levi the poet: pretty in pornography
I would tell you that your only lasting hope is in Jesus Christ. We create a lot of functional saviors for ourselves - drugs, sex, alcohol, money, food, etc. A lot of those things aren’t even bad, but they’re not God. Or they shouldn’t be. Jesus is God, and Jesus is the ultimate answer and fulfillment of every weary longing or hopeless, cyclical sin or struggle.
I think that it’s worth saying that I know a lot of people will write me off as soon as they read that. That’s fine, but it’s worth it for you to know that I don’t just run off at the mouth about Jesus because I’ve been brainwashed into recruiting people for my religion. I proclaim the name of Jesus Christ because he’s the only hope that I have. The Jesus of the Bible is a God - the God - that loves you, and that understands you, and that knows you by name. He sympathizes with you because he knew pain like you know pain. He knows hurt like you know hurt. He knows loss like you know loss. And for the Christian, he defeated Satan, sin, death, hell and the wrath of God by dying in your place and, like my dad used to tell me, we can unclench our fists, hold out our hands flat before him, and allow him to take our burdens away.
That is not mindless squawking off at the lip. That’s not stupid oral or written tradition for the deceived, naive, or ignorant mind. I think that anyone, if they took a good look at their lives, and took a good look at Jesus’ life and life-giving teaching and fulfillment of Scripture, would know that Christ speaks into the very depths of our heart’s desperation for him. His word does not return void: if you seek, you will find, and what you find will be the Jesus that has been knocking on the door of your heart all along.
It is a shame to think that even in the eyes of Christians, the gospel can become cliche. It is not cliche, and it cannot be over-spoken. That’d be like saying oxygen is over-rated.
when she finds the magazines underneath her husband’s side of the bed,
she’ll stand naked in front of the mirror for hours (… well what did you expect?)
“bang dumb blondes, sexy singles and busty brunettes…”
i must not be as beautiful as the advertising says…
miss, i saw your poster recently…
i read your ad in one of playboy’s latest magazines, actually…
i’ve fed every need that i believed photography could feed me
if you can believe me… i hate it.
you are worth so much more than my brief moment of orgasm
when i allow my mind to deceive me.
i’d like to be an open book and it’s hard to admit
how i take advantage of the desires God gave me…
but i don’t want to sugarcoat this - i feel hopeless, trapped in brokenness -
like i lost before i ever started racing…
and i know as well as anybody, this is a difficult topic to be facing,
and a difficult confession for me to be making
but i’m stating that when God started the molding, shaping and creating -
you were not designed to be the objects that men look at while masturbating.
baby, never forget that you were made for relating and i’m sick of failing
to realize exactly what it is that i’m saying…
i apologize.
it was never my intent to ruin lives, compromise, or feed these eyes
something other than what was designed.
i apologize.
it was never my desire to downsize or objectify the beauty God designed
to be wrapped tight until its proper time…
my God is only as big as i let him be and
i am not gonna limit my God with my disbelief
my God has always, always been there for me
and i am not gonna limit my God with uncertainty
i don’t have much (but it might amount to a mustard seed)
i beg for miracles and then i breathe
i scream for signs and wonders and then my heart keeps its beat
but you’ve got to go through the fire to be refined - yeah!
there’s a huge sense of helplessness in a hopeless time…
well, i am yours and you are mine, and we are one in a kind.