Talk to Your Wife About Lust
00:00:00.000 | There was a video clip recently posted on Instagram by Jackie Hill Perry, who is a wife
00:00:05.680 | and a mom, a poet and a hip hop artist, and of course, a guest writer for us at Desiring God.
00:00:10.960 | We are fans of her work, and the clip that she posted is a really bold and insightful
00:00:16.160 | word to married couples. I'll play the audio for you, Pastor John,
00:00:20.640 | and then I want to get your thoughts. Here's the clip.
00:00:22.800 | Question. How often are you honest with your spouse about your lustful temptation?
00:00:28.560 | When it comes to men, I think it might be two reasons why they might be unwilling to share
00:00:33.520 | with their wives about their struggle. One, they like it. They enjoy entertaining the fact
00:00:38.960 | that other women want them, or the ideas that pop up in their minds about what they could do
00:00:43.840 | with other women. That is a heart issue. Two, you women too insecure to take it.
00:00:50.240 | Every time this man want to let you in on what he's struggling with, you want to get in your
00:00:54.000 | feeling. So what you trying to say, you was thinking about another woman, and she was in
00:00:57.760 | your dreams? So you telling me I'm not worth dreaming about now? Girl, calm down. You should
00:01:04.240 | let the fact that he let you in on his heart give you security, and the reassurance that he loves
00:01:09.600 | you. Letting our spouses in on our issue gives them the opportunity to hold us accountable
00:01:14.720 | and pray for us, and it uproots any opportunity for Satan to wreak havoc on our marriages through
00:01:19.600 | secrets. She gets to the point, doesn't she? Pastor John, any thoughts that you would add to
00:01:26.000 | this discussion? Jackie Hill Perry is very thoughtful. She's a thoughtful young woman,
00:01:33.440 | and it's manifest in this penetrating analysis into a man's love affair with lust,
00:01:39.680 | and a woman's fears of letting her man talk to her about it. She isn't just blowing steam here.
00:01:47.840 | She's seeing, seeing through and seeing into, and that's a great gift that every
00:01:54.240 | Christian should aspire to. Another thing, as I listened, that makes these couple minutes
00:02:02.160 | compelling is that she's balanced. She goes after both men and women in their respective
00:02:09.680 | sins and weaknesses. She's not just harping on the man or harping on the woman. It takes two
00:02:17.600 | to tango, and it takes two to play hide and seek, especially hide, and she gets that right.
00:02:25.120 | The third thing that I thought of as I listened that adds depth to what she says is that she takes
00:02:34.240 | Satan seriously. There are a lot of people who don't even believe in Satan, and they're Christians
00:02:40.160 | who never give serious thought to how deceptive and destructive his designs are. Jackie draws
00:02:47.600 | our attention to the truth that Satan works in the dark. He's like roaches. You turn the light on,
00:02:54.480 | he goes away. You keep the light off, he might run right up your leg. When Paul says in 2 Corinthians
00:03:03.760 | 2, 11 that we are not ignorant of Satan's designs, he was referring to the unwillingness to forgive.
00:03:11.760 | That's a field day. That's a dark kitchen for the roach of Satan. Maybe there, however,
00:03:20.560 | is a kitchen that is darker than the kitchen of unforgiveness, and that would be the kitchen that
00:03:31.040 | is so dark nobody even knows there's a need to be forgiven. At one time you were darkness,
00:03:39.440 | but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of the light, Ephesians 5.8,
00:03:43.840 | or as James says, James 5.16, confess your sins to one another, and surely Jackie's onto something
00:03:52.880 | with husbands and wives here in applying it to that relationship. Confess your sins to one another
00:03:59.040 | that you may be healed. She would add, and I would add, that Satan might not get the upper hand in
00:04:06.080 | your relationship through all the darkness of unconfessed sin that you don't even know about.
00:04:13.680 | If I would add anything to what Jackie says, I might say to the guys, Jackie stressed lustful
00:04:21.040 | thoughts in which you think about doing things with other women. Don't let yourself off the hook
00:04:28.080 | if you say, "Well, I don't fantasize about doing things with other women. I just fantasize about
00:04:33.840 | seeing things." Jesus said, "Everyone who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed
00:04:42.880 | adultery in his heart." So the question is, is that woman in your head your wife? That's the
00:04:50.240 | question. And the last thing that I would add is this. If there's going to be enough deep security
00:04:58.640 | and strength in this woman's heart and the man's heart, I would say, to welcome this kind of
00:05:04.480 | honesty that she's commending, then both of them will need to lay some pretty massive foundations
00:05:11.840 | of Christ-centered commitment beforehand. And I mean like rock solid, unshakable, blood-bought,
00:05:20.720 | spirit-dependent, Bible-saturated commitment. Namely, divorce by either one of us is not an
00:05:27.600 | option. Noelle and I, my wife and I, said that divorce is not an option to each other over the
00:05:36.320 | last 47 years, many times. And in our darkest, stormiest seasons, we knew there was hope to get
00:05:46.240 | through the storm because we had promised, "Nobody's jumping out of this plane." So thank you,
00:05:52.000 | Jackie, for wise and penetrating words. I hope they bear much fruit. Yes, amen. Thank you. And
00:05:57.840 | thank you, Jackie, for this and for your online ministry. You're really serving the church well.
00:06:03.040 | And thank you, Pastor John, for your thoughts here as well, too. On Wednesday, we return,
00:06:06.960 | and we're going to talk about the Old Testament and how to interpret it. Specifically, what
00:06:11.040 | promises of God to Israel apply to us as contemporary American and Western readers of
00:06:16.960 | the Bible today? It's a question readers for ages have been asking and wrestling with,
00:06:22.080 | and we will talk more about it on Wednesday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then.
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