Visualizing Christ to Battle Lust?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Pastor John, in a couple of places,

00:00:06.680 | I've recently heard you talk about visualizing Christ

00:00:09.200 | in the battle against lustful thoughts.

00:00:11.400 | Lust is so often a visible battle,

00:00:13.040 | so it makes sense that this battle

00:00:14.240 | is fought in the imagination.

00:00:16.160 | And this point surfaced in your parable

00:00:17.760 | on the power of sin in a sermon clip

00:00:19.860 | that I posted as episode number 291 of this podcast.

00:00:23.640 | And all the way back in episode 18,

00:00:25.320 | you explained the anacronym ANTHEM to fight lust.

00:00:29.000 | And there you described H as quote,

00:00:31.080 | "Hold a beautiful vision of Jesus in your mind

00:00:33.760 | "until it triumphs over the other sensual vision," end quote.

00:00:37.660 | In the fight against lust,

00:00:39.040 | how important is it to have this beautiful vision of Jesus?

00:00:42.640 | And how does this work for you in the moment of temptation?

00:00:44.640 | What's happening in your imagination?

00:00:47.160 | - Well, Tony, I've had history with really bad ways

00:00:53.340 | of using visualization in prayer.

00:00:57.200 | So even though the question isn't exactly that,

00:01:00.960 | let me start there.

00:01:03.200 | Pictures can begin to displace the word of Scripture

00:01:07.360 | as the center of God's saving communication.

00:01:10.640 | And that's really dangerous.

00:01:12.640 | We can edge right up to and transgress

00:01:16.720 | the intention of the second commandment.

00:01:18.680 | Don't make any graven images for worship.

00:01:24.320 | There's an approach that I've run into,

00:01:27.840 | it's pretty widespread, at least it was,

00:01:30.400 | to healing prayer, where people are instructed

00:01:33.520 | to go back into their painful past

00:01:35.200 | and visualize a scene of, say, abuse, sexual abuse.

00:01:38.480 | And for example, imagine Jesus,

00:01:40.640 | picture Jesus walking into the room

00:01:42.680 | and picking you up and hugging you and caring for you.

00:01:45.800 | And there are problems with that kind of counseling,

00:01:49.880 | it seems to me, because it's foreign to Scripture.

00:01:53.840 | You don't find any pattern quite like that in Scripture.

00:01:57.280 | And it's usually slanted away from some of the aspects

00:02:01.260 | of the role that Jesus plays, namely in Providence,

00:02:04.160 | portraying Him only as a comforter

00:02:05.880 | and not as a sovereign and not as a judge

00:02:09.760 | and not as the one who's gonna handle that perpetrator

00:02:11.960 | with violence someday.

00:02:14.200 | It tends to be just soft and gentle and warm

00:02:17.400 | and therefore slanted.

00:02:19.080 | It tends to oversimplify and over-psychologize

00:02:21.880 | what's really needed.

00:02:24.360 | The healing of the soul

00:02:26.640 | involves a profound spiritual perception,

00:02:29.660 | not only of a tender affectionate Jesus,

00:02:32.720 | but of the full meaning of the cross

00:02:36.000 | and the reality of the Holy Spirit

00:02:37.560 | and God's ways in justice and judgment.

00:02:40.400 | So there are real dangers that I've encountered

00:02:43.800 | in this whole area of visualization in prayer.

00:02:49.240 | But let me get back to the positive side.

00:02:52.040 | Jesus is the eternal Word and He became flesh, John 1:14.

00:02:58.040 | So we know He had a body.

00:03:01.140 | People looked at Him.

00:03:02.120 | They could see Him with their physical eyes,

00:03:05.080 | unlike God the Father, who can't be visualized in that way.

00:03:08.840 | I don't think we should picture God the Father

00:03:10.480 | as a grandfather with a white beard.

00:03:12.280 | I think that's a big mistake.

00:03:14.880 | But Jesus had flesh and bones.

00:03:17.600 | And here's another point.

00:03:18.840 | Some words do not invoke visual realities

00:03:23.840 | like love, hate, right, wrong, kind.

00:03:27.520 | Those are general, principal kinds of words.

00:03:30.760 | But other words do evoke necessarily images in our minds,

00:03:35.760 | cross, blood, nails, spear, side of body,

00:03:41.360 | hands, feet, thorns, beard, spit, rod,

00:03:47.640 | sun darkened, hill.

00:03:50.280 | You can't say those words without seeing something

00:03:53.320 | because those words are names of sites.

00:03:55.880 | They're names of sites.

00:03:57.280 | You see a hand, you put a word on a hand,

00:03:59.200 | you expect people to process that word

00:04:01.280 | and have a kind of hand visualized in their mind.

00:04:05.200 | No specific hand, but the idea of hand

00:04:07.360 | is being visualized in their mind.

00:04:10.200 | So when you read about the ninth hour,

00:04:14.000 | Jesus cried out with a loud voice.

00:04:16.000 | Now you've got sounds as well.

00:04:18.360 | There are words that designate sounds like loud voice.

00:04:22.480 | That word is supposed to conjure something in your mind

00:04:25.600 | concerning Eli, Eli, Lama, Sebaothenoi.

00:04:28.600 | And it was loud.

