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Strategies for Fighting Lust
by John Piper
I have in mind men and women. For men it’s obvious. The need for warfare against the bombardment of visual temptation to fixate on sexual images is urgent. For women it is less obvious, but just as great if we broaden the scope of temptation to food or figure or relational fantasies. When I say “lust” I mean the realm of thought, imagination, and desire that leads to sexual misconduct. So here is one set of strategies in the war against wrong desires. I put it in the form of an acronym, A N T H E M.
A – AVOID as much as is possible and reasonable the sights and situations that arouse unfitting desire. I say “possible and reasonable” because some exposure to temptation is inevitable. And I say “unfitting desire” because not all desires for sex, food, and family are bad. We know when they are unfitting and unhelpful and on their way to becoming enslaving. We know our weaknesses and what triggers them. “Avoiding” is a Biblical strategy. “Flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness” (2 Timothy 2:22). “Make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:14).
N – Say NO to every lustful thought within five seconds. And say it with the authority of Jesus Christ. “In the name of Jesus, NO!” You don’t have much more than five seconds. Give it more unopposed time than that, and it will lodge itself with such force as to be almost immovable. Say it out loud if you dare. Be tough and warlike. As John Owen said, “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.” Strike fast and strike hard. “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” ( James 4:7).
T – TURN the mind forcefully toward Christ as a superior satisfaction. Saying “no” will not suffice. You must move from defense to offense. Fight fire with fire. Attack the promises of sin with the promises of Christ. The Bible calls lusts “deceitful desires” (Ephesians 4:22). They lie. They promise more than they can deliver. The Bible calls them “passions of your former ignorance” (1 Peter 1:14). Only fools yield. “All at once he follows her, as an ox goes to the slaughter” (Proverbs 7:22). Deceit is defeated by truth. Ignorance is defeated by knowledge. It must be glorious truth and beautiful knowledge. This is why I wrote Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ. We must stock our minds with the superior promises and pleasures of Jesus. Then we must turn to them immediately after saying, “NO!”
H – HOLD the promise and the pleasure of Christ firmly in your mind until it pushes the other images out. “Fix your eyes on Jesus” (Hebrews 3:1). Here is where many fail. They give in too soon. They say, “I tried to push it out, and it didn’t work.” I ask, “How long did you try?” How hard did you exert your mind? The mind is a muscle. You can flex it with vehemence. Take the kingdom violently (Matthew 11:12). Be brutal. Hold the promise of Christ before your eyes. Hold it. Hold it! Don’t let it go! Keep holding it! How long? As long as it takes. Fight! For Christ’s sake, fight till you win! If an electric garage door were about to crush your child you would hold it up with all our might and holler for help, and hold it and hold it and hold it and hold it.
E – ENJOY a superior satisfaction. Cultivate the capacities for pleasure in Christ. One reason lust reigns in so many is that Christ has so little appeal. We default to deceit because we have little delight in Christ. Don’t say, “That’s just not me.” What steps have you taken to waken affection for Jesus? Have you fought for joy? Don’t be fatalistic. You were created to treasure Christ with all your heart – more than you treasure sex or sugar. If you have little taste for Jesus, competing pleasures will triumph. Plead with God for the satisfaction you don’t have: “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days” (Psalm 90:14). Then look, look, look at the most magnificent Person in the universe until you see him the way he is.
M – MOVE into a useful activity away from idleness and other vulnerable behaviors. Lust grows fast in the garden of leisure. Find a good work to do, and do it with all your might. “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord” (Romans 12:11). “Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58). Abound in work. Get up and do something. Sweep a room. Hammer a nail. Write a letter. Fix a faucet. And do it for Jesus’ sake. You were made to manage and create. Christ died to make you “zealous for good deeds” (Titus 2:14). Displace deceitful lusts with a passion for good deeds.
