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# The Nature of Sexual Immorality There are many reasons that men remain trapped in bondage to sexual sin. Freedom, however, begins by recognizing the nature of your sinful condition. Unless you accept your need for change, it won’t last. Keep an open heart and be ready to respond as you read this devotional. Overcome sexual immorality (Ephesians 4:19–24; 5:3; Colossians 3:5–7; 1 Thessalonians 4:3–7). Consider a few common sexual sins and how they interfere with your relationships: Lustful thoughts are sins. Perhaps the most overlooked and yet dangerous sexual sin is lustful thoughts. Fantasies are fabricated scenarios intended to serve you, please you, and give you what you claim you deserve. Lustful hidden thoughts don’t receive much attention. Some men consider these thoughts as innocent unless acted upon. Jesus says, however, that anyone who even looks at a woman lustfully commits adultery in his heart (Matthew 5:27–28). Why are lustful thoughts so serious that God calls them adultery? The Lord desires your heart, plain and simple. Jesus doesn’t want mere outward appearances or actions from you (1 Samuel 16:7; Galatians 2:6). Your thoughts reveal the focus of your heart. You cannot serve two masters (Matthew 6:24). This means you cannot pursue selfish sexual desires while seeking to love and serve the Lord. You may try, but you’ll always be frustrated in the end. Fantasies are forms of false intimacy that keep you from being fully devoted to healthy relationships that are open and honest. Fantasies tend to make you view people as objects. Lustful thoughts can demonstrate that you’re not content and may keep you from going to the place where contentment is found (Hebrews 13:4–5). When you’re discontent, it’s because some area of your life is not in line with God. When you lust, you’re seeking more and more self-pleasures in a vain attempt to fill a void in your life. You incorrectly think that if you only had more sexual pleasures, you’d be more fulfilled, but lust can never satisfy, and it doesn’t fill the place in your heart meant for Jesus. The result is emptiness because you don’t have an intimate relationship with the Lord, the only source of peace and contentment. Lustful thoughts violate the unity and intimacy God designed and reserved for marriage. Although God made you a sexual being, He intended that sex would occur only with a spouse (Proverbs 5:1–23). Please understand that God instructs you to be faithful for your good. It leads to the security and unity that God intended for marriage. By remaining pure in your thought life, you also avoid feelings of guilt and shame that drive you further into the destructive cycle of seeking temporary pleasure in a momentary fantasy that leaves you feeling empty or deficient. Masturbation and pornography are advanced forms of lust. Just like fantasies, masturbation cannot fill the emotional and spiritual needs inside your soul. With pornography, the difference is that you use your mind as the vehicle of self-pleasure. Both pornography and masturbation stimulate fantasies and lustful thoughts, and both involve a heightened and direct inward focus on satisfying your desires. Although you often try to justify these things with notions that you deserve a little pleasure or that nobody gets hurt, you and others are damaged (Ephesians 4:19–24; 5:3–5). Pornography grieves God. He knows that it breeds discontentment, fills your mind with thoughts that consume your attention, and distracts you from pursuing what is good. Whether you admit it or not, when you masturbate or look at pornography, you experience guilt or shame that feeds a continual downward cycle. You then isolate portions of your life from others and hide from Jesus. These things desensitize and blind you to the truth about who Jesus is and how much He wants to meet your needs. Satisfying sexual urges may reveal that sex controls you. A misunderstood area of sexuality is the notion that a person must have sex practically every day to be satisfied. Although God did design and create you to be a sexual being, and while you certainly are capable of wanting sex daily, God never intended you to satisfy every desire that enters your mind (Ephesians 2:3; 1 John 2:16). Pursuing daily sex may reveal that sex is your master, not the Lord. Over the years, you train yourself to sexualize things and lose sensitivity to sin (Ephesians 4:19). You might try justifying your actions or impulses with notions such as, “I am only lusting after my wife” or “God made me more sensual than other men.” However, the man who seeks to satisfy all his desires, often without regard for his wife, will never find contentment. The endless hunt for satisfaction, with sex often the target, is a