A Lifelong Commitment to Purity

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Nancy Leigh DeMoss: If you’re involved in ministering to other women, you know what it’s like to feel pressure.

Women's Ministry Leader 1: So often you feel depleted, unappreciated, disrespected, disregarded.

Women's Ministry Leader 2: You try to share the truth with women, and they don’t want to receive it, and you watch their lives fall apart.

Women's Ministry Leader 1: As a leader, you never feel like you’re doing it very well. You never feel like you have it right.

Nancy: If you’re a pastor’s wife, counselor, ministry leader, Bible study teacher, small group leader—if you’re involved with women’s ministry in any way, I want to encourage you to be refreshed and to refocus at a conference designed just for you.

Revive Our Hearts, the ministry that brought you the True Woman conferences, presents revive 11.

I’m Nancy Leigh DeMoss, and I’ll be there, along with Susan Hunt and Pastor Crawford Loritts and others, and Fernando Ortega will be leading us in worship.

Fernando Ortega singing:

Great is Thy faithfulness; great is Thy faithfulness
Lord unto Me.

Nancy: You learn how to avoid pitfalls of ministry and develop a lasting influence. You’ll have time to worship, pray, and deepen your walk with the Lord, and you’ll be equipped with new ides for carrying out God’s calling in your life.

So don’t miss this chance to be refreshed and refocused for a new season of ministry. Join us for revive 11 in Indianapolis, November 4-5. For details, visit ReviveOurHearts.com.

Leslie Basham: How much have you told your kids about your past? Here’s what one mom has discovered.

Maryann: For my daughters, I need to let them in on my failures. I have told them of my failures. I want them to learn from that and to see that when we sin, there is a consequence. When we obey, there are great rewards.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Friday, July 8.

How often do you get your daughter’s attention? Some undisturbed time when she’s really getting what you have to say? Well, today we’ll give you some ideas on connecting with your daughter. We’ll hear about some moms who undertook a project that gave them some opportunities to talk with their kids. Nancy, you started telling us about it yesterday.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Yes, these moms and daughters read a picture book together called The Princess and the Kiss. It’s a wonderful parable about purity and how important it is to save physical intimacy for marriage.

These moms and daughters also went through a companion workbook that Revive Our Hearts has developed called Life Lessons from the Princess and the Kiss. It has 21 discussion topics and activities for moms and daughters to do together. That’s where the real connection happened with these moms and their daughters.

My friend Susan Henson co-authored this workbook. Earlier in the week she told us about the life lesson discussions and the creative activities that go along with each lesson. I asked her about another component of each life lesson.

Susan Henson: We also have a section in there with helpful hints for parents. That in itself goes beyond the lesson and helps the parents themselves in some specific way to introduce maybe some sensitive issues that perhaps they may have tiptoed around otherwise.

If you haven’t talked to your daughter about this particular subject, tying this in with this lesson today would be a great opportunity to talk to your daughter about just becoming a woman and the changes that happen along the way—especially life lesson number 20. The opportunity we suggest then for them is to talk about the physical union of marriage and what all that really entails for them.

Nancy: Here’s one mom who worked through Life Lessons from the Princess and the Kiss with her daughter.

Sherri: We’re so careful to say we don’t watch this and we don’t do this and boy-girl relationships and we don’t encourage all that. They can tend to think that a relationship or that kissing is bad or that intimacy is bad. So this book allowed us time to talk about that it’s not a bad thing.

This book allowed me to teach Caroline 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 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 was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Nancy: I think that’s so important because otherwise it’s the appeal of the forbidden, curiosity that can sometimes draw those kids from very conservative, protected homes to want to experience something just because it’s forbidden if we’re not communicating this is God’s perspective on it. This is something beautiful and wonderful, and it’s such a special treasure.

Sherri: I think I’m so grateful too that the girls can understand that purity is not because God is a legalistic, judgmental God, saying, “I don’t want you to have fun and you have to abstain from all of these things because I’m a mean God.” He gives us the gift of purity, and I didn’t understand it that way.

