Free Indeed
The sin of sexual lust has plagued man ever since God made woman. One subject you will hardly ever hear preached in church is that concerning our sexuality. Why? Because church folk don’t sin in this area? Hardly! Their are probably as many in the church that are caught up in lust as those outside. Unlike many obvious sins, this sin often goes undetected. There is a book titled “The Secret Sin” which tells how sexual sins are commonplace among Church going people. Those who are caught up in these sins are good at keeping their secrets. But, there is One from whom we cannot hide our sins. The Word declares, “You already know how to please God in your daily living, for you know the commands we gave you from the Lord Jesus himself. Now we beg you-yes, we demand of you in the name of the Lord Jesus-that you live more and more closely to that ideal. For God wants you to be holy and pure, and to keep clear of all sexual sin so that each of you will marry in holiness and honor-not in lustful passion as the heathen do, in their ignorance of God and His ways” (1Thessalonians 4:1-5LB).
Now we may have a problem in all this, if we do lust, and if we allow ourselves to fall into all manner of sexual sin. For a long time I rationalized my sin by thinking, “God understands why I do the things I do, He made me this way”. Is that true? Well, in a way yes. God did give us our sexual drive. He is the one who invented sex, not Playboy Magazine publisher Hugh Hefner. But, we are the ones who perverted that which God made holy. God didn’t cause me to sin. I chose to. When I did, sin got hold of me, and I became increasingly more sinful, more perverted until I was a slave to my sins. God gave us our sexual drive and He knew what He was doing when He did it. We were created as sexual beings, but not without boundaries. Men and women are physically attracted to one another. Many relationships are started based on that physical attraction, but for a relationship to be healthy it must move beyond that initial attractiveness. You also need to know that God established marriage as the only place where the sexual act can be performed within the will of God. God ordained sexual intercourse as a means of fulfilling the bonds of love between a husband and wife, and as a reward for their being faithful to submit to one another in love. Do you know that it is not easy to be submissive and loving towards one another in this close intimate relationship called marriage? Hebrews 13:4 NIV says, “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterers and all the sexually immoral“. God is letting us know He has ordained sex for those who are married, and He will judge those who violate His commandments and live immorally. How serious is this? 1 Corinthians 6:9,10 LB says, “Don’t you know that those doing such things have no share in the kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who live immoral lives, who are idol worshippers, adulterers or homosexuals-will have no share in His kingdom. Neither will thieves or greedy people, drunkards, slanderers, or robbers”.
Sex education is not something that should be left to our educators who don’t know the Author of our sexuality. Godly parents should teach their children how to deal with their sexuality. I never received any sex education in school, or from my parents. I learned all I knew about sex from my friends who knew nothing about the origin and purpose of sex. Furthermore, not knowing anything about God and His ways, I grew up with a distorted idea of how to deal with my sexuality. Consequently, I developed a fascination for pornographic material, and a masturbation habit that became a stronghold in my life. To be sure, fornication and adultery were by-products of those strongholds. I thought that when I got married I would be free of these bondage’s, but I found out that getting married will not set you free from sexual sin. How many of you are married and still have a problem with lust? It takes the power of God to break free of these chains!
Is it possible to be set free from life controlling addictions that keep us in bondage? Addictions to alcohol, drugs, sexual lust, etc.? The answer is an unequivocal, YES! But there are several things you must be aware of first.
The main thing you must know is that while you are powerless over your sin, God is ready, willing, and able to give you His power to conquer your addiction. However, you cannot receive God’s help unless you are in a right relationship with Him. The only way you can be in a right relationship with God is to receive forgiveness for all the sins you have committed up to now. This is accomplished from start to finish by believing on the One whom God chose to be a sacrifice for our sins. Jesus Christ took the punishment we deserve for sins when He was nailed to a cross almost 2,000 years ago. Three days after He was buried, He rose from the grave proving that He had conquered sin and death, and that His claims to be God were true. That same resurrection power is available to us today, if we believe. When I was 40 years old (seven years after I was saved), I was baptized in the Holy Spirit and Jesus set me free of my addictions to alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, lust, gambling, etc. I found out that God’s power is shown forth in our weaknesses, and that, “He who the Son sets free, is free indeed” (John 8:31,3.
Yes, God will do His part to set His people free, but we have an important role to play. We need to trust God, and let Him take away our fears. God is love, and His perfect love casts out all fears. We have been afraid that we cannot conquer our addictions. While this is true in the natural, we need to know that when we are in Christ Jesus, we have dwelling within us the power of a supernatural God. You need to know that to try and overcome addictions in your own strength is an effort in futility. Flesh warring against flesh will lose every time. The Apostle Paul understood that in and of himself he could not rise above his weaknesses. God told Paul, “My power shows up best in weak people” (2 Corinthians 12:9 LB). The Word of God further declares, “I can do everything God asks me to with the help of Christ who gives me the strength and power” (Philippians 4:13 LB). You see, God never asks us to do anything that He doesn’t equip us to do. How cruel would it be for God to tell us, “Be holy as I am Holy,” and then not equip us to do that?
