PART 1
The Truth About Lust
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I have a simple definition for lust: Lust is craving sexually what God has forbidden.
To lust is to want what you don’t have and weren’t meant to have. Lust goes beyond attraction, an appreciation of beauty, or even a healthy desire for sex – it makes these desires more important than God. Lust wants to go outside guidelines to find satisfaction.
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Misguided in 3 key areas:
1) the wrong standard for holiness
Ephesians 5:3 – But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or any kind of impurity, or of greed because these are improper for God’s holy people.
God standard of not even a hint.
2) the wrong source of power to change
It reminds me that God’s standard is so much higher than the standards I place for myself that only the victory of Christ’s death and resurrection can provide the right power and the right motive needed to change me. Will power won’t work. Only the power of the cross can break the power of sin that keeps us on its treadmill.
3) and the wrong motive for fighting our sin
Despair or pride that I can change won’t work either. Only the motive of grace – trust in the undeserved favor of God – can inspire us to pursue holiness free from fear and shame.
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That’s the mystery of His plan. You will find his strength in your weakness. As you despair in yourself, you will find hope in Him. And as you turn your back on lust, you will discover that true pleasure is something only God can give.
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God gave us our dries so we could drive toward something. Just as He gave us appetite for food so that we wouldn’t forget to feed our bodies, He gave us a sexual appetite so that men and women would keep being joined together and creating offspring in marriage.
And beyond procreation, our sex drive is in some mysterious way part and parcel of our drive to build, advance, conquer and survive. Our sexuality and our sex drive are intertwine and tied together with our creativity and with our innate human desire to continue life on this spinning planet. Being a sexual being with sexual desires is part of what it means to be a human created in God’s image.
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Misplaced shame can be dangerous because it saps our strength for fighting our real enemy. A person who is wrongly ashamed of being a sexual creature with sexual desires will quickly feel overwhelmed and helpless because he’s trying to overcome more than just lust – he’s trying to stop being human!
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Prayer
- God, in this moment my whole body seems to be screaming for sexual satisfaction – would You please quiet my desires? My body was made for You and for holiness, not for sexual sin. Help me to glorify You with my body.
- God, thank You for beauty and for my ability to appreciate it. That person is very attractive. But let me look on him with purity. I don’t want to covet and lust after him. Help me to view him as a person made in Your image, not an object of my lust.
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John Piper explains lust with this simple equation: “Lust is a sexual desire minus honor and holiness.” When we lust, we take this good thing – sexual desire – and remove from it honor toward fellow humans and reverence for God.
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It’s only when we properly identify the source of lust as our selves that we can take responsibility and do something about it. Which brings me to an important point I don’t want you to miss: Though the source of lust is our own evil desires, the One who is offended is God. When we choose lust, we are actively rejecting God:
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)
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God says “not…even a hint” because you can’t give in to lust’s demands and hope to pacify it. It always grows. And as it does, lust will orb you of your ability to enjoy true, godly pleasure. You can’t bargain with lust and come out a winner.
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Only the power of the gospel can rescue us from the prison of our sin, and only the motive of grace can sustain us in the ongoing struggle against lust.
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Here’s what you have to remember: You need to be rescued. You need God’s grace. And not just on your bad days – you need God’s grace every day.
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(Josh can’t keep the contract signed/designed by himself)
The law, and our obedience of it, could never make us righteous. It only reveals how sinful we are and how incapable of changing by ourselves. The law is a huge signpost pointing out the fact that we need a Savior.
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The process of sanctification is the result of being justified. Nothing we do in our pursuit of holiness adds to our justification.
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Spirit-led life is not some superspiritual or mystical state; it simple means waling in step with the Spirit.
Source: Sex Is Not the Problem (Lust Is): Sexual Purity in a Lust-Saturated World - Joshua Harris (2005)
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