00:04:30.720 | The word loud is used to make you feel and think loud.

00:04:34.640 | And then Jesus calls out with a loud voice,

00:04:37.600 | "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."

00:04:40.560 | The point of those very words

00:04:42.440 | is to get our minds hearing something

00:04:45.660 | and the words like beard and spit

00:04:48.440 | are supposed to get our minds seeing something.

00:04:51.880 | And then here's one pointer from the apostle

00:04:54.560 | that inclines me to go ahead and form this image in my mind.

00:04:59.560 | Galatians 3,1, "Oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?

00:05:05.040 | It was before your very eyes

00:05:07.680 | that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified."

00:05:11.360 | Now, what does that mean?

00:05:12.600 | I don't think it means Paul got out a piece of chalk

00:05:15.860 | and drew Jesus.

00:05:17.840 | But it means evidently that he portrayed with words

00:05:22.740 | the gospel, the cross so vividly.

00:05:26.220 | He says, "It was like I was doing it before your very eyes."

00:05:29.700 | He used the words eyes here.

00:05:31.540 | It was before your eyes

00:05:33.000 | that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed.

00:05:35.300 | So maybe he means I'm embodying this with my sufferings.

00:05:38.420 | I'm speaking it in such a way

00:05:40.400 | that you can see it.

00:05:43.660 | And so one of my strategies, Tony,

00:05:46.940 | back to Anthem and the whole battle with lust.

00:05:49.100 | One of my strategies in trying to obey Jesus,

00:05:52.300 | tearing out my eyes and putting sin to death

00:05:54.820 | and counting myself dead is to fight nudity.

00:05:59.820 | Let's just take that as a concrete example.

00:06:01.780 | Fight nudity in my mind with Christ's misery on the cross.

00:06:06.780 | So nudity is a picture in my mind.

00:06:10.140 | Now I've argued that Christ's misery on the cross

00:06:13.540 | is a picture in my mind.

00:06:16.420 | Christ died to make me pure.

00:06:19.380 | This lustful thought is not pure.

00:06:22.080 | Therefore, if I willingly hold this image in my mind,

00:06:26.220 | I'm taking a spear and thrusting it into the side of Jesus.

00:06:31.220 | I picture myself about to do that.

00:06:33.880 | I picture him saying, "I love you.

00:06:36.500 | "I love you.

00:06:38.460 | "I am dying to free you from that bondage to lust."

00:06:43.460 | And I picture a battered body.

00:06:45.980 | And maybe I should qualify.

00:06:48.740 | It's not a photographic.

00:06:51.140 | I don't have a particular face in view.

00:06:53.300 | I don't know what Jesus looked like.

00:06:54.940 | I don't pick a movie star

00:06:56.500 | from the Passion of the Christ or whatever.

00:06:59.420 | I don't have a particular face before me.

00:07:02.380 | He doesn't look like any actor.

00:07:04.160 | I don't get that specific.

00:07:05.180 | It's a word-created picture,

00:07:07.780 | not a photo-created picture.

00:07:11.060 | So it's what I think Paul did

00:07:14.380 | when he said in Galatians 2:20,

00:07:15.880 | "The life I now live in the flesh,

00:07:17.900 | "I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me."

00:07:22.180 | Now, he could have stopped right there, couldn't he?

00:07:24.140 | "Who loved me," and he added, "And gave himself for me."

00:07:28.820 | In Paul's mind, the faith to kill sin every day in his life

00:07:33.340 | was strengthened by remembering the love of Christ for him

00:07:37.020 | and the love of Christ is emblazoned in Paul's mind

00:07:41.580 | as he thought of him as crucified.

00:07:45.100 | He gave himself for me.

00:07:46.580 | And Paul saw crucified people.

00:07:50.100 | They were on the hills.

00:07:51.300 | It was horrible.

00:07:52.740 | And when he said, "Christ gave himself for me,"

00:07:55.120 | I can't believe that he didn't have some picture,

00:07:59.180 | if not photographic, in his mind

00:08:01.400 | of Christ suffering profoundly for his purity

00:08:05.680 | and thus his faith was empowered to defeat lust.

00:08:10.680 | - That's interesting.

00:08:11.580 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:08:12.400 | And for more on the anacronym ANTHEM,

00:08:14.780 | see Pastor John's article titled

00:08:15.980 | "ANTHEM, Strategies for Fighting Lust,"

00:08:18.300 | which was published online in 2001.

00:08:20.260 | It's available online at desiringgod.org right now.

00:08:23.020 | Go to the website and search for the title

00:08:24.460 | "ANTHEM, Strategies for Fighting Lust."

00:08:27.140 | Tomorrow, we'll address a tricky pastoral question

00:08:29.100 | with big ramifications.

00:08:30.780 | For those in our churches with severe cognitive impairment,

00:08:33.760 | what's the threshold that Credo Baptist Church

00:08:35.900 | would hold to in deciding whether or not

00:08:37.600 | to baptize such an individual?

00:08:39.560 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.

00:08:41.620 | We'll see you tomorrow.

00:08:42.720 | (upbeat music)

00:08:45.300 | (upbeat music)

00:08:47.880 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Visualizing Christ to Battle Lust?

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