Fighting at your side,
Pastor John
Reproduced with the permission of Desiring God Ministries
One thing that I have heard before that wasn’t encouraging to me at the time, but looking back I understand…
Once we act out, we find it easy to redouble our efforts. Like any appetite, once we feed it, it is quelled for a time. This is true of our sexual appetite. When we indulge ourselves, the sexual hunger is satiated and doesn’t bother us for a time. It could be a few days or even a few weeks or months. Our efforts to avoid temptations and maybe avert our attention from objects of temptation come easy for a time after acting out.
It isn’t easy when the siren’s call to dash ourselves on the rocks grows from a whisper to a shout. The hardest part of recovery is growing to the point where we are able to withstand temptation when the hunger hasn’t been fulfilled.
We have to remember that the thing we actually hunger isn’t sex, but intimacy, connection and pleasure. The false intimacy and connection of pornography, and the fleeting pleasure of masturbation always leave us flat. And like any appetite, it only grows as we indulge it.
Like I said, that is tough and may not sound encouraging right now, but I felt that it would be helpful to you in the long run. Stay strong and use the time when the temptation is low to build real intimacy, connection and healthy sources of pleasure into your life. That is the best way to combat the temptation to come.
If you don’t have face-to-face friendships with others who can encourage you, start out by joining our forums for strugglers at The Purity Report. It is a safe environment to begin talking about your temptations in a structured way and receive prayer and encouragement.
Leave a commentThis video clip is from a friend of mine, Aaron Dailey. He was actually my RA in Bible school, so it is cool and funny at the same time to see him in ministry. It is even more ironic that we are in a similar vein of ministry.
In the clip. Aaron talks about the silliness of dating relationships sometimes, the bad advice we get, and how we give the same advice to each other as Christians regarding sin rather than preaching the Gospel – loving Jesus. The bottom line is we love sin. Telling each other to hate something we love is ridiculous. Rather, we need to fall in love with Jesus and let him do the work of changing our heart toward sin.
Take a look…
The amazing thing about pornography is how it can keep arousal fresh when it would otherwise stagnate, excitement electric when it would neutralize, keep us awake when we’d otherwise sleep. And awake, and awake, and awake.
Marnia Robinson and Gary Wilson probe porn’s secret recipe for keeping the high going. Key ingredient: the convincing illusion of so many participants eager sex with little old moi, the viewer. (This is where that little gullible part of the brain screams, “Illusion? Illusion?! Noooo!!”)
What could be better than that dreamy vision, that fantastic mirage?
May I humbly suggest: How about a real life one-and-only?
With last Monday being Valentine’s day, I was quite attuned to my wife of twenty-two years. Jenny and I went to grab lunch together, which consisted mostly of me waiting in the Suburban with our two little chatterbugs while she ran into Target to grab heart-shaped treats for our fourth grader’s class.
Why did my heart skip a beat when I saw that it really was her in the blue sweats walking out the door of the store? Why did we have so much fun shoveling down twenty bucks worth of Thai food in under ten minutes? Why did I feel just a little giddy when I asked her to be my valentine and she smiled?
I wanted her to have a good day, so I splurged at Amazon and got her an old audio version of a poetry collection, Grow Old Along With Me, the Best Is Yet to Be. The excerpt I heard long ago on the radio had Ed Asner reading the title poem by Robert Browning. On that program they also read another poem about the comfortable familiarity of the folds of one’s beloved’s wrinkly skin.
Those poems affected me. I’ve talked with Jenny about them several times since.
That’s right: Mary Tyler Moore’s Lou Grant, that suave romantic. And wrinkly skin, that old reliable turn-on.
The books are still fifteen bucks online, so who would have guessed that a still shrink-wrapped audio cassette version would be so affordable (wink)? I splurged and dropped a dollar (plus four for shipping and handling) to let my one-and-only know she still is.
I didn’t go to bed that night thinking that it was an amazing day. I have come to enjoy those little charged-up moments and connected comforts as a part of life. Sure, they’re a great part of life, but their also familiar and reliable. Expected.
But when I woke up in the middle of the night my mind flashed my day’s easy enjoyments against the backdrop of the harsh arid landscape that I see every day in the lives of the porn junkies I love and try to help.
The effect of a poem about a wrinkled old one-and-only lingers for a decade and counting. The effect of the best porn we’ve ever seen lingers for a few minutes, and then we need something else, something more.
In our culture, which so prizes beauty and youth, it may seem downright odd that an aging couple could be more and more pleased by each other as the years pass. Nonetheless, it’s a phenomenon that doesn’t peter out in middle age. If you know a handful of elderly couples, think about those among them who are still intensely drawn to one another. Watching them is evidence enough that attraction is not primarily based on attractiveness.
While this phenomenon remains fertile ground for poets, the inner workings of this magic have also been scrutinized by scientists. We know that the brain’s dopamine pleasure system can be desensitized over time if it is subjected to addictive levels of sexual stimulation. Which hints that the converse is true: it can remain highly sensitized among monogamous individuals who reserve their lust for their one and only.
Not only that, but another potent chemical is at work here as well. Oxytocin is like relationship super-glue. To compare: a dump of dopamine is the reward our brains give us for finding something new and exciting, but it can quickly dissipate and leave us hankering. Oxytocin, on the other hand, is the gift our brain gives us that keeps on giving. Unlike dopamine, we get more oxytocin when we’re with someone familiar and beloved. (Oxytocin is released in breastfeeding mothers and their infants, and you won’t see either of them looking around for a new and more exciting partner.)
While we become desensitized and less affected by dopamine over time, our sensitivity to oxytocin is heightened over time. Seeing, touching, and hearing a devoted partner gains more and more power over time to trigger the release of this chemical. A ninety-year-old woman walks into the room and her husband can’t hold back a sigh. “You can see why I love her!” The rest of us think, “Well, actually…no.” But there’s no doubting his sincerity.
This generation of young adults have been dubbed “Generation XXX” by Jason Carroll, who has surveyed students at six colleges about their levels of exposure, acceptance, and consumption of pornography. 87 percent of the males in their survey acknowledged seeking out and viewing pornography in the past year, with 20 percent viewing it daily or nearly every day. Surely some of them would not be such eager consumers if they realized that they’re impeding their capacity to fully attach to and enjoy their relationship with a one-and-only.
In her article The Porn Myth, Naomi Wolf wrote, “The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women…greater supply of the stimulant equals diminished capacity.” One reader responded to Wolf’s claim this way: “I hate porn. Why? Because I’m one of the younger guys who have grown up with the easy accessibility of the internet. It’s easy to see whatever you want with just a quick Google search. I hate it because I allowed myself to be immersed into it and it’s become a part of me. I got married, had two kids, and now I’m divorced and my wife has remarried. I have been through so much pain in my life, and I attribute it to precisely what Ms. Wolf has explained in this article. Even now, my mind has been desensitized, and I work my way through it. It’s a constant battle. I know that I’ve been desensitized–I see it and feel it. Emotionally, I’ve scarred myself. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone who wishes to have a family and a wife to cherish.”
Neurosurgeon Donald Hilton compares a porn-ravenous young adult to a confused insect on the verge of extermination. Here’s why: In place of chemical insecticides, sex attractants are now commonly used by farmers to control insect populations. Air currents carry the mist of condensed female pheromones out over crops and orchards. Science journalist Anna Salleh describes what happens next: “The male either becomes confused and doesn’t know which direction to turn for the female, or he becomes desensitized to the lower levels of pheromones naturally given out by the female and has no incentive to mate with her… The insects follow the pheromone trail into the trap.”
Just as pheromones would not occur in the natural world at that condensed level, pornography opens our brains’ floodgates of dopamine in concentrations that otherwise never occur. Dr. Hilton’s right: we’re as vulnerable to the effects of porn as these insects are to their exterminators’ bait. Just like the bugs, we get confused, desensitized, and lose our capacity and incentive for enjoying a real-life partner.
Fortunately, we do have something on those confused little critters. We can choose. We need not keep swimming in super-concentrate. We can give up porn’s fleeting pleasures, restore our sensitivity, and cultivate a lifestyle that’s more conducive to lasting love. In the process, we’ll discover what we might have never suspected: one real wrinkled wife really is better than an endless harem of airbrushed goddesses.
