Read Exodus 20:14 and Galatians 5:19-22
“It’s the second glance that ties your hands.”
Casting Crowns
The following is an excerpt from the book EVERY MAN’S BATTLE: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time:
“After training my eyes to look away, I was sunbathing with my wife on a Florida beach. My wife, Brenda, called my attention to a bikini-clad woman approaching us. ‘Fred, look! You won’t believe this’. I turned to look but initially I couldn’t. My good habits that I had developed had become so strong that I had to force my eyes to look.”
The book’s authors (Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker) write that the first defense against lust is with your eyes and so we need to employ the strategy of bouncing your eyes. You can train your eyes to bounce away from individuals, images etc. If you bounce your eyes for six weeks, it becomes a habit and you can win this war.
Bounce away to prevent a slow, negative fade. Pursue sexual purity!
If you train your eyes to bounce and eliminate the visual stimuli and leave no food for the mental fantasies, the sexual attractions that can draw your mind to lust in the situations can be broken.
Eliminate your visual stimuli.
“But a man who commits adultery has no sense; whoever does so destroys himself.”
Proverbs 6:32
As one of the 10 Commandments, adultery refers to sexual relations between a married person and a person who is not his or her spouse and is mentioned 40 times in the Bible. The Bible is clear about the commitment of marriage and the purity that must be maintained in the midst of it. In the age of the smart phone, problems can develop when pornography is viewed.
Is this lust a slow fade into adultery? Is it a gateway to something much worse?
The Bible says that God shows mercy to those who repent and turnaround from their sins—including adultery. (Acts 3:19). To repent is to turn from sin leading to a change in life.
In fact, the Bible talks about men and women who stopped committing adultery and later became God’s friends (See 1 Corinthians 6:9-11).
Is this an area that you struggle with or have before? Seek forgiveness from God and other necessary parties and commit to tighten up your life so you aren’t exposed to any gateway sins.
Tom Weckesser
Every Day With God 