Whose Person Are You, Anyway? Today's Three-minute Bible Study Print, Study and Apply Title: Whose Person Are You, Anyway? --------------------------------------- Date: 7/21/2000 Keywords: "gifts" "ownership" "reveal" "words" "world" Welcome to eXXit, the web site designed to help you stand strong in the face of sexual temptation. Passage: John 17:6-10* 6. "I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. 7. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. 8. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. 9. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. 10. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. Questions 1. What of importance do pornographic images reveal about a person?   2. Are you drawn to pornography because you have a desire to see things that are normally hidden?   3. Do you know where to look if you want to see the "hidden" things of God?   4. Do the verses above make it sound as if God likes to give good things?   Practical help Our beloved technology does a lot of good things for us, but one bad thing it does is mask the fact that we aren't king (or queen) of our world. We belong to someone, as verse 6 tells us. He gives us a lot of freedom, and that freedom gets us into trouble, such as with the Internet and pornography. God loves us enough to know that he is glorified when we choose to follow him of our own free will, not by force. Among all the gifts he gives us, our freedom to decide is perhaps the most valuable, and the most dangerous. And his ownership of us applies whether we choose to follow him or not; those who reject him, he will also reject at the end and send to destruction. Another good gift God has given us is our desire to know. We want to learn and are curious about many things. Our curiosity also gets us into trouble, as when we are drawn to look at pornographic images. These images reveal something about the outside of the body (but what they reveal frequently isn't real, having been doctored either by perverted modern medicine or by the black magic of digital imaging). They don't reveal anything about the soul or the person. If we let our curiosity lead us to search the person of Jesus, then we will know what is real, and what is glorious. And we can rejoice in knowing that we take part in that glory — verse 10 tells us that we are the channel by which glory flows to Jesus. By using your freedom to honor God rather than pervert his creation, you will gain more than you could ever give up. eXXit homepage Index of three-minute studies Copyright 2000 by eXXit *Scriptures are from The Holy Bible: New International Version, © copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved.