Beating Lust: Mowing Down Weeds vs. Killing Them
I didn’t realize until the last year or so how prevalent sexual lust is in the Church. I guess I sort of had an idea that it was a big problem, but not until I heard the statistic that 76% of churchgoing men actively seek out pornography that it really hit me. That’s when I began taking some action to address this problem in our fellowship.
As I write this, the men in our church have begun a second go-round of The Conquer Series, a 7-week DVD study that addresses the problem of lust, with a special emphasis on pornography. During our first session this past Wednesday, I made the statement that being married does not necessarily remedy the problem, and all of the heads in the room nodded in agreement. Clearly, the problem isn’t one of simply needing an outlet for sexual intimacy, meaning one’s wife. There is a deeper problem at work, and that problem is a sin nature hellbent on pleasing itself. And the problem with lust is that it isn’t content to just please one’s self once in a while with pornography and masturbation. Sin leads way to more sin and worse sin. Once someone begins going down that road, it will lead to more serious bondages and expressions of sin eventually.
While The Conquer Series has some very important insights and principles that help in understanding the battle and how to wage it, for me personally, I have found that one simple principle has had the biggest impact on my ability to walk in victory. That concept has been called, “Bouncing the eyes.” Before I elaborate on this, let me first quote from a superb book called, Overcoming Lust, by Jim VanderSpek. He writes, “Striving to merely change ugly observable behavior is as ineffective as mowing a lawn to get rid of weeds. Whenever we let lust loose at any level, we will find ourselves fighting off its more unpleasant expressions sooner or later. However, it we eliminate the fuel, the fire will die.”
Anyone with a beautiful lawn knows that you can’t just mow down the weeds because they will just grow right back up again. You have to either pull them up from the roots, or poison them so that they shrivel up from the roots. The root system is what continues to feed growth above the ground, and until the roots are dealt with, the visible, outward problem will be addressed only to have it crop up time and time again.
In our battle against lust, the outward sins are not the real problem. Those are just the fruits of deeper problem represented in the roots. The roots — the heart — is the seat of sin. The heart is what feeds behavior. Jesus taught that “out of the heart come evil thoughts–murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander (Matthew 15:19). Until the heart issue is dealt with, you will only frustrate yourself in dealing only with the outward expressions such as lust, pornography, and masturbation.
So then, back to “bouncing the eyes.”
While the heart feeds behavior, the eyes feed the heart. Proverbs says to “guard your heart, for out if flow the wellspring of life (4:23).” One version says, “Guard your heart, for it effects everything you do.” If the heart effects what you do, then how do we guard the heart? The answer is by guarding carefully what goes into it.
The term “heart” in this context is synonymous for mind or soul. Your mind/soul/heart is fed by your eyes. What you allow in the gate of your eyes is what is going to occupy your heart, and what occupies your heart is what is going to dictate your behavior.
Thus, what we choose to look at is paramount to victory in this area. And when I say what we choose to look at, I’m not just referring to pornography. Pornography use is usually the acting out, the fruit on the tree. The root is what we choose to feed the mind throughout the course of a day, day after day.
Our culture is so saturated with sexual images and stimuli that one may feel as though it’s impossible to escape it. But while it’s true that you can’t keep the birds from flying over your head, so to speak, you can certainly keep them from making nests in your hair! In other words, you may not be able to cut yourself off from every improperly dressed woman who walks down the street or every billboard or magazine cover that your path crosses, but you CAN choose how you react to those things. If you gaze longingly at every sexually-charged image or person, you are inching ever-closer to that lust threshold where you will be so pent up with lust that your body demands that you act out in some way, and that’s usually with pornography, or worse.
If you will come to the place of utterly despising anything that feeds your carnal nature, and thus train your eyes to immediately bounce away from anything that is even remotely sexually-charged for you, then the lust that feeds your mind and heart will begin to fade. Your thoughts will clear and your sinful passions will lose their power over you.
Job said that he made a covenant with his eyes that he would not look lustfully upon a young woman (see Job 31:1,4). That needs to be our commitment as well.
On that note, having safeguards in place such as filtering software on one’s computer can help in this way, but again, these methods only seek to pluck the fruit from the tree. It doesn’t really address the roots. You can have blocking software on your computer that keeps you from acting out with pornography, but unless you starve your eyes and your mind from other polluting influences, you still have a problem with impurity, and you may actually find ways to act out anyway.
This was the case with me. For years I have had blocking software on my computer to prevent slip-ups in weak moments. However, this method, while important, nevertheless did nothing for my heart issue. When I successfully dealt with the heart issue, the daily and overpowering power of lust lost its mastery over me.
Recently, in fact, I had some computer problems and had to wipe the whole computer and reinstall the operating system, which stripped off my blocking software. I know from past experience that knowing I had such easy access to impurity on the internet presented a significant battle with temptation. However, when this computer issue arose recently, it was after I had been learning more about how to deal with the inner heart issues. For more than two weeks I was without any type of filtering software, and had no issues at all in being tempted to look for inappropriate material. When the heart issues are dealt with, the outward expressions are not as much of a problem.
We must understand the seriousness of this. Impurity is a heart issue, and Ephesians 5 says that those who persist in impurity will have no inheritance in the Kingdom of God (see Ephesians 5:3-6). There are ways to deal with the problem in a Biblical way, and starving the eyes is the starting place. But replacing what has been uprooted with something positive is where real transformation takes place. Romans 12 tells us to be transformed by the renewing of the mind. We renew our minds through frequent exposure and meditation on the Word of God, and therein is where we find transformation and victory (see Psalm 1).
In closing, I want to encourage those of you who have had significant problems in this area to attend each session of The Conquer Series, and perhaps even supplement that with reading Jim VanderSpek’s book, Overcoming Lust.
Victory is in hand!