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Lust: usually intense or unbridled sexual desire; pleasure.
Alternative definition. . .
the feeling of wanting more when looking at bad pictures or someone
in your life.
Jesus said that we would be better to gouge out our eye and cut
off our hand than to give in to lust that to even look at someone
with lust in our hearts is equal to committing adultery that to
do such things is to subject ourselves to hell itself Still, upright
Christians forget that it was God who created sex. After all, it
is difficult to read the Bible thoroughly and conclude that God
is opposed to sex per se. But God has placed a fence around sex
to protect us from the ravages of sex outside His design. And that
fence is that sex is to be confined to marriage. Yet few people
look to the church for perspective on the true meaning of human
sexuality since they view the church as the implacable enemy of
sex. Surveys show that millions have left the church in disgust
over its hypocrisy about sex especially when priests and ministers
fail to practice what they preach. ˆ so what is the problem
with a little lust?
C. S. Lewis reflected on that question by comparing our sexual hunger
to our appetite for food. Lewis invited his readers to imagine visiting
a theatre in a foreign country. The lights go down, the curtain
goes up and a woman walks on the stage carrying a covered tray.
With a sensual look on her face she slowly begins to lift the cover.
You look at the people around you and notice that they are clearly
becoming aroused. You look back to the stage. The woman continues
to lift the cover only to reveal, just before the lights go out,
a lamb chop, mashed potatoes and a helping of peas What would you
make of that? Would you not think that the people in this country
surely have a very warped attitude toward food?
Lewis concluded that you find very few people who want to eat things
that are not food or to do things with food instead of eating it.
In other words, perversions of the food appetite are rare. But perversions
of the sexual appetite are numerous, hard to cure, and even frightful.
Drinking From the Wrong Source
Lust is essentially the inordinate craving for physical sensual
pleasures, most frequently of the sexual kind. In its mildest form,
lust is to sex what cotton candy is to hunger ˆ a sugar-injected
rush, but rarely filling and never nutritious. In its more extreme
forms, lust is the sexual equivalent of an eating disorder ˆ
the distortion of a healthy, God-given human appetite into a tragic
obsession that involves a relentless rotation of yearning, seeking,
binging, and purging. This is how it works.
First, we take a person made in the image of God and we objectify
him or her, so that they can be used as tools for our pleasure.
Next, we intensify the appetite by feeding it. As we feed it, we
become less sensitive to the stimulus, so we keep intensifying,
keep feeding the lust, to get that same rush. Then we rationalize
the behavior as natural or helpful. As the Apostle Paul said in
our text for today, having lost all sensitivity, (we give ourselves)
over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with
a continual lust for more (Ephesians. 4:19). But the truth is that
lust cannot be satisfied. Lust is the hunger for salt of a person
dying of thirst.
A Christian leader in Leadership magazine said this of his own struggle:
„I learned quickly that lust, like physical sex, points only
in one direction. You cannot go back to a lower level and stay satisfied.
Always you want more. A magazine excites, a move thrills, a live
show really makes the blood run. A physical tryst seems to fill
for a moment. But lust does not satisfy; it stirs up. I no longer
wonder how deviates can get into child molesting, masochism, and
other abnormalities. Although such acts are incomprehensible to
me, I remember well that where I ended up was also incomprehensible
to me when I started.
Feeding lust only builds a craving for more intensity, when what
we really need is a covenant of intimacy. We slowly kill our hearts
and the signs of death are everywhere today: Shattered marriages,
unwanted children, haggard prostitutes, sexually transmitted diseases,
children snatched out of their beds at night, degrading stares,
children of God who feel like they‚re nothing because they
don‚t look like Britney Spears. We‚re having a heart
attack as a people and we don‚t seem to realize that we‚re
dying.
Hope for the thirsty heart
But the God of Love does know and He wants to give us a new heart.
Here is how the transplant can begin to take place.
FIRST, realize how much He loves you
and longs to see that love fill you, transform you and satisfy you
at your deepest point of need. Take time to spend time with Him.
Read The Christian Hedonist by John Piper to help you to find joy
in your relationship to the Lord God. Receive His love till it is
no longer [you] who lives but Christ who lives in [you]. (Galatians
2:20).
SECONDLY, ask Him for help: Please,
Lord give me a heart like Yours for people. Help me to see every
person as someone created in Your image and who You love. God will
give you the help you seek. The blood of Christ, who through the
eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, [will] cleanse
our consciences from acts that lead to death. (Hebrews 9:14)
THIRDLY, make a covenant with your
eyes, your physical eyes as well as your imagination. The prophet
Job said: I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at
a girl. (Job 31:1) You may not always be able to control what passes
in front of you or the rise of an impulse, but you always have a
choice as to whether or not you will divert your attention.
FINALLY, make a covenant with others.
If you don‚t have an individual, or better yet a small group
of people, with whom you can be truly transparent about your sins
and temptations, investing yourselves in finding such support may
be one of the most important things you ever do for your heart.
As King Solomon once said from personal experience: "Though
one {person} may be overpowered, two can defend themselves {and}
a cord of three strands is not quickly broken." Ecclesiastes
4:12.
If you have any lustful pleasure rushing through you, as in self
cybering in a chat room, pornography on the web or magazines, looking
at another male/female and getting the rush of lust, self sex (masturbation),
safe sex (safe sex is wrong. Many make is sound ok, but remember
that God made sex ONLY for the birth of offspring, and not human
pleasure.), adultery, fornication, homosexuality (the Bible does
say that He made the opposite sex for us to create life. Same sex
relationships are for self pleasure, and not what God has ordered.
WE ALL HAVE LUST IN OUR LIVES. YOU HAVE FALLEN IN ONE OR MORE CATEGORIES.
You know you want to be free from the bondage of Lust. Pray this
prayer for a heart with our Lord. Remember, praying is the 1ST STEP.
You have the option to go back to lust.. Your call.
Please pray with me: Lord God you have told
us in your word above all guard your heart, for it is the well spring
of life. Whether it is as single people or married ones, young or
older, we pray that we will see ourselves as You see us and that
you will give us practical steps that we can take to cooperate with
You in Your work to shape us into the people we can yet become.
Forgive us our sins in the same way we forgive those who sin against
us and lead us carefully through the minefield of temptation. Deliver
us from hardened hearts, deliver us from evil and the evil one.
For the sake of the love of Your dear Son, our Redeemer.
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