"Do you not know that when
you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are
slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or
of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that
though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to
that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been
freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in
human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you
presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness,
resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves
to righteousness, resulting in sanctification." (Romans 6:16-19)
I hope you haven't forgotten what had happened up to this
point, but the place where I left off last time was right after I felt
that God had showed me I was free of this sin by calling to my mind the
verses above. Now, to continue...
That same night, I had no fantasies for the first time in ages.
Then another day went by, and another, and soon it was a week, and then
two weeks, and I hadn't had a lustful thought for even a moment! To
show you how my mind works, I actually started getting worried that
maybe I had a brain tumor, and it was in the part of my brain that
controls those kinds of thoughts. I'm not kidding! The change of mind
was so total, the freedom from lust so complete, that I was actually
having trouble believing it myself!
Then I worried that just as quickly as the thoughts had
disappeared, they would probably come back again. But that never
happened. Amazing as it seemed to me, I was still lust-free. God even
provided a way to show me that He had indeed delivered me from my
problem. A situation that had sent me over the edge a year earlier
reappeared for a couple weeks. This time, it had absolutely no effect
on me. I was awestruck! All I could do was praise the Lord and thank
Him over and over again for this miraculous deliverance!
It has now been almost two years since this happened, and I'm
still free of any kind of sexual thoughts about women other than my
wife. And I don't mean that it's not as much of a problem as it was
before, that I only occasionally think those kind of thoughts now -
it's truly totally gone! I didn't deserve it, and I can't even explain
it. I'm sitting here trying to think how to describe it, and I can't
really come up with anything. It's like God has totally closed off a
too-well-traveled path in my mind, and replaced it with something so
much better, that I almost feel like I can't even go to that other path
that I used to go to much too often.
However, don't think that I'm being overconfident or lax about
this. I have changed many habits and patterns in my life that used to
lead me into this sin. Even though I haven't had problems for so long,
I still feel like I can take God's grace for granted, and lose this
deliverance, if I start acting complacently. And this freedom is too
sweet to let it slip away from me by neglect or carelessness.
Since the media constantly bombards us with sensual images,
I've tried to avoid most exposure to anything in the media of this
kind. We watch almost no TV at all (and believe me, I know I'm not
really missing anything - when we visit relatives or friends who have
the TV on, I am reassured that I can do without most of the garbage
that's on there). We don't go to R-rated movies (and usually not any
PG-13 ones either, because they're almost as bad).
I try to avoid going past the magazine racks in grocery stores
(have you ever noticed how little clothing is worn by most of the
models on the covers?). I'm really careful about what Web sites I
visit. I even stay away from most secular music. The music is okay, but
most of the words are horrendous. For instance, I love Def Leppard's
music, they used to be one of my favorites before I became a Christian.
But the lyrics are so sensual, that when one of their songs comes on, I
can feel myself being dragged into old sexual fantasies that I used to
have when listening to their songs long ago. I don't want to go there
anymore!
Trying to stay away from sensual images and those things that
try to lead us into sexual thoughts and fantasies is not easy. It's all
around us. People will think you're fanatical or weird or a prude (some
of you may even be thinking this after you read the last paragraph).
But believe me, it's really worth giving up this junk for something
that's so much more in line with God's purpose for creation and sexual
relationships. If you keep putting this stuff into your mind, it's
going to keep you in slavery. If you won't stay away from the things
that will drag you down into the pit of sexual immorality, then it's
hard to be convincing that you're very serious about being sexually
pure.
There's another big benefit. Think of what an impact we can
have on the women in our lives! It seems that a lot of women try to
tolerate the behavior of men who watch dirty movies, read magazines
with nudity or even the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition; who talk
to women in sexual innuendoes, double entendres, and dirty jokes; and
generally treat women as sexual objects. But I wonder how many of these
women are okay with this behavior? Do you think it's possible that
they've just given up, because they've been handed the lie that "boys
will be boys"?
How many of our wives and girlfriends and mothers and sisters have been
really hurt and scarred inside by us men treating women this way? How
many of them feel inferior to the models and actresses who sell their
bodies so that men can lust after them?
Men, God NEVER meant for us to treat the women in our lives
this way! We are doing so much more damage, spiritually and
emotionally, to them AND us, than we can ever imagine! It's got to
stop, brothers. Please, make the commitment to stop the poison in your
life. When you stop treating women as things, and treat the one woman
in your life as the ONLY woman in your life, you will bless her more
than you can realize, and you can't help but be blessed in return.
"Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of
good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of
praise, dwell on these things." (Philippians 4:8)