Freedom From Lust
Freedom From... prt. 5
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
September 27, 2009
We're going into part 5 of our Freedom From... series and this morning I want to talk to you about Lust. Now I chose this video this morning not because it deals with pornography, but mostly because it accurately depicts the way our lustful feelings, and many of our lustful behaviors, are shrouded in secrecy. It shows the attempts we make to gloss over our lust - to hide it from others, and put on a good public front. Whether it is sexual lust, like that which was shown in the video, emotional lust, like that which so many women harbor in their hearts, or lust for money, or power, lust often carries with it this element of secrecy. We're lusting on the sly.
But what exactly is lust?
Lust is:
1.intense sexual desire or appetite.
2.uncontrolled or illicit sexual desire or appetite; lecherousness.
3.a passionate or overmastering desire or craving (usually fol. by for): a lust for power.
(Source: Dictionary.com)
For the purposes of this message today, I'm going to talk about lust in terms of human relationships. We won't talk directly about lust for money and power and those kinds of things.
Having defined what lust is, let's set it in proper context this morning, so we understand why a person who is setting forth to live a godly life cannot continue to entertain lust. First there is nothing whatsoever wrong with lust under the first definition. There is no prescribed amount of sexual desire we are to have, and of course such a prescription would be ridiculous, as none of us have a whole lot of control over how much sexual desire we have. Some of us have a ton of desire and wish we had even more. Some of us have very little desire and are fine with that. Some of us have a ton and have significant others who wish we had less. And of course a very common problem is when one partner has a higher level of desire than the other and wishes the other person would be willing to have sex more often. But having a high level of sexual desire in itself is neutral. Desire is a feeling - it is an emotion. It is simply something we experience. But the concern with lust lies in its intensity, because its intensity is what gives it the ability it can have to rule over us. Definition #2 uses the words "uncontrolled," and "illicit," and definition #3 uses the word "overmastering." It is here that lust becomes a problem for the person who wants to be faithful in walking the way Jesus walked. In the book of Hebrews we see this about Jesus:
Hebrews 4:15 (NIV)
15 ...we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet was without sin.
From this passage we can understand that Jesus experienced sexual desire. He has experienced the temptations we all face. And yet for Jesus, these temptations -- these desires -- did not lead to sin.
And that is our great challenge, is it not? To be human, to experience sexual desire, perhaps very intense sexual desire, but to express it in ways that are appropriate to our station in life. To be tempted, but sin not.
Under the definitions we are looking at, I would wish that all of you would find yourselves lusting very deeply after the one to whom you are married. According to the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center,
Sexual activity is 25 percent to 300 percent greater for married couples versus the non-married, depending on age. The 1998 University of Chicago report that compiled available sex research also concluded that intercourse is more frequent among couples in happier marriages.
Lust belongs in marriages.
Sociologist Denise A. Donnelly explains, “While sex isn’t the only important thing in a marriage, it matters more than many believe. Couples who don’t have satisfying sex lives are more likely to get divorced. Plus, regular, intimate sex can help increase general happiness.” Donnelly adds, “Happy couples have more sex, and the more sex a couple has, the happier they report being.”
There is no way we can read scripture and come away with anything less than a wholehearted endorsement of passionate, frequent sex between married partners. In fact I think it's accurate to say that ALL of the issues that the church has had with sex stemmed from the sexual hangups of some of the early church fathers (and mothers). There isn't any place I could find in scripture that speaks of sex between married partners in anything less than glowing terms. Lust belongs in marriages. It serves them well, it helps them last and be healthy, and keeps the partners in those marriages happy, healthy, and whole. It protects against the evil of adultery and the suffering it brings upon all involved. It keeps families together and helps children grow up with two committed and happy parents. It is not intense desire we are concerned about this morning. It is when intense desire is misplaced, when its object is inappropriate, when it is uncontrolled, when it begins to master and rule over us. You will read in popular books and magazines today that it's okay for married people to fantasize about other people when they are having sex, but my friends, there is great power in lust. What the mind conceives as fantasy, the will eventually tends to want to bring into reality. It is not giving license to lust in the mind that we need, it is learning to develop intimacy with our partners, our legitimate avenues for sexual expression. As we do that, our desire will increasingly be for the person we are already with. Isn't that what happiness is? Continuing to want what you already have?