There is probably no other area of our lives where we are more vulnerable than our sexuality. Especially men. We have been given strong desires in this area. There are two areas which when kept in proper perspective are healthy, but when out of balance are extremely unhealthy. They are our desire for food and our desire for sexual fulfillment. The one we can’t live without, and the other many think they can’t live without. We need to know what we are dealing with and how God provides. Those who are not married need to recognize how vulnerable they are. Everyone has a desire to have a mate, and deals regularly with loneliness. God knows that, for it was He who declared, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). The Bible also says, “The man who finds a wife finds a good thing; she is a blessing to him from the Lord” (Proverbs 18:22 LB). But you want to be sure that the one you get for a mate is the one God selects. A Godly mate is truly a blessing from the Lord, but if you get the other kind, you won’t dig it.
The single person needs to know God has a gift for you. It is called celibacy! You can’t get this gift anywhere else except from your Heavenly Father. This gift of celibacy wasn’t designed just for Catholic Priests and Nuns. It is for everyone who wants to remain pure for his or her future mate and wants to obey God’s commandment to be holy. The reason more people don’t avail themselves of this gift is they don’t know of it, or they have trouble believing God. This is one of the ways I know God is real, and that He is true to His promises to give us power over all our enemies (even over our greatest enemy, self). I was enslaved by sexual lusts for over 25 years before God set me free. After that I lost my wife to cancer and then I was single for 4 years prior to meeting and marrying my present wife. I can attest to the fact that the gift of celibacy is real and it works. God kept me from being caught up in sexual sins while waiting for Him to bring me my current wife, who is my helpmate.
There is a right way and a wrong way for Christians to meet and court those who may end up being their mate for life. The way the world dates is asking for trouble. If you want to kiss and pet, you can kiss your gift of celibacy goodbye. When dating you should take your date to group affairs where each of you can get to know each other in safety. Dates where you are alone for extended periods of time should be withheld until you are sure you respect each other enough that you will not violate the other’s trust. When going to places of entertainment, you should show discretion about choosing the type of entertainment you will partake of. The main thing is to recognize that everyone has a need to be loved, and we all fight a battle with loneliness. Don’t place yourself in places where you are going to be tempted beyond your capability to resist. Sexual desires when stimulated can get out of our ability to control. You can’t hold fire against your chest and not get burnt.
In my 20 years of working with those who are attempting to recover from chemical addictions, I have seen many of them suffer multiple relapses. In almost every instance I found that where they started to lose it was when they got involved in a wrong relationship. It wasn’t long after they committed sexual sins that their ability to resist the temptation to pick up was so eroded that they fell victim again to their addiction. Let’s look at this: Does not the Word of God say, “The Wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)? When we disobey God we experience spiritual death. Separation from God, and the loss of His power. If it is God’s power that is replacing our weakness, aren’t we a pushover for the devil to get us back into our chemical addictions when we fall into sexual sins? If you struggle with sexual lust, you need to know that victory in this area will probably not come easy. This can be a real stronghold, but nothing is impossible with God. If God set this sinner free, He will do the same for you. After all, we know that He is no respecter of persons. What He does for one, He will do for all who seek His face.
The Lord says, “But remember this-the wrong desires that come into your life aren’t anything new and different. Many others have faced exactly the same problems before you. And no temptation is irresistible. You can trust God to keep the temptation from becoming so strong that you can’t stand up against it, for He has promised this and will do what He says. He will show you how to escape temptation’s power so that you can bear up patiently against it” (1 Corinthians 10:13 LB). The problem of being set free from those sins that so easily beset us, is not that God is not able, it is that we are weak in our faith. We simply don’t believe that God is able to rescue us in our time of temptation, so we give up without a fight. Yes, we need to grow in faith, and we need to know about the spiritual warfare we are in and how to fight, but there is something else we need to know. In God’s dealing with man, there is a duality of responsibility. There are some things you can do, and some things you can’t do. Example: In our deliverance from the sins of sexual lust, we can stop looking at those things that would stimulate us sexually: Pornographic magazines, worldly television programs, etc. And we can seek and find what the Word of God says about lust and sexual sin, and how we can involve ourselves in spiritual warfare so we can get God’s mighty power working on our behalf. Then God will do for us those things we are incapable of doing. He will break the bondage that lust holds over us. He will strengthen us for the battle as we seek to break sinful habits. He says, “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness” (Isaiah 41:10).
CONSIDER THIS: “THE ONE WHO LIVES FOR THIS LIFE ONLY, AND THE PLEASURES IT OFFERS, WILL HAVE ALL OF ETERNITY TO REGRET IT”.