He’s given our girls this gift, this precious gift of purity because of His love and because His way is best. He knows how their lives are going to have the greatest rewards, not because He’s withholding from them what the rest of the world would have them believe, but because He wants to give to them.

Susan: So it’s really a springboard for parents to talk about deeper issues. There’s also additional help with Scripture if there’s more that they want out of the life lessons so it takes them a little deeper in that respect.

Then also we have at the very end an opportunity—what we call royal reminders. These are really discussion questions that help springboard into some deeper issues as well. It really gives you a measuring stick to help you as a parent know where they really are and how much they’re really getting.

Jenny Bishop: Right and I see it as kind of a checklist.

Nancy: This is Jenny Bishop, the author of The Princess and the Kiss.

Jenny: So many times I wished I just had something that would say, “Okay, if you did all these things—you’ve talked to your daughter about all of the pertinent issues of relationships and getting married.” I never could find a resource like that that really ministered to me particularly.

So this book, The Life Lessons, to me are kind of like that checklist that if I go through each one of these with my daughter, I’m talking about all the different aspects of relationship, marriage, sexuality, that I need to and that I can say I know, I know, I know that I’ve said those things. I’ve taken the time to discuss those with her.

What a comfort to me as a mom to know that I’ve equipped her as best I can to live in a very sexually charged culture and to stand up and to say I’m going to make a stand for purity here. That’s a great feeling.

Mom: I believe that going through this study, especially with my 11-year-old and my 7-year-old, I see it as a pathway that leads to a highway because when they get older and they’re on the highway, they’re going to have more enticements, billboards so to speak, along the way and more things drawing their attention away from God. If I can set their feet on this pathway and know they need to stay on it and be a highway to God as they get older, that’s where they’re going to build their faith prior to getting caught in traffic.

Jenny: We’ve had a wide variety of ages embrace the book, so we’re overwhelmed with the way the book speaks to so many. That’s the great thing about writing children’s books is that you get two audiences—the mom and the person who’s being read to, or the reader and readee. It’s wonderful to hear moms testify to the way the book has impacted them.

In fact, when it first came into bookstores, we heard so many reports of, "we have a cry corner. The moms take the book, read it, cry, and talk about how great it is. They take it home to their kids and they come back and buy eight more for a birthday party because it’s a message that so deeply touches them and they want it to touch other lives as well."

Maryann: I’ve talked to so many women whose Christian parents had them in church every Sunday but failed to communicate these vital truths that we need to obey. When I was 17 or 18, I had already been in several immoral relationships. Even now, after being married for 15 years, one of the consequences of that sin are memories that we can never rid our mind of, only from the power of God working in our heart and in our mind to remove those memories that are embedded in us.

The enemy will use those when my husband and I are wanting to be intimate—there’ll be a flashback in my mind, and I will think where in the world is this coming from? It is a scheme from the devil to discourage us and frustrate us in our walk with God because as a married woman now, I do desire to have a pure heart.

As I went through these relationships at the age of 17, I found myself pregnant, and that pregnancy did end in an abortion. That is the deepest regret of my life, that I failed to obey God—the truths that I did hear as I was sitting in church. I failed to make Him Lord of my life.

I failed to obey the truths that are in His Word regarding purity, and that will be a lifelong consequence that I will live with. However, through the blood of Jesus, we can stand before God pure and clean, and we can have victory over the enemy when we’re trusting in the Lord.

For my daughters, I need to let them in on my failures. I’ve told them of my failures. I want them to learn from that and to see that when you sin, there is a consequence. When we obey, there are great rewards. That picture of purity for them can be beautiful even if it comes from a life that was impure in previous years.

Mom: One thing that I wanted to add that I thought was my greatest fear with having children, and especially a little girl, was that she would one day ask me, when I tried to explain to her about purity, that she would ask me, “Mom, were you pure?” Coming from a life of immorality, I thought I could never tell her that because then I would have no credibility with her to teach her these truths.

This book, The Princess and the Kiss, just opened the door of communication so that I could share with her, “Yes, mommy failed, but God has forgiven me and daddy has forgiven me, and I want to pray as your mommy that you would forgive me because I don’t have this to teach you out of experience, but out of the grace of God.” She wrapped her arms around me and was just comforting and encouraging to me, and I was like the mother in the picture (in the Princess and the Kiss book).

God covered my greatest fear with His grace and showed me that with all of my imperfections and the sin in my past, that He would give me children that would love me in spite of it just like He loves me in spite of those mistakes.

Leslie: I’m so glad we have a redeeming God who’s in the process of making all things new. We’ve been hearing from some moms who are learning to teach their daughters out of their own failures and challenging their daughters to make different choices than they did as young women.

These moms are a part of a group of women and their daughters who went through a book called The Princess and the Kiss, along with a workbook called Life Lessons from the Princess and the Kiss. They studied the 21 lessons in the workbook, then they celebrated with a fun Princess Purity Ceremony. Nancy, it must have been exciting to join this group.

Nancy: It was such an incredible evening, Leslie. First we arrived at this big home where the event was being held and the place was decorated like a castle. It was just beautiful. The decorations were beautiful, and the girls as they arrived, they were all dressed up.

When they came in the room, they were given a tiara, which they put on. So you had all these little princesses walking around the room. We had refreshments, a special reception, and it just made the girls feel very, very special.

Then we gathered together as a group for the actual ceremony. Let me describe to you what took place. Each of the moms one at a time came and sat in a special Queen’s Chair, and there was a big empty chair next to the Queen’s Chair. We told the girls this was a chair that pictured the King and a reminder that we keep our purity not just for our parents, but for the Lord Jesus who is the King and whom we love.

Then as the mom would sit in the Queen’s Chair, her daughter would come and sit on a stool down at her mom’s feet. The mom would look the daughter in the eyes, sometimes holding the daughter’s face in her hands, and would speak words of blessing into her daughter’s life.

Shawn: Ashley, 13 years ago God gave you to our family. You have always been a complete joy. God has given you so many gifts.

Andrea: Brooke, you are such a diligent worker, and I’m praying that that diligence that I see in your life will turn to be a heart that seeks after the Lord, more than anything else that you will seek to know God. You are such a good big sister. We’ll never lose Zachary again, will we? Because his big sister Brooke is always looking out for him.

Debby: After five sons, Anna, the Lord has blessed me with you. I felt like Sarah having you in my older age. But you have made me young just having you around. As daddy and I were praying for you, I kept not wanting to get my hopes up when they kept telling me you were a little girl because I couldn’t believe that the Lord would bless me with a little girl. I knew that was such a privilege, and you have been definitely the joy of our family.

Singing to Jesus and mommy’s prayer warrior, praying for your friends and their needs, being concerned about obedience and honesty, being a peacemaker. So my peaceful, obedient, wonderful girl, may God bless you and form you into a beautiful pearl. So all we see the beauty that came as we see you live, pray, and sing. I love you, Anna, more than you will ever, ever know.

Nancy: Then after giving that word of blessing, the moms prayed a prayer of blessing over each of their daughters.

Shawn: Father, I thank you for my daughter. She is a true treasure. God, I pray that she would save her heart, her mind, and her kiss and her body for her husband.

Mom: I would have loved to have been able to do that with my own mother. It was just an incredible opportunity to be able to sit with my daughter and say words of blessing that I see on her life and share my heart with her. I could look her in the eye, and I knew that she was understanding the depth of my love and my passion for her and how much God loved her.

Shawn: I definitely don’t deserve such a wonderful child, God, but I praise You and thank You for letting us have her.

Sherri: Caroline doesn’t like jewelry and girly-girl stuff at all. So she was scared to death even going to the ceremony because she had this dress-uppy dress on. She was sitting in the front seat of the car and Lane (her father) came out to the car. I was on the other side. He had his arms all around her in the front seat praying for her because of her fear of looking so girly-girl.

It was sweeter than anything I could have said to her in a ceremony for her to see that daddy cared that she was even nervous about going to the ceremony. Even more does he care about her purity and what all this meant.

