“Guys lust and girls long to be lusted after!” You may have heard this statement, but I think a more truthful saying is, “Guys lust, girls long to be lusted after—and girls lust!” Many Christian women, young and old alike, are struggling to live holy lives with regard to issues of sexuality.

Sexual sin among women often goes unconfessed and therefore un-repented because we do not have an open forum in which to discuss these very real struggles. Addressing the issue of sexual sin among women has become as difficult as addressing the issue of eating disorders among men. The idea of women lusting has been too remote on the Christian’s radar screen for far too long. Girls that I have talked to feel like they are walking around with fourteen eyes and three heads! They feel like a “fish out of water,” and are unable to broach the subject of lust and sexual sin because it is taboo.

Had I any vague premonition of my present plight when I was six, I would have demanded that Stephen Herbison (incontestably the catch of the second grade) put his marriage proposal into writing and have it notarized. I do want this piece to be practical, so to all you first-graders: carpe diem.

Over the past several years I have perfected the artistry of escape regarding any singles functions—cookouts, conferences, Sunday school classes, and my personal favorite, putt-putt. My avoidance mechanism is triggered not so much by a lack of patience with such activities as it is by a lack of stomach for the pervasive attitudes. Thoreau insists that most men lead lives of quiet desperation; I insist that many singles lead lives of loud aggravation. Being immersed in singles can be like finding yourself in the midst of "The Whiners" of 1980s Saturday Night Live—it gives a whole new meaning to "pity party."

For the past two and a half years I have not been able to shake the feeling that someone is watching me. Everywhere I go I get the feeling that someone is looking over my shoulder. Ever since my son Drew was born two and a half years ago there has been someone watching me. Just yesterday he watched me wake up (actually he woke me up by staring at me from approximately two inches away—this happens almost daily), he watched me make breakfast, he watched me get dressed, he watched me rake leaves, he watched me repair a broken faucet in my shower, and he wanted desperately to watch me “go hunt the deer,” but I was able to convince him that he would have to wait until he was older. Young children are obsessed with their parents. They are very observant and they are great copy-cats. I learned quickly that I must watch what I say and do because Drew is watching and he will inevitably follow suit—for better or for worse! 

It is impossible to have an awareness of God without some understanding of the fact that he is holy. At the same time it is very difficult for us to wrap our minds around the concept of holiness. Holiness is difficult for us to understand because it is so foreign to our experience. We are well acquainted with brokenness and the miseries that accompany it in this life. We know all about sickness, sorrow, pain, and death. We have no trouble understanding sexual immorality, impurity, idolatry, enmity, strife, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, and things like these. But holiness, that’s an entirely different matter. In fact, one of the most helpful ways we can understand holiness is to see it as the absence of these and other sins. God is holy specifically because none of the previously mentioned sins apply to him. John says that “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5). This is another way of saying that God is holy.