The Purity Bytes Podcast (on iTunes)
Byte-sized chunks of wisdom about sexual purity…
Episode 7: Overcoming Temptation
So what do we do about temptation?
In this episode, we talk about temptation – where it really comes from and how to overcome it.
2 CommentsDon’t Let Your Lust Go Unaccounted For!
A while ago we blogged about identifying the biggest triggers for our lust. The point of that blog post was to encourage us to proactively identify what the main triggers for our lust may be and put guardrails in place to safeguard us from them.
Triggers can be very different from person to person, but generally fall into two categories:
- Physical Triggers (people, places, things)
- Emotional Triggers (feelings, thoughts, circumstances)
One of the most important aspects of recovery from porn/sex addiction is taking the time after a “slip” to process what happened. What were the specific triggers leading up to this particular episode?
Using the categories of physical and emotional triggers, we can gain valuable insight into our addiction after giving in to sin. Looking at it differently, you could say that it is discovering what the enemy used to gain access to our lives in this instance. Furthermore, over time we will see patterns emerging. This information about our addiction is absolutely necessary if we are to find real, lasting freedom from sexual sin.
Here are some questions that may be helpful when looking back and processing a fall. When answering them, don’t think just about the exact time that you acted out, but think about the last week or so leading up to it.
Physical Triggers
- What places did I go to that triggered lustful thoughts and feelings (including places online)?
- What people did I encounter that triggered lustful thoughts and feelings?
- What things did I come across that triggered lustful thoughts and feelings (including things online)?
Emotional Triggers
- What specific feelings have I wanted to escape or numb myself to? How long have I had these feelings?
- What has my mood or attitude been like? What has contributed to my mood or attitude?
- What feelings of anger or frustration have I been feeling? What is the cause of that anger or frustration? Who is involved?
- What feelings of resentment am I feeling? Who are those feelings directed toward?
- What stressful circumstances have I been dealing with? How have these contributed to the feelings I listed above?
- What have my predominant thoughts been focused upon? How do these thoughts mesh with the feelings and circumstances I listed above?
- What thoughts have specifically led to fantasy and arousal? How long have I been entertaining these thoughts? What feelings and circumstances have been in play since I have entertained these thoughts?
The next step is to decide what you are going to do with this information. How can you use it to help protect yourself from giving into sin in the future? What do you need to pray for wisdom and strength to guard against? Where do you need to specifically shore up your accountability? What do you need to avoid altogether?
Taking the time to carefully and courageously reflect upon our physical and emotional triggers is a non-negotiable aspect of recovery from addiction. Make a pact with yourself and your accountability network that you will always take the time to complete such an inventory when you give in to your lust. Don’t wait days or weeks to process your slip. Our addictive minds quickly cover up all of this junk when we act out. Take advantage of the time fresh from a fall, when your emotions are still raw and your conscience is screaming, to reflect upon what happened. You will not regret it!
26 Destructive Consequences Porn Viewing Has on a Man
The following destructive consequences are the result of a Christian man viewing pornography. The A to Z format covers the wide range of negative results that porn has on a man who is a follower of Jesus.
Alienates You From God. You no longer feel close to God. You don’t experience the power of God. You no longer have the joy of your salvation.
Blinds You To The Consequences. It temporarily turns off your walk with God, your relationships with your wife, your children, and others. It blinds you to what is going to happen to you spiritually, physically, emotionally, mentally, socially, vocationally, and relationally.
Creates Unrealistic Expectations. Men begin to think this is what every woman should look like and that this is what your relationships with your wife is to be like.
Distorts Your View Of Sex. It makes you believe that sex is solely for the pleasure of a man and that women are simply objects to be used rather than God’s creations to be honored and respected.
Enough Is Never Enough. Pornography has an escalating effect. Like a drug you need more and more to satisfy the lust. It takes you further down a destructive path and further away from peace, joy, and healthy relationships.
Freedom Over What You Think And Do Is Lost. You become enslaved to your sinful thoughts which lead to sinful actions.
