Warning this may be an uncomfortable topic for many. In order to look fully at lust we need to first define it. I would define lust as a lure or hook to bait you and lead you into destruction. Lust is connected to your pleasures. It isn’t lust if you don’t want it. When I was young I had a dream and from it I concluded the solution to breaking the hold of lust is prayerful abiding. Abiding in Christ is the only way to change the harvest of your thoughts and actions. STAY WITH GOD.
So let’s look at LUST vs. ABIDING
LUST OFFERS YOU: Unrighteous thoughts (Isaiah 55:7)
†ABIDING: The mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5-8)
LUST OFFERS YOU: unfaithfulness, fights, quarrels (WARNING THIS IS WHERE LUST CAN PUT ON CHURCH CLOTHES.)
James 4:1-7
1What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
4You adulterous people, (4:4 An allusion to covenant unfaithfulness; see Hosea 3:1)
don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us4:5 Or that the spirit he caused to dwell in us envies intensely; or that the Spirit he caused to dwell in us longs jealously? 6But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”4:6 Prov. 3:34
7Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
†ABIDING: peace and contentment, right relationships, God’s Spirit dwelling in you, more grace,
Abiding says “I have what you want me to have, the friendships you want me to have, the financial blessings, the marriage or singleness you bless me with, the favor you want me to have, and the opportunities you want me to have. I surrender to your plan. Yes God, you are the Potter shape my life as you will not as I will.”
LUST OFFERS YOU: A war against your soul. Lust regularly does the wrong thing.
Note there is no unrest like a deep sense of guilt.
1 Peter 2:11
11Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 12Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
†ABIDING: Does the right thing, and thereby brings peace to your soul.
LUST OFFERS YOU: enslavement to the desires and passions as it serves you envy on a platter
Titus 3:3-5 At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. 4But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior
†ABIDING: offers you mercy, a cleanness of soul, and the nature and fruits of the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5)
LUST puts your heart in the hands of someone or something that can not satisfy nor can be fully relied upon. LUST becomes your source of self-worth. Ladies this happens when your worth is coming from your Instagram post and you are not getting enough likes, so you reveal more of your body, giving your worth to the double-tap gratification of social media. Pause, YOU ARE MORE VALUABLE THAN YOUR NUMBER OF LIKES ON INSTAGRAM.
†ABIDING puts your heart and the whole weight of your value into the hands of the only perfect one to ever live.
‘Jesus is one person in both divine and human natures’ the only reliable source of consistent love.
Jesus Christ who knows you fully and completely loves you fully and completely. Nothing is hidden from his sight and YET HE STILL DIED FOR YOU. His love remains available even on your worst day.
Trigger words to identify lust:
Cravings, desires, thoughts, natural instincts, ungodly desires, desires of the sinful nature, evil desires, corruption of the world. Lust is always contrary to the Spirit.
†Abiding offers you and I, a counter culture freedom. A new way of living. CHRIST OFFERS YOU A DIVINE NATURE. In Christ we are offered the incorruptible righteousness of Jesus perfect life. What amazing grace.
SYNONYMS
godly, godlike, angelic, seraphic, saintly, beatific
spiritual, heavenly, celestial, holy
rare
empyrean (heaven, in particular the highest part of heaven)
deiform (godlike in character)
deific
Resembling a god in qualities such as power or beauty; divine.
‘he achieved deific status’
‘deific powers’
1Peter1:3 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
5For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.
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