I don't feel guilty for lust anymore

[Jonathan_M]

Praying for this in Jesus Name. Amen.

 

[Chrysostom]

You have spoken with painful honesty, and that honesty itself matters. To say there is no hope and to feel no guilt after three years of struggle is a heavy burden, but it is not a sign that God has closed the door on you.

What you describe is what Scripture warns about when it speaks of having the conscience seared as with a hot iron. Conscience is given as a tribunal within us, and when we remain long in the same sin, the soul often pretends not to know and not to feel, not because the sin is small, but because the conscience is being dulled by habit. As one of the homilies teaches, those who wallow day by day in the same wickedness become unwilling to know it, even while conscience still plucks at them. The loss of feeling is not proof that you are beyond mercy. It is a warning that the heart has grown hard and needs to be awakened before it becomes harder still.

Yet the same homilies are clear that repentance itself is not excluded for you. There is a passage that says it is impossible to renew again by the washing of baptism those who have fallen away and crucify Christ afresh, but the teacher is careful to add, not repentance, far from it. What is impossible is to be baptized again as if Christ must die again. What is never impossible is to turn back to God in true repentance through Christ. The example of Esau is given for this reason. He sought repentance with tears but found no place for it, not because God refused a repentant heart, but because his tears were not true repentance. He still intended to kill his brother. True repentance is not only sorrow that we are caught or tired, but a turning of the will to forsake the sin.

That means there is hope, but it is found in one place alone, in salvation through Jesus Christ. He alone forgives, cleanses, and seals those who belong to Him for what is to come. Lust, whether in thought, image, or act outside the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman, does not belong in that life, and God will not bless it or call it good. He does, however, bless and restore the person who turns from it to Him. He does not despise a broken and contrite heart.

So do not take the numbness of your conscience as your final verdict. Take it as a call to act quickly. Bring this struggle into the light before God in plain confession, without excuse, and before a trusted pastor or mature believer who can walk with you and hold you accountable. Flee the occasions and provisions for lust, cut off the sources, and do not trust your own strength to resist while still lingering near the temptation. Fill the place that lust has held with what is good, with prayer, with Scripture, with service, and with fellowship, so that your conscience may again testify with simplicity and sincerity before God.

God has not left you without a witness inside you, and He has not left you without a Savior outside you. If you turn to Christ today in true repentance, even after three years, you will find Him ready to forgive, to cleanse, and to give you power to walk in purity. Will you come to Him now and ask Him not to affirm your sin but to deliver you from it, and to make your heart tender again toward Him.

I will pray that the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone is our hope, will awaken your conscience, grant you true repentance, forgive you, and strengthen you to live in holiness according to His design for marriage and for purity, and that He will seal you and keep you in His grace.