Guilt Comes Upon You After You Look At Porn, But The Guilt Is Not Enough To Prevent You From Doing It The Next Time.
Healthy Sexuality Is Numbed Through Porn. Healthy sex is married sex only that includes regular sex, unselfish sex, and loving sex.
Isolates You And Makes You Feel You Are All Alone And Are The Only One Who Struggles With Porn And Lust.
Jeopardizes Your Relationship With Your Wife Or Future Wife (if you are single), Your Witness For Jesus Christ, And Everything In Your Life That Is Important To You. You Put It All On The Line For Pornography.
Keeps You In S Cycle Of Self Destructive Behavior. It may appear to medicate the pain in your life, but it only adds to the pain with more pain. Porn leads you to do things you never thought you would do. Sin will take you further than you want to go. It will keep you longer than you want to stay. And it will cost you more than you want to pay (Unknown Author).
Lust—Sexual Sinful Lust—Leads To Sexual Sinful Actions. Porn put in your mind is like putting fuel on the fire of wrong sexual desire resulting in destructive thoughts and actions.
Masks The Real Wound You Are Seeking To Heal And Makes Things Worse.
Never A Neutral Experience. You cannot look at porn and not be affected by it. That experience is always inconsistent with God’s Word.
Objectifies Women. It makes them a sexual object. Porn hijacks a man’s ability to see an older woman as a mother figure, a same-aged woman as a sister figure, and a younger woman as a daughter figure.
Porn Initially Brings A Very Short-Lived Pleasure, Followed By Pain And More Pain
Quitting Becomes The Struggle Of A Lifetime. Once you allow porn in, there is a raging battle with Satan and your old nature to keep looking. Once you have allowed porn into your life, there will always be a battle. It is a winnable battle, but a daily battle.
Remains Imbedded In Your Mind Forever. Satan uses that image to replay in your mind to create a cycle of sinful lust again and to drive you back to looking at porn. You become bound to an image and a not a person.
Shame Enters Your Life. Guilt is feeling badly for something you have done, shame, however, is based on feeling badly about who you are. Pornography brings shame. God never brings shame. Satan always brings shame.
Trust Is Broken With The People You Love And Respect The Most.
Unlocks The Door To Every Sexual Sin. Porn is a portal, a gateway that leads to nothing good and everything painful such as compulsive masturbation, affairs, dangerous sexual practices, visiting adult-oriented businesses, paying for sex, perverted sexual practices and sexual abuse.
Violates Women. How? You are putting your stamp of approval on an industry that degrades and dehumanizes women.
Wandering Eyes Toward Other Women are Invited .
Xtinguishes Truth. Pornography promotes lying. You lie to others, you lie to God, and you lie to yourself. You lie more to cover up past lies. You become a living lie.
Yokes You To An Image. You become bound and attached to the image instead of your wife or future wife if you are single.
Zips Your Lips To Praising God, Speaking About Your Faith, And Telling Others How They Can Experience God.
Reproduced with permission from XXXChurch.com
While reading the verse of the day as delivered to my Google Reader account, a familiar verse showed up.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)
This verse is often quoted by folks struggling with sin, as it well should be. If we could not find any forgiveness, then we are in big, big trouble! Those of us who are or have been trapped by an addiction to porn know all-to-well the deep hole we have lived in and how much we need God’s help to climb out of it.
What struck me as I read the verse this time is the latter part, “…and purify us from all unrighteousness.” The focus when this verse is quoted is almost universally about forgiveness. But what about being purified from unrighteousness? Isn’t that what we really want? Forgiveness is an amazing thing, but being cleansed of the unrighteousness that brought about the state from which I need to be forgiven is more amazing still! So with this being one of the more familiar verses thrown around in church circles, why aren’t more people experiencing the purification that it promises?
I have worked in sexual integrity ministry for several years now. In both face-to-face and online venues I have been the recipient of many confessions of giving in to the lust of the flesh.
- “I slipped.”
- “I got online.”
- “I masturbated.”
- “I fill-in-the-blank.”
