A Battered and Crushed Rose

Matt Chandler, a pastor in Texas, tells of being in a meeting for teens where the topic is sexual purity. The speaker asks the audience to pass around a rose and to sniff its fragrance and touch the silky petals. When he finishes his talk he holds up the crushed, mangled, roughly used rose and asks with disdain, "Who would want this rose now?" Matt said he wanted to stand up and yell, "Jesus. Jesus wants the rose!"

It's true. His welcoming invitation extends to the bruised and weakly burning soul, to the ravaged and lonely. "A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out"{Isaiah 42:3}. His invitation stands ~ "Come." {Pursue The Intentional Life by Jean Fleming}

There are many of you who were not virgins when your were married. I am sure there are some of you who had sex with multiple men before marriage. There are divorced women, maybe some who have divorced more than once or even twice. Some may have had abortions or affairs while married. Maybe some even struggle with pornography and homosexuality. I want you to know that you are welcome here. 

Yes, I love the Duggars and I love God's ways. I always will and I will always teach Truth because deep in your hearts, you know that God's ways are far superior to man's ways. BUT, when you ask God for forgiveness and repent of your ways, there is cleansing and forgiveness. In fact, God makes you a new creature and fills you with Himself. Imagine the freedom of taking off your filthy, dirty rags {which by the way, we all have before coming to Christ} and putting on Christ, brand new clothes, the righteousness of God.

Just because you weren't a virgin or you got divorced or any other "evil" sin doesn't make you any less a woman of God than me or any other. I know some of you feel bruised and battered from your past but know that God has forgiven you for all of it the day you believed, just as He has the rest of us. You are worthy! You are a child of the most High God. Rest in His perfect peace.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: 

old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

2 Corinthians 5:17