How Can the Lord Help One Overcome Personal Lusts?
How can I control my physical desires?
ILlustration:While my wife and I were shopping at a mall kiosk, a shapely young woman in a short, form-fitting dress strolled by. My eyes followed her.
Without looking up from the item she was examining, my wife asked, "Was it worth the trouble you’re in?"
Drew Anderson (Tucson, AZ), Reader’s Digest
1. Concentrate on honoring the Lord with your thoughts, emotions and every action and avoid tempting situations. Paul wrote, "Flee sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside of his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Therefore, honor God with your body and spirit, which are God’s." (I Cor. 6:18-20)
Illustration:Mr. Spurgeon once made a parable. He said, "There was once a tyrant who summoned one of his subjects into his presence, and ordered him to make a chain. The poor blacksmith -- that was his occupation -- had to go to work and forge the chain. When it was done, he brought it into the presence of the tyrant, and was ordered to take it away and make it twice the length. He brought it again to the tyrant, and again he was ordered to double it. Back he came when he had obeyed the order, and the tyrant looked at it, and then commanded the servants to bind the man hand and foot with the chain he had made and cast him into prison.
"That is what the devil does with men," Mr. Spurgeon said. "He makes them forge their own chain, and then binds them hand and foot with it, and casts them into outer darkness."
My friends, that is just what drunkards, gamblers, blasphemers -- that is just what every sinner is doing. But thank God, we can tell them of a deliverer. The Son of God has power to break every one of their fetters if they will only come to Him.
Moody’s Anecdotes, pp. 48-49.
2. Determine in your mind to love the Lord more than you love the world with all its entrapments. John writes, "Love not the world neither the things in the world for all that is in the world the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not of the Father but is from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever." (I John 2:15,16)
3. Consider the great damage that lust does to your life and relationships. James wrote, "What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards God?" (James 4:1-4)
Illustration:I’ve learned that if you give a pig and a boy everything they want, you’ll get a good pig and a bad boy.
Jackson Brown, Jr., Live and Learn and Pass it On.
4. Avoid focusing on people, things or possessions with a lustful eye. Jesus said, "You have heard that it was said, "Do not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matt. 5:27,28)
5. Consider the self-destructive consequences of lust. Solomon wrote, "Do not lust in your heart after her beauty or let her captivate you with her eyes, for the prostitute reduces you to a loaf of bread, and the adulteress preys upon your very life. Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned? Can a man walk on hot coals without his feet being scorched? So is he who sleeps with another man’s wife; no one who touches her will go unpunished." (Prov. 6:25 29) Everyone who engages in adultery will experience guilt, shame and disappointment. Consider how lust wars against one’s inner well being, peace, and happiness. Peter wrote, "Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. (I Pet. 2:11) As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance." ( I Pet. 1:14)
6. Run away from things that tempt you to lust and involve yourself in activities that contribute to Christ’s great commission of Matthew 28:19,20. Paul wrote, "Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart." (2 Tim. 2:22)
7. Stay in step with the directions of the Holy Spirit and you will feel less tempted to lust. Paul wrote, "Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary to one another: so you cannot do the things that you please." (Gal. 5:16,17)
8. Deny your natural lusts and choose to live godly lives that benefit one in millions of ways. Paul wrote, "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. Teaching us that, denying godliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world." (Tit. 2:11,12)
9. Live by the grace of Jesus rather than trying to live according to a set of rules, regulations and policies. Paul wrote, "For sin will not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace." (Rom. 6:14) We can only live by grace through the leading of the Holy Spirit.
10. Refuse to let sin become your master or you will be enslaved by your lusts. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. (Rom. 6:19) Millions have lived to regret their momentary surrender to lust - ask Bill Clinton!
Conclusion:Radio personality Paul Harvey tells the story of how an Eskimo kills a wolf. The account is grisly, yet it offers fresh insight into the consuming, self-destructive nature of sin.
"First, the Eskimo coats his knife blade with animal blood and allows it to freeze. Then he adds another layer of blood, and another, until the blade is completely concealed by frozen blood.
"Next, the hunter fixes his knife in the ground with the blade up. When a wolf follows his sensitive nose to the source of the scent and discovers the bait, he licks it, tasting the fresh frozen blood. He begins to lick faster, more and more vigorously, lapping the blade until the keen edge is bare. Feverishly now, harder and harder the wolf licks the blade in the arctic night. So great becomes his craving for blood that the wolf does not notice the razor-sharp sting of the naked blade on his own tongue, nor does he recognize the instant at which his insatiable thirst is being satisfied by his OWN warm blood. His carnivorous appetite just craves more--until the dawn finds him dead in the snow!"
It is a fearful thing that people can be "consumed by their own lusts." Only God’s grace keeps us from the wolf’s fate.
Chris T. Zwingelberg.
