ANTHEM: Strategies for Fighting Lust

Lust
A desire that we should not have because it is untethered from the purifying effects of Christ and is therefore directed to the wrong object or is so out of proportion or unsuited to its object as to disorder our thoughts or feelings or actions.

Christ centered, gospel rooted strategies for overcoming lust:
Avoid
No
Turn
Hold
Enjoy
Move

Avoid
2 Tim 2:19-22
But God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal, "The Lord knows those who are his," and "Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity."
Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.
So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

• What sort of situations have defiling effects on our desires?

Romans 13:12-14

The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on  the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh , to gratify its desires.

• Avoid the stimulus and associations that drag us towards lust. 

Money, Sex, Power

Living in the Light

• All of creation was meant to communicate the supreme beauty and worth of God.
• God created the world for His glory. He created the world so that He would be magnified by the way His creatures find their greatest satisfaction in Him.
• Money, sex, and power exist ultimately to show that God is more to be desired than money, sex, and power.
• Everything hangs on what we value as supreme. What is our highest treasure? What is our greatest satisfaction? When God takes that place in our hearts (of the greatest treasure and satisfaction); then money, sex and power begin to find their true and beautiful order. 

Definitions and Foundations

• Money: not just paper and coins but the pleasures, advantages or status that money can signify.
• Money, sex and power are gifts from God. If they sink us, it's not because they are bad. It's because something happened inside of us to turn instruments of grace into instruments of sin, into altars and incense in the temple of pride.

Notes from John Piper's book: Living in the Light: Money, Sex and Power.

After Watching Porn - 001

We too often allow unattainable ideas to dictate what we allow ourselves to say.

God can and does act in that moment of regret.

It is often in the moment after the act that Satan spins his most eloquent web: menacing thinking patterns, bargaining with a distant and disapproving God.... It is in this moment that Satan does his finest work. It is in this moment that we need God to do His finest saving.

1. Know your enemy. Godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret; but worldly grief produces death (2 Cor.7:10). Recognize that you have a powerful personal agent who is singularly focused on your destruction. Do not forget that Satan is at work. If you do, it is easier to believe hidden, subversive, subtle, destructive lies. Evil gains power when it is forgotten. Don't forget: After you indulge, you are still mid-battle with a tenacious, evil person bent on stealing your life, and he has not yet gotten it.
2. Fight self-hatred. Porn is the twisted manipulation of innocence for the raw crave of erotic appetite. To have a grieved conscience is a good thing... [but] wallowing in self-deprecation and feeling like paying penance to God for sin is a sad and ironclad torture. It is false, and it is a wicked oppression. Not surprisingly, suicide rates are high among porn users. 
• No wonder David uses such deeply physical metaphors when he pleads with God for grace over sexual sin: 
• Blot out my transgressions;
• Wash me;
• Cleanse me;
• Purge me;
• Blot out my iniquities;
• Create in me a clean heart
• Scream that, with David. Replace the groan of human self-hatred with an unbroken war cry of divine love.
• If you are tempted to wallow, don't let your (good) intuitive hatred of sin lead you to hate yourself. 
• Be patient with yourself, because God is patient. He is fighting for your life. He has not forgotten you. He has not left you. Keep fighting with him. Keep gasping for the air of divine life - the Life-Giving Spirit.
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