immodest dress on magazine covers and advertisements for movies and CDs -- let alone on the people shopping around you.

How do you raise a daughter to value purity in this kind of an environment? This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Monday, January 17.

Nancy, moms really need to hear today's subject.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: They sure do, Leslie, and I am so excited about this effort that we're launching this week on Revive Our Hearts and what it will do to help teach the next generation of young women about the whole subject of modesty and purity.

That help has come to us in the form of a book for children called The Princess and the Kiss and in the form of a workbook that Revive Our Hearts has developed to go along with The Princess and the Kiss.

The workbook is called Life Lessons from the Princess and the Kiss. The workbook is designed to help moms and daughters read the book together, discuss it together and talk about some really important issues in the lives of these young girls.

Then after a mom and a daughter go through this study, there's a very special "Princess Ceremony," at which time the moms bless the daughters and pray for them and give them a special "Princess Prayer Box" necklace.

I had a chance to talk with a group of moms and daughters who'd been through the study and through the ceremony together and to hear about the impact that it made in their lives -- not only on the daughters but on the moms as well.

We're going to hear from some of those moms and daughters on the series this week. I also was able to talk with Jennie Bishop who is the author of The Princess and the Kiss. I asked her how she originally came up with the whole idea.

Jennie Bishop: It really was just the simplest way imaginable. I know that most mothers have knelt at the bedside of their child and prayed for them at some point or another if not every night.

There was one particular night where I was praying over my daughters. My daughter, Vashti (who is eleven now and was probably about seven at that time) was attending public school as a kindergartner and had come home talking about her friends and how she needed to have a boyfriend because her friends had boyfriends, about how one little girl's boyfriend had been stolen by another little girl.

My heart was just so troubled by that because I recognized how young she was, how young these friends were. And that night I prayed for my girls, that God would show me a way to teach them about purity and saving themselves for marriage, now, because I recognized that I couldn't wait until they were teenagers. It would be too late by that time.

I just really wanted God to show me some particular way that I could really make an impact on them at a young age.

I shouldn't have been surprised (because I was a writer at that time) that the answer came as a story. In just a few days I had the ideas for a story that became The Princess and the Kiss. Well, it begins with a princess being born to a mother and a father"¦

Narrator: "¦who were king and queen of the mountain and all the green valley below.

The king and queen loved the little princess even before she was born. On the day she came into the world the royal couple gave their daughter a very special gift from God -- her first kiss.

Jennie Bishop: And they save it for her, keeping it in the castle tower until she becomes a young woman. And then when she's of age, they present her with the kiss and say, "Now it's yours to keep or to give away as you see fit."

And then there are princes who come and present themselves to the princess as suitors. And it's about her decision about how she comes to find the man that God had prepared for her.

I shouldn't spoil the story by telling how, but it's about passing that legacy of "saving yourself for marriage" and looking for the right partner on to our children and their children someday too.

Narrator: "God gave this gift to you on the day you were born," said the Queen, "because He loves you so dearly.

"And now," continued the King, "this kiss is yours to keep or to give away as you see fit."

Jennie Bishop: And I've been amazed to find that there are so many other mothers who have the same prayer on their hearts and that God's been using the book to touch those families as well.

Mother 1: This book allowed me to teach Karen "right thinking" about physical intimacy and kissing. Even though we guard her from watching it in an immoral way, we still want her to know that it's a good thing. It's just not a good thing in that setting, but it's a gift from God. So it allowed us to teach "the right spin" on what we were teaching [instead of "This is] wrong, wrong, wrong!"

Narrator: The Princess stared in amazement for she had never before received such a wonderful present.

Jennie Bishop: "The Kiss" is like a light that's underneath a bell jar and so it gives the reader lots of opportunity for discussion or the mom and the daughter opportunity for discussion on what "The Kiss" actually is and what it actually means.

So you can draw from that the physical kiss but also "our wholeness" in giving ourselves to someone and what that means. The whole point was to make "The Kiss" something that just had an incredible sense of value -- that you would never want to spoil or just give away thoughtlessly.

Narrator: "But use wisdom, my daughter," warned the king, "and save your kiss for the man you will marry."

Daughter 1: It's talking to me about how I need to ask my parents. So it gives me more time to be with my mom"¦so I can ask her those questions and read with her.

Narrator: The wise little princess took her father's words to heart and kept the kiss safe in the castle tower, but there were many days when she went to gaze at her precious possession. She wondered how she could ever give it up.

Mother 2: This whole book is just so exciting to me because it takes a concept that was so foreign to me and really, I think, to my generation. It takes it"¦it makes it practical and just broadcasts it.

Mother 3: There seem to be so many families with just single moms anymore. And it seems like they're always looking for a way they can connect with their children without having the father figure there.

