The Battle

I've been reading this book for a week or so and I finally finished it today. It's called "Every Young Man's Battle" It's actually a book written for guys... but let me tell you, it's been an eye-opener for me.

Being a girl, I always heard the stereo-typical comments like, "guys are all about sex" and other "harsh" statements. All my life I've known that guys are "extra horny"... and yeah, they probably think quite often about stuff that rarely crosses my mind. I also knew that guys are visually stimulated, pretty much a million times more so than girls are. So "knowing" that.. and finding it all "far out" and kind of hard to relate to, I put all that information on a back burner in my mind, and continued living my life. (ignorance is bliss right?)
Little did I know how much I didn't realize and the problems it would cause me.

I always knew the basics... guys are "logical", girls are "emotional", and guys would rather be respected and girls loved. And that, was that.
But I didn't have the life experience to understand exactly what all that meant in reality...

So when this handsome, charming guy turned up... I pretty much forgot that "you can't preheat the oven without cooking the roast. " (from a Doug Wilson book "Her Hand in Marriage" which is Very Excellent btw) ...and after years of dreaming about meeting my ideal man and having a perfect fairytale relationship I closed my eyes and took a leap.

Well... actually I didn't close my eyes. They were wide open the whole time... which is the worst part. For a good part of my relationship with this guy (or what seems like forever to me now), I thought I was doing things well, and handling myself properly and in a Christian manner.
Now I look back and just try to comprehend what on earth I was even thinking... or more likely what I wasn't thinking.

"Every Young Man's Battle" has to do with the sexual sins that EVERY guy struggles with. There is no guy that is perfect enough or sheltered enough or godly enough, to not deal with sexual temptations and struggles.
And you see... that is where I went wrong.

I didn't purposefully try to ignore the truth... I was simply naive and didn't understand or even know what the truth was. I misunderstood the whole entire creation of males. Because of my own insecurities and emotional needs I didn't realize that there was more to the picture. In my mind there were those "bad" and "naughty" boys, but there were still the good guys who didn't struggle like others. The nice Christian boys who had it under control. Who maybe still looked but didn't lust.
Now as I look back and think about that thought process, I can't help but laugh. It doesn't even make sense! I guess I just never asked myself WHY would a guy look?... and what would he be doing with what he saw?

Now don't get me wrong... I'm not trying to put the guys down because us ladies have our own struggles. We struggle just as much with sexual temptations but just in different ways, and for different reasons.
Needless to say, I have a lot of things I'll be changing about the way I act around guys. I am ashamed of some of the things I've done, or said, or maybe even implied without realized it. I always though I do it all right when it came to my turn to be in a relationship. I thought that because I had seen how my older siblings struggled and failed and that I had studied up and knew how it all worked when you did things God's way that I could avoid those problems. I guess God just gave me a wake up call... before it was too late. I know know how mistaken I was... how my flesh will always fail... how close and open I have to be with God for him to work in my life.
...But instead I was proud.
If I could apologize to Trenton for all the ways I made his life hell just because I was a hypocrite I would. I know that not all of his problems are my fault but maybe it's just that he's not better off for having known me.

I guess that's what it comes down to though, right? Being a hypocrite? I think Romans 7:18-23 describes it perfectly:
"For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.
For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:
But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

It's the flesh warring against the spirit, and our new man trying to live in this sinful world and yet still be not of this world.

Sooooo... even though I thought I could learn from other peoples mistakes I had to learn the hard way.
It scares me too... there is no guarantee that I will not fail again, and as a matter of fact my chances of doing things wrong are quite high.
So I must rely on God, and my family and friends who can see things from a much clearer perspective, to give me good advice (and they already have).

And thanks to "Every Young Man's Battle," I will never look at guys the same way again. A guy is going to have to "work to get me", and prove that he can be a man... and not only a man but a man that has God as the center of his life. Not Lust.