Welcome to a Life of JoyIvy

What is Masturbation? Masturbation is the self stimulation of your genitals or other sensitive areas of your body for sexual arousal or pleasure. Some biological benefits of masturbation are: Reduce stress Relieve tension Improve sleep Increase your focus Boost your mood and so on So it’s safe to say that biologically there’s nothing wrong with masturbating. With all that said, Should Christians Masturbate? Who is a Christian? A Christian is someone whose behavior and heart posture reflects Jesus Christ. So back to my question, Should Christians Masturbate? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Why? 1 Corinthians 6:18 - 20 :  18  Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.  19  Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,  20  for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. It’s tr...

A genuine question I hear a lot from godly unmarried people goes something like this, “If we are to abstain before marriage how will I know if we are sexually compatible?” …Why this a thought of concern confuses me but I get it.  When a healthy baby is born, he/she is born with legs, hands, eyes, and so on. For the sake of this post I’d focus on legs. Babies are born with legs but don’t come out of their mother’s uterus walking, they learn to walk just as they learn to use every other parts of their body. No one is born sexually compatible to anyone. Sex at its core is biology and if and when God calls you to marriage your spouse and yourself will and should learn how to serve and please each other sexually. Sexual compatibility will be a fruit of your service to each other. I believe that in a godly marriage selflessly submitting one to another through acts of service is and should be one foundation on which everything is built and this selfless service extends to sexual intercour...

While talking with my sisterhood I was finally able to articulate this feeling I had carried for months. Although I wasn’t completely clueless to how I felt, the gift of being able to fully capture it in words was really liberating. THERE IT IS! Though still fatigued, I’m once again reminded: JUDE 24 - Now to him who is able TO KEEP you(me) from stumbling and to present you(me) blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy. So if Jesus does the keeping and presenting which is basically all the heavy lifting, why then is my spirit man so fatigued? Better put what nurtured seed turned into a tree is producing this fruit, fatigue?  Moments of introspection led me to weariness. Weariness birthed from the struggles that come with living in this world but specifically the one birthed from the reality of my flesh. I’m not oblivious to the weakness and depth of wickedness that my flesh is capable of but I’m also aware that the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives i...

This past weeks have been filled with thoughts of me questioning what the heck I’m doing with my life, especially in my spiritual life. I’ve borderline been joyless and I mean joy that only God can give. With little to no zeal to pursue or seek God’s face talk less of tarrying in his presence, all I have genuinely desired and enjoyed is pleasing my flesh (Netflix, random Youtube videos, mindlessly scrolling through Instagram) but in the midst of all that I’ve somehow disciplined myself to study my bible and pray. The main theme of my prayer being “UPHOLD ME WITH A WILLING SPIRIT”. I knew my spirit was willing but my flesh was so weak. In that same vein, I was enjoying a show on Netflix tonight when my spirit began to nudge me to seek God, I initially resisted but soon found myself asking to be upheld. I was soon led to Jude 24 which with all humility I have lost count of how many times I’ve read it. I in fact started a study guide on the book of Jude a week ago. But I followed the spir...

Is God difficult to talk to or are we just talking to our idols as God? I’ll guess your definition of prayer is the same as mine, which at its core is simply a communication between God and man. But how exactly does one communicate with a King Spirit? Just when I thought I had finally locked down the act of praying, the Holysprit exposed my idolatry. The issue wasn’t the act but the how I was praying. A brief insight into my typical prayer schedule : Worship, thanksgiving, bible study & prayer(in my knowledge and in the holyghost). Seems solid right? So I thought.  All of those expression above consisted of one theme, my genuine desire to reverence God based off my gained knowledge and understanding of him which I honestly don’t think is wrong. But when my prayer life begins to depend solely on my knowledge of Christ, the whole purpose of prayer is missed. In Matthew 6:9-13, when Jesus taught us to pray, the focus of his gaze was solely on the father from the beginning of the p...

I think one reason why we sometimes stumble or struggle through a dry or difficult season is because we are impatient. The feeling of dryness, weariness or temptations isn’t necessarily shocking or at least it shouldn’t be because the Bible does tell us that our possibility of walking through the valley of the shadow of death is high, but that same verse tells us that he will be with us and comfort us. Why then don’t we, at least I feel comforted? Why do these temptations seem to sometimes have me in a chokehold?  Isaiah 40:29-31 :                29 - He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.             30 - Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted;    31 - but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. Some oth...