Silas
Beloved of All
Hearing you say you feel like the most lustful person in the world and cannot escape tells me how heavy and hopeless this feels. That sense of being trapped is painful, but it is also a very familiar place in Scripture. The apostle Paul came to that same point of despair and cried out, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death. At first many of us try to answer that question by asking how can I deliver myself, and we fail again and again. The turning point comes when we stop trying to free ourselves by willpower and ask who will deliver me, and the answer is Jesus Christ.
The pattern of temptation you are facing is not new. From the beginning the enemy has worked through the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life. What looks good to taste, what looks pleasant to see, what promises to make us wise or important. John says these things are of the world and not of God, and the world is passing away along with its lust. That is important to remember because lust promises life and satisfaction but it cannot last and it cannot satisfy. Like the son who left his father to waste his life in wild living, it will take you far from home and then leave you empty, trying to fill yourself with what was meant for pigs, until you come to yourself and see what it has cost.
God has given you freedom of choice and He respects it. In Christ that freedom becomes something precious. It is not only freedom to do what you want, it is freedom not to do what once mastered you. Many people do not guard that freedom. If you keep exercising freedom to indulge, you lose the freedom not to. If you guard it, you keep the freedom to walk away. That is why Scripture so plainly says to keep yourself from sexual immorality. It is not to take away joy, but to protect you from a power that wants to make you its servant. You do not have to be a servant of sin. Jesus is able to set you free from any binding power, including the power of lust that feels so strong right now.
You will not find that freedom by pretending you have no sin. If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves. The way forward is honest confession. When we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You can bring this struggle into the light before Him without hiding, and trust His grace to forgive and to cleanse, not because you have earned it but because you are joined to Christ. The Bible speaks of being freed from trying to make ourselves righteous by law and being joined to another, to Jesus Himself, so that our lives can bear new fruit. Victory does not come from trying harder in your own strength, it comes from belonging to Him and drawing your life from Him day by day.
You are not beyond help, and you are not the exception that cannot be freed. Guard the freedom Christ gives you. Make choices that protect it rather than weaken it, turn away from what feeds lust, feed your heart on what is of God, and keep confessing and receiving His forgiveness and cleansing when you stumble. He can give you the freedom not to, and over time that freedom grows stronger as you walk with Him.
The pattern of temptation you are facing is not new. From the beginning the enemy has worked through the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life. What looks good to taste, what looks pleasant to see, what promises to make us wise or important. John says these things are of the world and not of God, and the world is passing away along with its lust. That is important to remember because lust promises life and satisfaction but it cannot last and it cannot satisfy. Like the son who left his father to waste his life in wild living, it will take you far from home and then leave you empty, trying to fill yourself with what was meant for pigs, until you come to yourself and see what it has cost.
God has given you freedom of choice and He respects it. In Christ that freedom becomes something precious. It is not only freedom to do what you want, it is freedom not to do what once mastered you. Many people do not guard that freedom. If you keep exercising freedom to indulge, you lose the freedom not to. If you guard it, you keep the freedom to walk away. That is why Scripture so plainly says to keep yourself from sexual immorality. It is not to take away joy, but to protect you from a power that wants to make you its servant. You do not have to be a servant of sin. Jesus is able to set you free from any binding power, including the power of lust that feels so strong right now.
You will not find that freedom by pretending you have no sin. If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves. The way forward is honest confession. When we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You can bring this struggle into the light before Him without hiding, and trust His grace to forgive and to cleanse, not because you have earned it but because you are joined to Christ. The Bible speaks of being freed from trying to make ourselves righteous by law and being joined to another, to Jesus Himself, so that our lives can bear new fruit. Victory does not come from trying harder in your own strength, it comes from belonging to Him and drawing your life from Him day by day.
You are not beyond help, and you are not the exception that cannot be freed. Guard the freedom Christ gives you. Make choices that protect it rather than weaken it, turn away from what feeds lust, feed your heart on what is of God, and keep confessing and receiving His forgiveness and cleansing when you stumble. He can give you the freedom not to, and over time that freedom grows stronger as you walk with Him.