constant cycle of frustration. If you expect to have sex almost every day, chances are, you’re living for self-gratification, which only sets your heart on a continuous pursuit to satisfy a desire that will always want more. The only answer is to discipline your sexual urges by fixing your gaze upon the Lord, the source of satisfaction. Do you see your thoughts and conduct as God does? Are you broken over how you have used God’s gift of sexual intimacy for selfish purposes and practices? A selfish heart won’t hear God or seek lasting change. Ask yourself, “Am I humble enough and seeking intimacy with the Lord enough to hear His voice in this regard?” Consider Romans 12:1–2: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing, and perfect will.” While meditating on this, turn to the Lord with a willing heart and teachable spirit. Ask God to speak to you and to reveal in which areas of life you’re holding onto control instead of yielding to Him. As you constantly evaluate your actions and motives, keep asking yourself questions such as: * Is it my desire to be a living offering to a holy God? * Am I able to discern God’s will for my life? * Under God’s scrutiny, are my thoughts, motives, and actions pure? * Am I relying upon the views of others or on societal norms to justify my sexual practices? The Lord doesn’t want you to remain ignorant about sin. He wants you to overcome it. God knows you cannot stop sinning, so He provides the way out. Turn to Him now and ask Him to speak to your heart and open your eyes to all sinful practices that you justify or allow to remain in your life. You won’t seek repentance until you see these things as keeping you separated from all that God wants for you. Instead, you’ll only play a game at trying to stop, or you’ll deceive yourself into thinking all is well. The roots of selfish practices will never be far from the surface, taking various forms of anger, greed, lust, worry, and other stealers of peace and contentment. Spend time now meeting with God, seeking truth, repentance, and brokenness. # Heartwork (Write down your answers in a separate notebook or on a note on your smartphone.) What grabs your attention from this passage of Scripture: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27–28). Take a minute to answer the question above. Stimulating your sexual drive by outside sources (i.e., other than unselfish intimacy with your spouse) is improper and fuels an unquenchable lust. Setting expectations of how often you must have some form of sexual release is living for self-gratification, which only sets your heart on a continuous pursuit to satisfy a nature that will always want more. What changes will you make because of these truths? Will these changes include considering others as more important than yourself? Will they involve taking on an eternal perspective? Write out your commitments. Take a minute to answer the question above and write out your commitments. Meditate on each of the following verses and jot down any insights or commitment to turn from evil: “Let those who love the Lord hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked” (Psalm 97:10). “To fear the Lord is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech” (Proverbs 8:13). “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good” (Romans 12:9). Take a minute to write out your thoughts or commitments. Special Note: Do you see lust, fantasy, pornography, and masturbation as 100% wrong? If you don’t see them as evil or have not chosen to hate them, you are likely only playing a game at trying to stop them. Therapy, religion, or even this plan won’t make you stop sexual immorality. Change must come from a desire of the heart followed by reliance upon the Lord. View unhealthy and undesirable evils like pornography and fantasy as no longer welcome in your life. State your desire and determination to hate such sins by writing a short prayer to God expressing your deep Godly sorrow over your impure lust, greed, pride, self-sufficiency, and refusal to turn over every area of your life to God. # Prayer Spend five minutes talking to God right now. Use a watch or set a timer if you need to. * Ask the Lord to cause you to see and hate the ugliness of pornography, lust, fantasy, and masturbation. * Tell God how you will turn to and trust in Him. * Confess your selfishness (wanting to be first), self-sufficiency (wanting to be in control), self-gratification (wanting to be served), greed (wanting more), and pride (wanting it on your terms). * Ask the Lord to be the master and to make you a willing servant. (Include all these things in your prayers daily this week.) * Be sure to pray for other Proven Men that they, too, will hate sin. Write down their names as you pray. Be specific in your requests to God.