I’ve given confessions of this sort many times myself. I have usually let them leak out reluctantly from a place of shame. My preference would be to keep it silent, let it slide, sweep it under the rug or at the very least minimize it. And as such, these weak little confessions are what I divulge. This, I believe, is the crux of why the purification promised in this scripture is missing.
It seems to me that if anything meaningful is to happen in response to my confession that the confession itself must be meaningful. The easy way out for some is to be overly explicit in describing how they acted out. While this may sound deep to the listener, it can often be an avenue of exhibitionism. Worse still, it may assuage the conscience of the confessor, but not result in any lasting change either. I can describe the mechanics of porn, actions and behaviors without ever really opening my heart up for inspection. And that is what confession is all about.
A quick word-study of the word “confession”, homologeo in Greek, shows it is defined as, “to say the same thing as another.” None of the tiny utterances mentioned above come close to saying the same thing about sexual sin as God does in his word. Taking this view is painful, and extremely necessary if we are to experience the purification from the unrighteousness that got us in this mess in the first place. It is another case of short-term pain for long-term gain!
There is obviously much more to say on this topic, but I will stop here for now.
Eros is not only a word in Greek used to describe romantic love. In Greek mythology, Eros was the god of love and son of the goddess Aphrodite. He is synonymous with the Roman god Cupid, often depicted as a naked, winged boy with bow and arrow.
Most of us have seen cartoons of such a character firing his arrow into an unwitting guy who is suddenly struck with an insatiable compulsion to seek out the object of love’s spell. The lovestruck suitor loses all self control and is at the mercy of base, animal instincts. It would seem to me that such legend exists because of the incredible strength of sexual desire.
I have to admit, there have been times when the draw to consume pornography or reach sexual release was so great it seemed as if I were on autopilot; practically unable to resist the temptation. Most who find themselves in the pitiable state of addiction to porn or sex will attest to similar loss of self control. It would seem as if something has pierced the heart, driving the compulsion. However, rather than an arrow flung from the bow of some chubby baby, I submit that the piercing results from moral boundaries crossed repeatedly. Decades of choosing to indulge my lust brought me to the place of virtual powerlessness over it. It was no single arrow, but thousands of tiny slices at my heart. The Assassin of Character Creep had done its work well, and I was the assassin.
It is important to redeem the word love, in particular the type of love known as eros. What I have been describing is not love at all. It is lust and nothing more. Eros is not lust, but a God-given desire meant to passionately bind husband and wife together. Eros is like fire: inside of proper boundaries it is beautiful and adds warmth to those huddled around it. Outside of safe boundaries, it is a wild force that destroys everything it comes in contact with.
Studying “The Four Loves” has helped me draw a clearer distinction between eros and lust. One is a God-given love. The other is a selfish impulse better defined as unlove. Which do you think best fits pop culture’s portrayal of romance?
Eros is the passionate feeling a man or woman feels towards the opposite sex when falling in love with them. It may be described as a feeling of infatuation. Many phrases do eros justice when describing the experience of falling in love, love-struck or being smitten. Eros is exciting, spontaneous, and occurs in ways that captivate the focus of the lover onto his beloved.
It is would be easy to dismiss eros as inherently evil and lustful. This is a mischaracterization of eros, which we must remember is a creation of God. It draws lovers together in a powerful way which culminates in the most intimate of physical acts: the union of sex. The danger with eros is presented when elevated beyond its proper place and expectations are placed upon it which it cannot deliver.
It is clear in our modern society that eros has been both elevated and debased at the same time. It has been elevated as the most important of the loves, which leave us devoid of love because eros is the most fleeting of loves. It has also been debased as little if nothing more than sex. Lewis describes this misplaced attention on love as expecting from a dive what should rather be expected of swimming. Once the rush of the dive has passed, the lover realizes immediately the rush is gone, swimming requires work and conclude they must have dove into the wrong pond!
Eros is mysterious and difficult to define. Even C. S. Lewis had a difficult time describing it. However, any insight we can gain from studying the topic helps us to discern its proper place and apply wisdom to this intense yet most fickle of the loves.
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