The two year birthday of This Isn’t High School was two weeks ago. I had other things I wanted to talk about instead of that so I pushed it to the side saying I’d get to it tomorrow. Well, I never got to.

This is me getting to it.

Many of the people who read this now weren’t around for the first year and a half of the blog. Unless they were really bored, they missed out on all the good, bad, and terrible from that year and a half. This week I’m going to go back and repost five of my favorite posts from that first year and a half from before I came to Two Rivers. Hopefully it’ll be a fun week and hopefully things I wrote a long time ago can still be relevant today. With that being said, here’s a post from April 7th of last year.

i love spring.

i love spring mainly because i hate wearing shoes and my feet get claustrophobic and i can once again wear flip flops in the spring. i also love spring because it brings warm days and cool nights. shorts and something long sleeved is my favorite thing to wear. with flip flops of course.

spring also brings baseball. football may be “america’s game” now, but there’s something about sitting at a baseball game on a friday night or a saturday afternoon that just feels right. there’s something uniquely american about sitting in the bleachers with a handful of peanuts and a bottle of water. i don’t know what it is, but doing that makes me want to sing that proud to be an american, where at least i know i’m free song.

as much as i love spring, i realized last weekend that spring can be rough, especially for guys.

you see, all winter it has been cold. in an effort to stay warm, girls have been covered up. they’ve been in jeans. they’ve worn sweaters and jackets. they’ve even thrown on a scarf or two. i won’t say they were dressed like nuns, but they didn’t put everything on a display like it was on sale two for a dollar at walmart.

when the thermometer hit 70, the girls all decided to lose their winter shell. out came the tank tops, the shorts, and one of god’s greatest creations: the sun dress.

none of these things alone are the problem here. it is completely, 100% possible for girls to wear those three things and be covered up in a way that makes me look and think, “man, good job on that one, god” and then go back to the baseball game.
unfortunately, not all girls follow that system of dress.

our society tells girls that if they’ve got it, they should flaunt it. that’s why most of the tank tops and sun dresses are cut about an inch shorter. that’s why they’re just a half size tighter. that’s why the bra pushes things up just a little bit.

our society also tells us that as guys, we should look at the girls. after all, that’s why they’re dressed that way, right? they want us to look. if we look at them as they walk down the stairs it’s a complement. there’s nothing wrong with taking those extra glances at them, especially if you’re wearing sunglasses and she can’t see where your eyes are.

and that’s why every inch of me wants to look, and look again, and maybe even look a third time when they walk by at a baseball game.

the problem comes in that second and that third look. where i’m saying, “man, good job on that one, god” during my first look, my second look starts going other places. by the time i get to the third look it’s all over and chances are i’ve just sinned.

none of this would be a problem if a) society were different or b) god didn’t make girls so dang good looking. i don’t know how pretty the girls are where you are, but at liberty, while they’re absolutely crazy, they’re also crazy good looking. i don’t see society changing any time soon and girls my age are just getting better looking the older i get.

in other words, the only thing that can change is me.

it’s insanely hard not to look at the pretty girl that’s showing off her body. as guys, we’re attracted to a good looking girl. it’s okay to look once and think, “wow, she’s really good looking.” we just can’t keep looking back. that second look might not be where the sin happens, but that second looks makes it easier for you to justify a third, fourth, or even fifth look.

guys, spring and summer is hard for us. the war against lust is a year-long, every-day, 24-hours-a-day battle, but this time of year it just gets geared up a little more and it’s right in front of us even more. just keeping fighting. if you slip up and look a couple extra times, don’t beat yourself up over it. more importantly, don’t use that slip us as an excuse to say, “well i’ve already slipped up with her, i might as well look at her friends too.”

instead, tell god your sorry, repent from it, and then move on.

this lust issue is a war and it’s got battles we have to go through every single day. we’re going to lose some. we don’t want to lose and we must fight to win every single time, but when we’re honest, we’re 20-something-year-old guys and our hormones are through the roof.

if we focus on winning the individual battles we can win the overall war.

to win the battle though, we can’t look back.

not even once.

say your prayers and take your vitamins.

have a nice day.

-jonathan