Monsters Fighting Enemies of the Faith #3: Lust

We don’t want to talk about lust. no one does… well let me rephrase. no one want to talk about their own lusts, but we often have no trouble talking about the lusts of others.

Lust is one of those monsters that often starts out really small. barely noticable, really. “Boy, I’d live to have a new iphone”… but quiclys grows to become a controling factor of our lives. “I have to have the newest iphone as soon as it comes out. if I can’t pre-order it, I have to be the first in line at the apple store.”

Lust is also a monster that we typicly associated with a particular kind of thought and action… sexual desire. and I’m sure the the monster of lust likes it that way because it makes is so much easier to hide amongt the other forms of lust that we often don’t even thing about.

Lust is not just about sexual desire

so let me get his point out of the way right away and despell it completely. Lust is not simply about your sexual desires towards another person. Lust is not an afliction simply for the young that the old “grow out of” or mature past.

Websterd dictionairy defines lust like this

lust

verb

: to have an intense desire or need : crave;

SO we can see that lust is not solely about sexual desire but about all intense desire.

Do you have an intense desire for Electronics? then you are lusting for it

Do you have an intense desire for exercise? then you are lusting for it

Do you have an intense desire for church?.....

The problem with Lust is that it’s like SON screen… it blocks out the one things that you should desire fully and above all else.

Lust says my number 1 priority is this thing… I want it, I want it now, and I can’t think about anything else until I get it!

now that’s never the way we intend it to be. We never intend the desires of our hearts to block out God. and that’s why lust is such a dnagerous monster.

Lust never starts out as I have to have this thing right now. it never starts out as an all consuming desire.

Lust starts small… “oh! that’s a nice purse”… and slowly but surely it evolves into “There was a sale on purses, so I took a long lunch to make sure I could get the one I wanted”… before you know it. it’s “I saw the new spring collection by Michael Kors during Paris Fashion week. and I know it’s expensive but I just had to have that new bag, so I spent $4000 to purchase and have it shipped. I know that it took some of my tithe money, but I’ll pay that back....”

And I know we all laugh, because that’s absurd but the path from normal desire to absurdity is often a slow and subtle one… no one ever starts as all consuming desire… but it where many people end up.

For me… one of the things I love is camera equipement

I have to be careful that my love of something does not become a lust for it

There is only room for ONE all consuming passion

Deuteronomy 4:24 NKJV

For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

God is an all consuming fire.... ALL Consuming. When the Lord comes to join you and is living in your life. He doesn’t leave any part of you alone. Not your body, not your mind, not your spirit.

The problem with Lust is that it is also an All Consuming fire. there is just not room in ones life for 2 all consuming fires!

When something is your all consuming fire it becomes your master.... and can one have two masters?

Matthew 6:24 NKJV

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

So when the lusts of your heart consume you, God is forced out. He cannot stay where sin lives.

And we see this again in again in the Bible but Pauls summs it up when he said in Romans 1:24-25

Romans 1:24–25 NKJV

Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

When we give in to our desires, God literally say “ Ok, no problem… I’ll just be over here whenever you’re ready. and He stands to the side.

And the sadest part is that often times we desire something so much that we forget that God is the created of everything including the thing that we want.

How can you wants Money so much that you forget that God is the creator of economy. (maybe this is where Alberta has gone so wrong, God put the oil there… he prospered us allowed the economy to favour us… and repay him time and time again with.. thanks but we don’t need you.)

Lust causes us to invite other monsters in

When we lust.. when we have an all conuming desire for something we invariably let other monsters into our lives as well. and those monsters can cause us to do all maner of things we would never have entertained in our lives.... Lust is the thing that turns otherwise same people into adulterer, murderes, theifs and more.

James 4:2 NKJV

You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask.

The truth of the matter is this…

When we lust we invite other sins into our lives. we murder and covet and more… and we do it all for things that we could have had if only we had asked. which brings me to the next point with is.

Lust redirects our passion

We were ment to love and burn after one thing and one thing only… Lust redirects that passion that we meant to drive us toward God and forces us in an other direction.

When we should be direction our passions, our energies, our wants and desires to doing what God wants. Lust diverts us away… we start to see what God wants as bringing us away from what we want… rather than the truth, which is that when we long after God we will get the desires of our heart.

Matthew 7:7–11 NKJV

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!

See God wants to give us the desires of our hearts… there is actaully no need to lust after the things of the world because God our father. knows what we want and His desire is that we should have all good things.

James says in James 1:17

James 1:17 NKJV

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.

SO Lusts actually tend to disconnect us from the very thing that we wanted in the first place. it forces us to find those things in unhealthy ways instead of Gods way and invites bigger and bigger sins into our lives.

This is why lusting after sexual desires becomes such a probem. beccause instead of our desiires being fulfilled with our husband our our wife the way God intended we try to fulfill those desires in unhealthy ways. we cheat, we have affairs. and its all because we didn’t want to do things God sway.

This is why when we lust after things, we get in so much trouble. because instead of going to work, saving for something and enjoying the fruits of our labour the way God intended. we go into debt to get our things right now. (that is why I don’t use credit cards)… or worse yet we begin to steal the things we want.

So how do we fight this monster?

#1 Remember God is not against you!

God is not against you! god actually wants you to have the good things in life. he isn’t not trying to withhold blessings of the things you want. Like we read in

Matthew 7:7–11 NKJV

Here is Gods simply formula for getting the good things in life....

ASK!

Simply ask and it will be given to you!

Now how can God be so certain that if YOU ask it will be given? well like I said. God wants to be the things that consumes you. He wants to be the fire that fuels you and that drives you… he wants to be the most important and biggest love in your life… and a funny thing happens when you love someone completely.

You start to want the things that they want

Jolene and I rarely have to discuss for long on purchases

See we are in sync because I love her fully… and in the same way God wants to have that kinds of relationship with you where you want the things that He wants and when you do its easy for Him to give you the things that you want… because it will be the things that He wants for you too!

God is not against you.. in fact he is for you. and when you remember that you will find that the monster of lust will begin to loose its power over you.

#2 Remember Your first love!

Anyone remember when they first came to the lord? do you remember the passion and the zeal that you felt?

do you remember that feeling like nothing but Jesus mattered at all?

do you remember when you felt like there was nothing the God couldn’t do fro you or though you?

I know that over the years those feelings may have wained a little… or even possibly a lot.

Some of you may feel like God didn’t fulfill his end of the bargain and you have things that you wanted so badly to happen that just have not happened yet.

MY friends… my brothers and sisters… God hasn’t changed. and God hasn't forgotten.

But God’s time is not our time…

Like Pastor Phil taught us not so long ago… There are 2 types of time Chronos Time and Kairos Time

God’s timing means that sometimes we have to wait for the things that we want. sometimes God has to do some work in us first before we’re ready to get the good stuff.

I know for sure that there are things in my life that I am waiting for… some times patiently, sometimes not so patiently, That God is getting me ready for so that when He gives me the good gifts I am ready to enter into the fruits of my labor.

Now I could go about it the wrong way. I could let my want for something turn into a lust for it. I could let that fester and drive me to get what I want i nthe wrong way.

But I perfer to remember that Gos is on my side. He wants to give me every Good and perfect gift and all I have to do is follow fervantly after Him and he will give me the desires of my heart.