OK, guys. Are you serious about living according to God’s standard when it comes to sexual purity? I mean, really serious? If so, I challenge you to grab a copy of Hero: Becoming the Man She Desires.

The book, co-authored by the Des Moines father-son duo Fred and Jasen Stoeker, centers around the question, “Are you leaving the women in your life better off for having known you?” But the issues the book tackles go much deeper, down to the roots sexual sin.

At a time when we have become numb to the sensuality that pervades our society, Fred and Jasen boldly swim against “the tide of sex-sex-sex 24/7”—equating sex outside of marriage to idolatry, pointing out how pornography and sexual sin rob us of God’s destiny for our lives, and showing that suffering—not sex—is our ticket into manhood. (I bet that would go over real well in Hollywood.)

In the book, Fred discusses his battle with sexual sin throughout early adulthood and how he made the decision to “drive the stake into the ground and change the destiny of his family tree” when he looked into Jasen’s two-year-old eyes.

“Would I really slink back now, when it really mattered? Was I really going to let another male offspring ‘down the line’ finish the job for me, some man who loved Him more, someone more committed to his purpose than I was? It was my family tree and my battle to fight. What kind of tepid, fainthearted man depends on someone else to restore his family name? Worst of all, if I passed on this, I knew the Lord would one day lay that same challenge at Jasen’s feet.”

But even more central to the book is the story of Jasen’s life—how he stepped into the destiny with his dad, and they completed it together. The book opens with Jasen experiencing his first kiss at the altar when he married his wife, Rose.

Fred and Jasen point out how, when it comes to women, most of us think more about how we can come across as the coolest guy on the planet than how we can pursue the heroic goal of leaving her better off for having known us. “Trouble is, while being cool may catch a girl’s eye, it’s not the greatest strategy for winning her heart. This mind-set does little to keep you sexually pure during the relationship and ultimately only makes matters more difficult,” Fred writes.

We even get to hear what Christian women are looking for in men from Rose. “She wants a man who is courageous, a leader, a pursuer, and someone whose heart is totally devoted to obedience, a man who is willing to take risks for the Lord with no guarantee how it will turn out. She’s not looking for someone who has it all together or for someone who always knows the perfect things to say. She just wants someone who loves Jesus and who is living his life for Him,” she writes.

Hero not only puts God’s standard of sexual purity into perspective, it also gives us practical steps we can take to get there. It provides hope for men who may think living to that standard is impossible, opens our eyes to how the decisions we’re making now will affect generations after us, and reveals how damaging sexual sin is to our relationships with other people and with the Lord.

But as I mentioned at the beginning, if you’re not serious about removing from your life every hint of sexual immorality or impurity, as Paul writes in Ephesians, then this book probably isn’t for you. Read this quote from the book (probably the one that hit me the hardest), and you’ll know what I mean:

“If you can take the base immorality of [the movie] Wedding Crashers right on through to the credits without turning it off, you are sexually perverted. Your mind has been split into two, and you’re nowhere near living the hero’s life to which God has called you. What’s more, your chances of staying pure with a girlfriend are bleak at best.”

When it comes to sexual purity, Fred and Jasen Stoeker don’t play games.