Over the past few months I have become wrecked with the realization that lust and sexual immorality is effecting every person I come in contact with in some way. Conversations have left me sick, empty, or crying over people's stories where sexual sin has completely taken over their lives--where they are sons and daughters of our one true King and yet are living as if they are slaves to sexual sin. My friends are these people. I am this person.
stuck.depressed.confused.humiliated.ashamed. and in the d a r k about it all.
I used to believe the lie that I was the only girl in this world that struggled with lust. It was a guy thing and I wasn't normal for struggling with it. I was alone and therefore I couldn't talk about it with anyone.
Through hard but the most freeing conversations I have ever had, I have come to realize that the true reality of this situation is that e v e r y o n e struggles in some way with lust and giving into sexual sin. We are sexual beings after all so I am not sure why this surprises so many of us. These conversations should have been happening a long time ago and honestly, this blog post should have been written a long time ago as well.
When things are kept in the dark I truly believe that satan has tremendous power. He comes to steal, kill, and destroy... and last time I checked those things are always easier to get away with in the dark.
Heres the deal:
-I am a sinner. The worst one. I am without fail going to FAIL, without Christ.
-I have a Savior who has saved me from my sin. Purchased me. I am owned by Him and He sees me without blemish or stain.
-That same Savior has told me that it is not good to live alone and has provided me with community.
Why would I think that it's okay to keep certain sins a secret? Why in the world would I want to give the enemy that kind of power? I don't and I certainly am not going to anymore. I challenge you to do the same and hope that the rest of this post can help you understand lust a little better and help give you the courage to fight it with every weapon available to you.
lust: craving sexually what God has forbidden.
(definition comes from the book "Sex is not the Problem: Lust Is")
John Piper explains lust with this simple equation:
"Lust is a sexual desire minus honor and holiness"
When we lust, we take this very good and God given thing-- sexual desire-- and we remove from it honor and holiness. That's huge. That's sin and that sin is destroying our generation.
"For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you His Holy Spirit." (1 Thessalonians 4:7-8)
In my personal battle against lust I have realized that the playoff of lust is a continual lust for more. Enough lust is never enough lust. When you give into lust because the desire or urge is just too strong you are actually not at all satisfying that desire-- you are only making it stronger. To make something lose it's desire you must starve it. If you stop eating sugar all of a sudden the next day you are still going to desire it but eventually that desire will deminish. However, if you just keep giving into it all you will want is more more more .
So at this point you are probably saying "That's great Madison and yeah lust sucks but I can't give it up. I've tried and tried and tried. All I do is fail so I might as well just stop. I can't keep focusing on it because if I do all I am focusing on is failure."
And to that, I would say that I totally understand and that I think you have the wrong plan for battle.
With that mindset you are stepping into a battlefield looking toward men who have knifes, guns, and bombs and all you have is yourself and a BB gun. You'll get somewhere but pretty quickly you're going to fail-- badly.
John Piper says this:
"We must fight fire with fire. The fire of lust's pleasures must be fought with the fire of God's pleasures. If we try to fight the fire of lust with prohibitions and threats alone-- even the terrible warnings of Jesus-we will fail. We must fight it with the massive promise of superior happiness. We must swallow up the little flicker of lust's pleasure in the conflagration of holy satisfaction."
If the only thing you are doing to fight lust is to set boundaries you are going to fail.
If the only thing you are doing to fight lust is to starve yourself of triggers to lust you are going to fail.
If the only thing you are doing to fight lust is to have accountability you are going to fail.
While these things are good (and recommended!) ,when used as tools against lust without fixing our eyes, hearts, and minds on Jesus-- we will fail.
Hear me on this: We don't abstain from pre-marital sex so that we can high five our spouse on our wedding day and say, "Yes! We did it! We are virgins!"
We abstain from pre-marital sex because we want to be h o l y .
we abstain from all sexual sin because we desire holiness.
The thing I am beginning to truly believe is that if we ever expect to find victory over lust, we have to believe with our whole hearts that God is against our lust not because He is against pleasure but because He is committed to it.
God knew what He was doing when He created us as sexual beings. He created us and
saw that it was good.
We are the ones that have created a distorted view of sex and we are the ones that are currently (or will have to in the future) suffer from the consequences of that distorted view and the things we have done because of it.
God put sex in marriage for a reason-- leave it there. All of it.
I think that unfortunately for us, some type of sexual sin is a part of all of our stories. Maybe it's part of our past story or maybe it's your current story and maybe it's been part of your story for a long time.
Regardless-- while it is a part of your story it isn't THE story.
When you have accepted Jesus into your life and heart-- the gospel is your story.
the cross is your story and it is there that your sin was paid for once and for all.
fight sexual sin-- and all sin for that matter-- because you want to be holy. because you want to be like
j e s u s .
not because you want to check things off of a list, make your girlfriend or boyfriend happy or anyone happy for that reason.
fight it because Jesus died for it on the cross and He is giving you Himself as a weapon.
fight it because the gospel set you f r e e
f r e e to be h o l y
there is no better reason.
Hop off the computer, go find community, start having these conversations, bring darkness to light and TRUST that Jesus was serious when He said that He came to give us life...
full and abundant life.
