In Lust We Trust or In Lust We Bust

Unfortunately this image displayed above says a lot about our society today both within and outside the church. Lust is a stronghold that sees its way into most relationships as a normal course of action. Our cultures policy is everything is alright as long as I have permission from my significant other, or it doesn’t hurt someone, or it is just looking not touching. But just as our covetousness can get us into trouble when given an opportunity with material possessions so lust can get us into trouble with our physical and emotional relationships.

I have been married to my wife for almost seven years now and I have been getting progressively better about the way I deal with my affections for her and how my love for her and my marriage stems out of my affections for Christ and His bride. It is only through the redemptive matrix of the gospel that this stronghold can be overcome. God had changed my heart to only have “bedroom eyes” with one woman through transformation of the body, heart, and soul. I used to be an adulterer…now I am just an adult.

As I have been talking with people about this topic in the last few weeks, I have noticed that there’s been some interesting dialogue in our conversation about lust, and the discussion keeps returning to a common theme: what do we need to do to actually experience change? Let me share with you the real life example of a friend Bob.

Bob is happily married to a godly wife, he loves her, they have great sex, etc. The only problem is, Bob also finds himself attracted to another woman - a common friend they both know. He takes Matthew 5 seriously, he wants to stop feeling this way, he prays, he tries to overcome his desires, etc…but it just gets worse - to the point where he’s gone all the way in his mind.

I’m not making this up - this is real, this is the reality of sexual desire. And it’s strong. Now you tell me: what does Bob need to know or do to experience change in his heart? Where does the rubber really meet the road?

This may sound like a familiar problem to many of us. Most of us will not gouge out our eyes to prevent sinning. But this is serious business between a man and woman, a husband and a wife. What would you do? How would you handle your feelings? And now I get to tell you the rest of the story.

In the face of this pressure, my friend Bob did something crazy. He decided he loved his wife too much to keep deceiving her about what was going on inside. So he confessed - he told her about his desires for this other woman. He told her everything. He held nothing back. And her response was amazing.

She didn’t get angry. She didn’t lash out. She didn’t tell him never to speak to this woman again. She didn’t say ‘try harder’. She didn’t say that he better ‘fix it or else’…

Instead, she said, “Bob, I love you, I forgive you, and I am with you - you have to learn how to overcome these desires, and I am going to stand beside you and help you do that, because you are my husband, and I am committed to you.”

In other words, she didn’t say “I will love you because you are faithful, because you are sensitive, because you a good provider, a good leader, a good lover.” She didn’t say “I will love you because you get it right” (performance). Instead she said “I will love you because you are my husband (relationship). I will love you because of who you are.”

Wow. How would you like a wife like that? Can you imagine being a wife like that?

Listen, this is precisely how God deals with us in the gospel - he loves us, and is with us, because of who we are in Christ: sons, not slaves. If God’s favor is based on what Christ has already done, then nothing you can do - not your greatest triumph, not your worst defeat - nothing can change the way he feels about you.

He loves you because of who you are in Christ.

And recognizing that reality is tremendously liberating. It frees us from our bondage.

Bob told me, “You have no idea how this affected me! When my wife responded to me this way, my heart melted! I was guilty, and instead of the judgment and condemnation which I deserved, she loved me in spite of myself, she gave me grace!”

Real grace rightly seen decimates our desires for sin. When Bob saw clearly the nature and extent of his wife’s love for him (because of her commitment to him, not his own fidelity to her), it changed his heart, it tamed his lust. On a scale of 1-10, his desire for this other woman plummeted from an 8 or 9 down to a 1 or a 2.

Why? Because seeing his wife’s love for him rejuvenated his own love for her; recognizing why she loved him (relationship, not performance) changed the affections of his heart.

What I’m saying in all this is that we don’t conquer our lust merely by trying harder (although a heart set free by love most certainly will try hard) - rather, we conquer our lust by learning to love something better, by realizing how it is that Christ loves us. We conquer our lust by seeing the grace of the gospel.

On a side note, here are some other thoughts I wanted to share from my marriage and life/ministry experience:

1. Making love is neither what society constantly portrays it as nor what the enemy entices us to imagine that it is. We are made to think that sex, even with a spouse, is mostly about seeing someone nude, getting physical sensations, and fulfilling animalistic needs. But God made sex to be the deepest consummation of true love that there is. The marriage bed is where they can physically and spiritually consume each other in love, not lust.
2. When Satan tries to entice you with lust, he is attacking your marriage, either current or future. Many Christians who used to be into pornography or pre-marital sex will tell how on their wedding night, when they saw their wife or husband nude for the first time, they couldn’t get the mental images of all the naked people they had seen before out of their minds. It was like there was a harem that was pressing in on them while they wanted to be with just each other. For the unmarried person, exposure to lust and especially blatant pornography makes the wait for intimacy with that special someone much harder, since he has been exposed to sexual images. Trust me; marriage is not like a pornographic film. When the pizza man comes, you pay the bill. There is no corny music playing in the background and ninety eight percent of the women you encounter will never be doing the Cirque du Soleil acts that you see on the screen. This stuff messes up true intimacy in a marriage (and marriage is about intimacy and not sex).
3. Remember the example of Joseph from Genesis 39. When Potiphar’s wife presses in on him and starts to strip him of his clothes, he flees. He does not try to explain why this isn’t right. He doesn’t fall madly and deeply in love with her. He doesn’t use the grace of God as a license to sin and make up for it later. He runs away leaving the coat that he was wearing in her hands. When lust starts peaking its head around the corner at us and grabs us by the coattails, we should be looking more like an Olympic track star than trying to look like a Greek god who wants worship for himself/herself.
4. Modesty is an important measure for men and women. While there is nothing wrong with grooming ourselves and making ourselves presentable to the public (good hygiene is missional), there is a problem when it comes to the “flaunt it if you got it” mentality. You “got it” from your genes and I can’t recall one biblical example of “flaunting it” for the Kingdom. We all have a personal responsibility in keeping ourselves accountable to one another as brothers and sisters in Christ in the area of modesty.