I think this is a tool that we can put in their hands, something practical, something attractive, something that they can do with their kids in the absence of a father. They can point them to their Heavenly Father.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Like the moms we just heard, Susan Henson has a heart for teaching purity to the next generation of young women. Susan is a friend of mine and she works part-time with Revive Our Hearts. One day when she was reading The Princess and the Kiss she came up with an idea.

Susan Henson: I was just reading it to my grandchildren, a girl and a boy. And so I was reading it for the very first time and I was just"¦really, like Jennie, this came from a grandmother's heart as I was reading it to my grandchildren, walking through this with them and stopping along the way and discussing it.

So really, as a result of reading this story over and over again (which is their favorite book), I began to write down all the discussion questions that opened up the doors for so many wonderful opportunities of conversation and opportunities just to share my heart with them. So I just began to write those down.

Really, it just came as a result of just having a grandmother's heart"¦of, "I want to invest into my grandchildren's lives now." There're other moms out there that"¦they're not training their children. I look at my grandchildren and I can make an investment even into my grandchildren's lives.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Susan organized those discussion questions and found that there were a lot of principles she wanted to pass on. She called each principle a "Life Lesson" and used those "Life Lessons" as the basis for a guide for moms and daughters to go through this book together. It would eventually be called Life Lessons from the Princess and the Kiss. This came as a surprise to Jennie Bishop, the story's author.

Jennie Bishop: It was very funny how it all came to pass because Susan came to me and said, "Did you know there are 21 'life lessons' in The Princess and the Kiss?

I had written the story knowing that God was working through it somehow, but you couldn't have told me that there were 21 life lessons in there.

So it was wonderful to begin taking a deeper look. Even now, just today in the car, we were talking about things that can be discussed just out of a few words in that story, how God has just put a certain anointing on that book to be able to be used for this purpose, how those "life lessons" can be pulled out of there. So then, we began to work together to develop the book and now, with the reports from the moms -- isn't it wonderful?

Mother 4: This was so timely for us. I had been praying for the last month and a half, "God, please give me wisdom in how to answer these questions about purity" so I don't say too much to [an] eight-years-old. Since I had five boys, my husband took care of that.

But now it is my privilege to teach her as she asks these questions. This book kind of walked us through"¦helping answer those questions.

Daughter 2: It made me feel like I could just come to her whenever I needed something or whenever I had a question about this kind of thing because she understood. When she was my age, she struggled with the same kinds of things I struggle with. She understands. So it made me feel like I could go to her and she would have the right answer.

Mother 5: When I asked her last night what the study meant to her she said, "You and Daddy can teach me to save my kiss and to save my purity," but this book confirmed that it's the right thing, that it's what God wants for me.

Narrator: Finally there came a day when suitors began to appear asking for the princess's hand in marriage. The first man who came to court her was Prince Peacock. "See the great muscles I have, Princess," he said. "I would always be able to save you from danger. I can run faster and jump higher than any other prince in the world. I am mighty."

Mother 6: When we talked about the qualities she wanted in a husband, she related all of them. At first she said, "Well, whatever Daddy is."

I said, "Tell me about Daddy. What are the qualities that you like and you see in your Dad"?

The things that she shared: that he spent time with her, he dated her, he prayed for her, that he read the Bible with her -- those are the same things that she wanted in a husband.

Narrator: Marry me -- for I am a man among men. The princess watched Prince Peacock lift heavy boulders. Prince Romance came to visit the princess. Prince Treasure Chest came to call. He brought gifts of gold, jewels and costly silken robes.

Daughter 3: I liked writing down the qualities of a husband that we want. And God also convicted me of qualities that He wants to put in my life"¦that I kind of blocked away. Just because I wrote down that stuff, I don't have to go look for someone right now for those qualities. But I need to be patient and wait for God's time.

Mother 7: The book put feet to my mission and showed me the path that I need to be taking. This is just a beginning for us. This is just the very first step for us in a very long journey. But I've got to jump in this battle for my daughter's heart.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: We've been hearing from moms and daughters who've gone through a study we've developed here at Revive Our Hearts called Life Lessons from the Princess and the Kiss.

You heard that one of the projects they did was to list characteristics to look for in a possible future husband. There are 21 similar projects in this material that moms and daughters can do together.

A lot of those projects involve crafts or other creative ways of getting the point across. Each lesson includes some questions that will generate some very good discussion.

Leslie Basham: We have more information available on The Princess and the Kiss on our Web site ReviveOurHearts.com.

Listeners can also call us to order a copy for their daughter or granddaughter. The number is 1-800-569-5959. Tomorrow we'll hear more about the princess who was saving her "special kiss" for the right someone. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is a an outreach of Life Action Ministries.  

Thank you, Ruth and Nina, for preparing today's Revive Our Hearts for the Internet.

Note: Special offers available only during the broadcast of the radio series.