Winning the War Against Lust
00:00:00.000 | How do we win the war against lust?
00:00:07.800 | That was the question Pastor John addressed in his sermon, "Battling the Unbelief of
00:00:11.480 | Lust," a sermon he preached 25 years ago on 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 1-8.
00:00:16.080 | Here's how he ended the message.
00:00:17.560 | I close with an illustration of a man who was in bondage to lust for 10 years in the
00:00:25.400 | most gross forms short of adultery, but who got victory.
00:00:31.880 | He wrote his story in an unsigned article in Leadership Magazine, which any of you can
00:00:36.720 | read in our library, Fall 1982.
00:00:40.440 | He was a religious man, and the story he tells is one of great tragedy until something happens.
00:00:49.320 | And I want to just tell you from the key paragraph what happened in his life.
00:00:54.740 | He discovered a book by Francois Mariac, a Catholic French novelist, who wrote a book
00:01:01.900 | called "What I Believe."
00:01:05.160 | In that book he had a chapter on sexuality and lust in particular, in which he described
00:01:10.540 | his own war against it as a little Catholic young man.
00:01:17.400 | He says that all of the guilt that he experienced and all of the shame did not conquer lust
00:01:24.520 | in his life.
00:01:25.600 | Rather, he came to discover that one great power exists that can conquer lust, and that's
00:01:31.400 | the power described in the Beatitude, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see
00:01:37.960 | God."
00:01:38.960 | And the man who was writing this and reading that book wrote this paragraph, which describes
00:01:44.600 | his own discovery.
00:01:46.000 | "The thought hit me like a bell, rung in a dark, silent hall.
00:01:53.720 | So far, none of the scary negative arguments against lust had succeeded in keeping me from
00:01:59.320 | it.
00:02:00.320 | But here was a description of what I was missing by continuing to harbor lust.
00:02:06.340 | I was limiting my own intimacy with God.
00:02:10.420 | The love he offers is so transcendent and possessing that it requires our faculties
00:02:17.520 | to be purified and cleansed before we can experience or can possibly contain all of
00:02:23.400 | it.
00:02:24.680 | Could he, in fact, substitute another thirst and another hunger for the one I had never
00:02:31.320 | filled?
00:02:32.760 | Would living water somehow quench lust?
00:02:37.280 | That was the gamble of faith."
00:02:41.540 | And I wrote down here, "It was no gamble."
00:02:45.760 | The way to fight lust is by feeding faith with the knowledge of an irresistibly glorious
00:02:56.840 | God.
00:02:58.320 | The way to fight lust is by feeding faith with the knowledge of an irresistibly glorious
00:03:06.580 | God.
00:03:09.160 | Do you know God?
00:03:12.480 | Are you engaged in week by week growth in knowing God?
00:03:20.720 | Do you meditate on God's Word day and night?
00:03:25.360 | Do you spend time focusing in on the snapshots of the image of God in his Son in the Gospels?
00:03:33.560 | Do you read great solid books that describe the character and the ways of God?
00:03:42.920 | Do you associate with people who are God besotted and God saturated?
00:03:51.280 | Are you praying daily, sometimes with fasting, that God would so waken and quicken your heart
00:03:58.120 | that you would have the capacity to be ravished by the irresistible glory of God with emotion
00:04:05.280 | and a movement and a joy overpowering all the passions that can go out towards pornography?
00:04:12.840 | Are you engaged in the warfare at that level?
00:04:16.880 | If not, I invite you to make those commitments, to resolve in your heart if this is right,
00:04:25.080 | if knowing God in all his irresistible glory is the way to push this junk out of my life,
00:04:31.120 | I want God, I want to be greedy for God, I want more of God than I've ever known if that's
00:04:36.940 | the way out of this bondage.
00:04:39.160 | Beautiful.
00:04:40.160 | That's what we're all about, a desiring God, relishing in God to find a love and security
00:04:46.280 | and a delight that trumps the empty lies of sin.
00:04:49.600 | Sins like lust.
00:04:50.600 | And if you want to fuel a sin-killing delight in God, I cannot recommend to you more highly
00:04:55.640 | a little book Pastor John wrote titled, "Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ."
00:05:00.140 | You can download it for free and start reading it right now.
00:05:02.340 | Go to desiringgod.org, click on the books tab and you'll find it, "Seeing and Savoring
00:05:06.840 | Jesus Christ."
00:05:07.840 | Well, you may have heard that David Platt became the new president of the SBC's International
00:05:13.000 | Mission Board.
00:05:14.120 | It was huge news and in light of this move, what's the future of international world missions?
00:05:19.560 | I'll ask Pastor John that tomorrow.
00:05:21.440 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:05:22.440 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast.
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