How do we win the war against lust? That was the question Pastor John addressed in his sermon, "Battling the Unbelief of Lust," a sermon he preached 25 years ago on 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 1-8. Here's how he ended the message. I close with an illustration of a man who was in bondage to lust for 10 years in the most gross forms short of adultery, but who got victory.

He wrote his story in an unsigned article in Leadership Magazine, which any of you can read in our library, Fall 1982. He was a religious man, and the story he tells is one of great tragedy until something happens. And I want to just tell you from the key paragraph what happened in his life.

He discovered a book by Francois Mariac, a Catholic French novelist, who wrote a book called "What I Believe." In that book he had a chapter on sexuality and lust in particular, in which he described his own war against it as a little Catholic young man. He says that all of the guilt that he experienced and all of the shame did not conquer lust in his life.

Rather, he came to discover that one great power exists that can conquer lust, and that's the power described in the Beatitude, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." And the man who was writing this and reading that book wrote this paragraph, which describes his own discovery.

"The thought hit me like a bell, rung in a dark, silent hall. So far, none of the scary negative arguments against lust had succeeded in keeping me from it. But here was a description of what I was missing by continuing to harbor lust. I was limiting my own intimacy with God.

The love he offers is so transcendent and possessing that it requires our faculties to be purified and cleansed before we can experience or can possibly contain all of it. Could he, in fact, substitute another thirst and another hunger for the one I had never filled? Would living water somehow quench lust?

That was the gamble of faith." And I wrote down here, "It was no gamble." The way to fight lust is by feeding faith with the knowledge of an irresistibly glorious God. The way to fight lust is by feeding faith with the knowledge of an irresistibly glorious God. Do you know God?

Are you engaged in week by week growth in knowing God? Do you meditate on God's Word day and night? Do you spend time focusing in on the snapshots of the image of God in his Son in the Gospels? Do you read great solid books that describe the character and the ways of God?

Do you associate with people who are God besotted and God saturated? Are you praying daily, sometimes with fasting, that God would so waken and quicken your heart that you would have the capacity to be ravished by the irresistible glory of God with emotion and a movement and a joy overpowering all the passions that can go out towards pornography?

Are you engaged in the warfare at that level? If not, I invite you to make those commitments, to resolve in your heart if this is right, if knowing God in all his irresistible glory is the way to push this junk out of my life, I want God, I want to be greedy for God, I want more of God than I've ever known if that's the way out of this bondage.

Beautiful. That's what we're all about, a desiring God, relishing in God to find a love and security and a delight that trumps the empty lies of sin. Sins like lust. And if you want to fuel a sin-killing delight in God, I cannot recommend to you more highly a little book Pastor John wrote titled, "Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ." You can download it for free and start reading it right now.

Go to desiringgod.org, click on the books tab and you'll find it, "Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ." Well, you may have heard that David Platt became the new president of the SBC's International Mission Board. It was huge news and in light of this move, what's the future of international world missions?

I'll ask Pastor John that tomorrow. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9