IBOGIRLLIVING

Gossip! 🙅🙅

Sexually suggestive conversations with guys!! 🙅🙅

I've been guilty of doing both! When I was indulging in the moment, it seemed fun and harmless but now that I look back upon being convicted by God's Holy Spirit, these are not things I'm proud of.

Conversational flirting has always been something I'm pretty good at and I did it a lot with guys I knew who liked me. Most of the time, they were the ones to initiate these talks and I always played along. Almost nothing was off limits in terms of sexually suggestive conversations but I always knew where to draw the line when things threatened to get too explicit for my comfort level. Deep down I knew that a lot of these nonsense talks would have to go and that would mean cutting off from the guys I indulged with.

I had gotten so comfortable with talking or chatting like this that when the Holy Spirit started talking to me about stopping, I found it hard to do at first. With every new guy, I would indulge and push these conversations as far as I wanted them to go. It was not until sometime in the middle of 2020 when I was dealing with a guy that I began to notice a major shift in my appetite and desire to keep having these talks. With this guy in question, it seemed that almost every time we talked, he steered the conversation towards something sexual. We could literally be talking about shoes and he would somehow manage to relate that to sex. It started to irritate me to the point where I just simply stopped talking to him; you could even say I ghosted him because that's exactly what I did. It was here that Ephesians 4: 29 meant significantly more and I understood it differently. These conversations were not edifying or wholesome or beneficial to anyone and that was the day I knew I was going to give it up.

With gossip, I won't say that it was second nature to me but I definitely indulged in it with girlfriends and guy friends alike. There were some friends I knew once we got together or talked on the phone, the conversations would drift towards talking about some other person. As much as I tried on my own not to participate, my strength failed. Then, just like with the suggestive convos with guys, my taste for being a participant in gossip began to fade. I noticed that if the subject matter shifted to talking about another person, I would either shut it down or simply not participate until it became clear that I had zero interest in continuing to pursue that line of conversation.

Doing the right thing can be hard and not fun especially if you are among a group of friends who are all doing it but your obedience means more to God than what you find pleasurable or wanting to fit in with your friend group. These are the types of things that can be hard to give up but are necessary to serve God in spirit and in truth. I had to abandon certain friendships because they did not contribute to my spiritual growth and at the time, I was not even totally aware that God was crippling my appetite for the things and people that fed my flesh. It wasn't until I realized I was in my wilderness season that it all started making sense. It was hard at first and I've talked about it in a previous post which I will leave the link to below if you haven't seen it already.

             RELATED POST: HOW I'M HANDLING MY WILDERNESS SEASON

I'm nowhere near perfect yet and I will very possibly never be. I will fail sometimes because I'm but human after all; God knows this and this is where His grace covers me but just as the Bible says in Romans 6 (read verses 1 and 2) where Paul asks "What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin, how can we live in it any longer?" Simply put, now that I know better, I am compelled by my faith to do better!

What could God be asking you to give up today? Ask Him through His Holy Spirit to show you whatever it may be and help you surrender it to Him. On your own He knows you can't do it because your strength will fail you like it did me but when God steps in, He will take it over and give you His strength to give that thing up. He wants to help you in your weaknesses because it is here that He is made strong. He never expects perfection, just progression!!

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Ibogirl