The hooker look has gone mainstream. You can see it paraded by women in malls, restaurants, schools, the workplace, and even in churches.
Clothing stores sell tiny tank tops printed with Playboy bunnies and such expressions as “Hottie,” “Porn Star,” “Wet,” “Princess,” “Party Girl,” and “No Angel.”
A well-known American journalist once said, “Don’t waste your breath proclaiming what’s really important to you. How you spend your time says it all. … There’s no sense talking about priorities. Priorities reveal themselves. We’re all transparent against the face of the clock.”
Mary A. Kassian,
Girls Gone Wise in a World Gone Wild (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2010).
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For about 30 years of my ministry I read at least one of Spurgeon’s sermons every week. I ran across this line in one of his sermons: “I feel weary with the silly way in which some people make toys out of Scripture and play with the text as with a pack of cards.”
Jerry Vines,
“Stargazers or Soul-Winners?: ‘This Same Jesus Shall so Come,’” in The Return of Christ: A Premillennial Perspective (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2011), 22.
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The hooker look has gone mainstream. You can see it paraded by women in malls, restaurants, schools, the workplace, and even in churches. Popular culture encourages very young girls to dress in a provocative manner. Toddlers play with dolls dressed in fishnets, miniskirts, and heavy eye makeup. Clothing stores sell tiny tank tops printed with Playboy bunnies and such expressions as “Hottie,” “Porn Star,” “Wet,” “Princess,” “Party Girl,” and “No Angel.” In 2002, retailer Abercrombie and Fitch produced a line of thong underwear with expressions such as “Eye Candy” and “Wink Wink.” The thongs fit girls as young as seven.1 From the adolescent Lolita to the middle-aged “cougar,” looking “hot” is promoted by the media as a desirable, lifelong pursuit.
1 Patrice A. Opplinger, Girls Gone Skank: The Sexualization of Girls in American Culture (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2008), 1.
Mary A. Kassian,
Girls Gone Wise in a World Gone Wild (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2010).
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This is Asbury's brief account of this unusual man, whom Stevens considers 'in many respects the most remarkable evangelist in an eventful field at that period.' He was a man of unusual constitution, few men being able to contend with him in bodily strength. A rough, wicked, almost brutal man, till forty years of age, when, October 12, 1772, a day which he annually observed thereafter in fasting, prayer, and thanksgiving until his death, he was converted. Almost immediately after his conversion he began to preach Christ and him crucified. A man of great humility, of great faith, without fear of man or devil, his sermons which were plain, simple, and illiterate, were frequently attended with such manifestations of divine power that many fell before him like men slain in battle. In his memoir of him Asbury says:
Perhaps he was one of the wonders of America, no man's copy, an uncommon zealot for the blessed work of sanctification, and preached it on all occasions and in all congregations, and, what was best of all, lived it. He was an innocent, holy man. He was seldom heard to speak about anything but God and religion. His whole soul was often overwhelmed with the power of God. He was known to hundreds as a truly primitive Methodist preacher and a man full of faith and the Holy Ghost. His last labors were upon the Eastern shore, where many will remember him for years to come and will, we hope and trust, shout the praises of God and the Lamb with him to all eternity. Several revivals have taken place by his means, sometimes upon the hearts of the preachers and the people. Yea, we trust the sacred flame still spreads in the much-favored peninsula begun chiefly by his instrumentality. His life was pressed out at every pore of the body. He was brought very low before he died and made perfect through suffering.
Ezra Tipple,
Francis Asbury
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I see tonight that in spiritual work, if nowhere else, the character of the worker decides the quality of the work.
Elisabeth Elliot,
The Journals of Jim Elliot: Missionary, Martyr, Man of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 2021), 218.
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But blessed be God, one may know God’s work for his soul without understanding it all. He that grasps God intellectually, grips Him coolly. Let the heart be warm at all costs to the head in the getting of Christianity. Put head and heart to balance for the apprehending of it all.
Elisabeth Elliot,
The Journals of Jim Elliot: Missionary, Martyr, Man of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 2021), 220.
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One time a young woman was bitten by a dog, and she got rabies. As soon as the doctor informed her that she had rabies, knowing how deadly rabies can be, she sat down and started making out a whole list of people she knew. The doctor, assuming she was making out her will, said, “Now wait a minute. Rabies are serious, but you do not need to make out a will yet.” She answered him, “Oh, this isn’t my will. It’s a list of people I plan to bite.”
R. Larry Moyer,
Show Me How to Preach Evangelistic Sermons, Show Me How Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic & Professional, 2012), 223.
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A believer visiting a mission field said to one of the dedicated workers, “My, you certainly are buried out here!” The missionary quietly replied, “We were not buried—we were planted! We buried ourselves long before we ever arrived on this field.”
Warren W. Wiersbe, Be What You Are: 12 Intriguing Pictures of the Christian from the New Testament (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1988), 153.
