The Battle for Lust is On-Going
“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” Colossians 3:5
It’s always there – nipping at our heels. Lust in some form or shape is trying to seduce us, to grab hold of our hearts. I think we will battle it until we close our eyes on this side of heaven – which is why we need to vigilant and militant about putting it to death.
Puritan preacher, John Owen wrote this powerful reminder as written in Voices from the Past – Puritan Devotional Readings (Banner of Truth):
To fight against sin is a big part of mortification. We need to recognize the enemy we are dealing with and that it is to be destroyed by all means possible. The battle is a hazardous one that deals with issues of eternity.
When a man sees his lust as a trivial thing, it is an indication that he is not mortified. We cannot go forward unless we recognize the danger of our own hearts. We need to be intimately acquainted with the ways, wiles, methods, advantages, and occasions in which lust has its victory. This is the way that men deal with their enemies: they search out their plans, ponder their goals, and consider how and by what means they have prevailed in the past. This is a most important strategy. If you do not utilize this great strategy, your warfare is very primitive.
When a man sees his lust as a trivial thing, it is an indication that he is not mortified. We cannot go forward unless we recognize the danger of our own hearts. We need to be intimately acquainted with the ways, wiles, methods, advantages, and occasions in which lust has its victory. This is the way that men deal with their enemies: they search out their plans, ponder their goals, and consider how and by what means they have prevailed in the past. This is a most important strategy. If you do not utilize this great strategy, your warfare is very primitive.
We need to KNOW how sin uses occasions, opportunities, and temptations to gain advantage. Search its pleas, pretences, reasonings, strategies, colors and excuses. We need to trace this serpent in all its windings, and to recognize its most secret tricks: “This is your usual way and course; I know what you aim at! Even when one thinks that a lust is dead because it is quiet, we must labor to give it new wounds and blows every day. The soul in this condition has the upper hand. Sin is under the sword and is dying.
Frequent successes against any lust strengthens us. When the heart recognizes at any time sin and temptation at work, seducing and forming sinful imaginations to get you to fulfill its lusts, the heart must IMMEDIATELY see if for what it is, bring it to the law of God and love of Christ, condemn it, and follow it to execute it to the uttermost. These weapons will lead to a great degree of success.
The good news is that we are not fighting all – that battle belongs to the Lord. As men, we can live in the victory over sin that has been made possible through Jesus Christ. The question is – will we make the right choice? Think about it. – Bill Welte is President and CEO of America’s Keswick
Compass Pointers: "Tarry in the city of Jerusalem, until you are endued with power from on high." Luke 24:49 "He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father." Acts 1:4 These waiting days were necessary to enable the disciples to realize their need, their nothingness, their failure and their dependence upon the Master. They had to get emptied first, before they could get filled. Oh, how often they must have thought, as those days went by, of the positions they were now to occupy, the responsibility that was resting upon them, the charge that the Master had committed to them, and their utter inability for it all! How they must have recalled their folly, their unbelief, their strife, their selfishness, their fears, their defeats, and shrunk back into nothingness, and even stood aghast at the prospect before them, until in the very dust they cried to Him for help and strength needed. And so God wants us to go apart and quietly wait upon Him, until He searches into the depths of our being, and shows us our folly, our failures, our need. There is no wiser nor better thing to do on the eve of a season of blessing than to make an inventory, not of our riches, but of our poverty; to count up all the voids and vacuums and places of insufficiency; to make the valley full of ditches, and then to bring to God the depths of our need for Him to fill. And it takes time to make this work thorough. It takes time to burn it into our consciousness. It takes time to make us feel it. It is one thing to know in a general way our need and failure; it is quite another thing to realize it, to mourn over it, to be distressed about it, and to be filled with sorrow and shame and that holy zeal and revenge upon ourselves which the apostle tells us is part of true repentance. A.B. Simpson
Navigation Rules to Memorize: Level 1: Proverbs 9:10-11; Level 2: Proverbs 9:7-12
Anchored to the Rock: Satan is far more anxious to keep us our knees than he is to keep us off our feet! Ivor Powell
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