We walked in the door and Andrea Shedd was standing there with that tray full of tiaras to put on. Caroline was like, “Oh, please don’t tell me I have to put that on.” So Andrea gave her one and we walked over by the fireplace, and she kept looking at it and looking at it. She said, “Mommy, I know there’s a smaller one up there.”

Most of the girls were coming in wanting the biggest, brightest one, and she’s going, “Is there one smaller? I know there’s a smaller one.” So we go back and we switched—they didn’t have one in the shape of a baseball cap!

I can’t honestly say that all of it went away when we got up for me to share with her because I could see with her sitting on that stool that she looked like with a feather you could knock her over. She was scared to death.

Caroline, all my life I wanted a little girl. All my life I thought, “Lord, if You give me a little girl, I’d just do this right.” He gave me a little girl, and sometimes I don’t do it just right. But I thank Him that He loves me, and He forgives me, and I thank Him that He gave me a little girl that’s more than willing to forgive me every time I ask her to.

When we got in the car and we talked about the things that happened, the things that were said, she heard every word I said, and every word was special to her. But she was so frightened being in front of everybody that she couldn’t respond there. It was still just as special to her though, even though she’s not verbal like other girls are. It was a time that she’ll never forget.

I love watching you do chores. You do it in such a perfect, orderly manner that mommy learns so much from you. Daddy and I pray that one day God will bless you with the privilege of being a wife and a mommy.

For her the princess concept was not appealing, but by the time the ceremony was over last night and we got home, when she changed and put on her pajamas and came downstairs for family time, she had that crown on her head. It was so exciting to see God move on that feminine side of her just through the ceremony because with the study and with the book, just those things alone wouldn’t have done that. But the ceremony brought out the specialness of being a princess—even for a tomboy.

Martha: I was very much afraid. I knew I couldn’t express to Julie exactly how I felt because the words never come out for me. So after when we left, I told her in the car I said, “You know how all those other moms had all those special prayers? Those are so many things that I could have told you, but the words never come out for me. I just want you to know that even though other people have very special, loving prayers and mine don’t come out quite the same, I love you so much.”

Julie, you are our precious daughter. Your dad and I are so thankful that God has given you to us to be a part of our family.

“It’s okay,” she goes. “I know, because I can’t say things well either.” So it was really good for me because I wanted her to know that even though I’m not good with words, I love her so very much.

Your loving, kind, gentle spirit enriches our family. The way that you play with Daniel and spend so much time with him, it’s helpful to our family, but it’s helpful to you. I’m so thankful for that.

Nancy: Then at the close of the ceremony, each of the moms presented to her daughter a special Princess Prayer Box Necklace. That necklace symbolizes God’s gift of purity and represents the parents’ love, their desire and their prayer for their little girl to choose the pathway of purity and to keep her kiss safe.

Each side of this special necklace has a symbol that was designed to help the princess remember the life lessons that they had talked about in this study. As the mothers gave their daughters this necklace, they reminded their daughters that "your dad and I will be praying for you as you grow up and prepare to give the gift of purity to the man that someday you will marry."

Andrea: I want to ask you, would you accept this necklace as my commitment to you to pray for you and to teach you in the ways of God, one of those ways being purity? Would you accept this gift from my heart to yours seeing you have such a desire to do right and to be pleasing to me and to daddy and to God?

This time is more of my commitment to you to be a mommy of prayer and one who is here for you for any questions or just if you do something wrong or you don’t do something right, that I will always love you. That will never change. Whatever you do or you don’t do, I will always love you.

Leslie: As you’ve been listening this week to the moms and daughters who participated in this study, I think you can tell that this was a very special event in the lives of these moms and their daughters.

That’s why we’re encouraging our listeners this week to order The Princess and the Kiss and the workbook, Life Lessons from the Princess and the Kiss.

We'll send them to you when you contribute any amount to the ministry of Revive Our Hearts. Just call 1-800-569-5959 and ask for The Princess and the Kiss and the Life Lessons workbook, or your can order line at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Well, Denise Glenn says thaat every wife can offer her husband three gifts in marriage. Find out what they are, Monday, when we return for another week of Revive Our Hearts.

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