So let's look at the kind of lust we are concerned about -- lust that contains those elements of lack of control, of being illicit, and of being overpowering and thus becoming an obsession.
Now 99% of the time when we talk about lust, we're talking about two things - sex, and men. Sex being the thing that is lusted after, and men being the ones doing the lusting. But this is unfair. Women have their own domain of lustful fantasy. Sometimes it involves sex, but far more often it involves affection. Seemingly little things, like a man talking to you, or better yet, really listening to you without trying to fix you. Or a man who tells you you are pretty, and that you make him feel good when he's with you. Or the guy who tells you about his problems and tells you how easy you are to talk to. Or the one that has flowers sent to your desk at work to say thanks for your help on that project. Isn't he dreamy? After all, your Homer Simpson, farting, dufus husband never sends you flowers. Or ladies, how about the guy that when you tell him you're frustrated with your husband for yelling at you last night, flashes that amazing smile and says to you, sincerely, "What is he thinking? If you were my wife, I'd NEVER do that to you." How about that guy who is such a great conversationalist, who is just so caring and fascinating? You know - the one you just click with every time you work together or see each other. But of course he's just a great friend and that's it. You're married, right? But it's so frustrating. Your husband never wants to talk about anything other than football and -- okay, maybe just football. Oh, to have a man who will really TALK to you like a woman. Not as if you are a woman, but as if HE is. Now wouldn't that be something? You look around at the husbands of your girlfriends and think, "How come he sends her flowers sometimes and my husband never sends me any?" Or, "How come I see him just holding her hand sometimes? The only time my husband holds my hand is when he's buttering me up for sex." Or, "How come her husband seems to really care about her and really listen to her? My husband never listens to me." That's where lust begins for many women. Not necessarily with perfect abs or the perfect butt, but with a smile that is warm and inviting, with words that wash over you and enthrall you, with little gestures that he's thinking about you in ways you're pretty sure your husband hasn't thought about you in a long time.
Fantasy. Lingering thoughts that you toy with, whether it's thoughts of how hot she looked walking away, or how incredible he smelled last night when you bumped into each other at the company party. Desire, whether it is for hot sex in the dark, or a cuddly walk in a park. Desire that occupies more and more of your time, gets more and more of your attention, and leads you further and further down the path of fantasy -- dreaming that one night with her would just blow your mind. It would be the kind of sex you thought you were going to be getting all the time when you got married. Or an evening with him would finally get you your heart's desire as a woman, what you THOUGHT you were getting when you got married.
The problem with lust is that, except in the case of lusting over the one you are married to, lust is not real. It does not have a legitimate object. Lust moves you increasingly into the realm of fantasy. Maybe your world is screaming toddlers and poopy baby diapers and an always-messy house, and not being as appreciated as you hoped you would be. Maybe your world is sex once a week missionary instead of every day in whatever way. We find that in various ways life isn't turning out the way we hoped it would. And then the gap between what you hoped life would be and what it in fact turns out to be can become filled with fantasy -- with the strong desires we have for something different, something better, something to scratch whatever our itch may be. This produces increasingly deep discontentment. And the more we think about those alternative realities, those exotic other possibilities, the more we come to desire them. Then desire begins to build and becomes more and more intense, and can get to a point where it starts to take on a life of its own, so that at some point we are no longer being driven primarily by our commitments and responsibilities, but are actually being driven by our fantasies -- unreal visions about what life should be. They take on a power that just keeps getting stronger. It is dangerous because after we've been entertaining lust for a while, we can easily lose sight of who we want to be and find ourselves willing to cash it all in for what we want to feel. Show me a person, male or female, who has had an affair and I can tell you two things with high certainty, and one thing with absolute certainty. The high certainty assertions are that if it was a man, the affair started with sexual lust and if it was a woman, the affair started with emotional lust. But the thing I can say with certainty is that in both cases, you have people who have lost sight of who they want to be and cashed it all in for what they wanted to feel. For him it was the rush of a new sexual encounter, and someone who isn't critical of him and who praises him, probably very much like his wife did when they first met. That feels amazing -- it feels like coming alive again after being dead for so long. For her it's the rush of a new emotional connection, someone who regards her and treats her like the princess every woman wanted to be as a little girl -- probably that's how her husband treated her when they first met. That feels incredible -- kind of like -- well, kind of like coming alive again after being dead for so long.
And where is God? Do you think there's a reason why I didn't begin this message with scripture about lust and then preach to you about that the whole time? See, ultimately this whole spiritual journey is about you, and God. But it's not just about you and God -- the journey part is where your life and God's life intersect -- where God is reaching out to you and you are reaching back, where God has something to say to you that makes a difference in the way you think and feel and live. See, this isn't about me taking some verse of scripture and reading it and then proving to you that it somehow relates. What I want to show you is that before you ever started sucking air on this planet, before your parents ever conceived you, way back before anything, there was God. And God has a certain nature, a certain way of being, and everything God has told us to do and be stems from who God is and what is consistent with his way of life and his way of being. And once upon a time, thousands of years ago, out of God's way of life and God's way of being, God said:
Exodus 20:17 (MSG)
17 No lusting after your neighbor's house—or wife or servant or maid or ox or donkey. Don't set your heart on anything that is your neighbor's.
See, long before there ever was a you, God knew you could not work that way. God knew you could not afford to live in a world that is ripped to shreds with mundaneness, shot through with ordinary, dull, plain things, and be responsible in that world, while you are indulging all kinds of ridiculous fantasies and making up sets of alternative realities and coming to increasingly live in those fantasies. I have spent the past half hour telling you why that doesn't work, why lust is to be avoided, why it is dangerous to our well-being, to our spirits, to our marriages and families, and to any chance of developing the kind of maturity that eventually finds life bubbling up among the dead and dying things --that is able to accept God's exchange of beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, and praise for the spirit of heaviness. God says what God says for a reason, and every marriage that is failing because a man lusted after another man's wife, every union that is faltering because a woman lusted after another woman's husband, every blessed partnership that is suffering and broken because someone chose to indulge their lust, to live in fantasy instead of reality -- every one of those relationships screams louder than I could ever say to you, "No lusting after your neighbor's house or wife or servant or maid or ox or donkey. Don't set your heart on anything that is your neighbors." Don't spend your life manufacturing and living in alternative realities. Live in the present moment. Accept your life for what it is and realize God cannot be in your fantasies because God is a God of truth. People who say, "I just think God wants me to be happy," are -- completely RIGHT. But happiness does not come from indulging those fantasies and chasing after the wind. Happiness is to be found in the truth, in what is real. If we think we're unhappy because our spouse isn't perfect, a deeper look will reveal that the hole is inside of us.
That's not to say we don't have needs and that we shouldn't try to meet the needs our spouse has. Some people are so neglectful of the basic needs of their spouse that they are complicit in helping to turn their spouse into quivering masses of need -- people who perpetually cannot find fulfillment because basic needs for love, for respect, for approval, for acceptance, chronically go unmet. To neglect the needs of our spouse and then say, "Hey, you heard pastor Dave. This is reality, deal with it, this is just how I roll" is to be heartless and miss the whole point. Because those promises we made to one another - they are as much a part of reality as anything else. Guys, your promise to love, honor, and keep her until death -- not until she gets a bit older and it's time to trade her in for a newer model -- that was reality. You aren't living in reality if you're not keeping that promise, and your not living in reality will force your spouse into fantasies of her own because you're not being the person you promised her you would be. Ladies, your promise to love, honor, and keep him until death -- not until you realize that he's not as charming as you imagined he'd be -- that was reality. You aren't living in reality if you aren't keeping that promise, and your not living in reality will force your husband into fantasies of his own because you're not being the person you promised him you would be.
So forgive me if I seem a bit forceful, but perhaps some of you would be too if you'd seen what I've seen and heard the excuses I've heard for flirting with lust, entertaining it, and excusing it -- like everybody who thinks there's a problem with your flirtiness is just being ridiculous. Given how flawed we know ourselves to be, how vulnerable we are to getting lost in lust for the things we do not have, we should be taking seriously the possibility that we do flirt too much, we do play it too close to the line, we do get lost in our fantasies. Guys, we do take that second look and indulge our lust. Ladies, we do criticize our husbands out of frustration that he's not the Prince Charming we thought we were marrying. That is what we are dealing with when we talk about lust. Next week I want to talk to you about some ways of rooting it out of your life for good.
