I should say at the beginning that this article was written by a man, for other men. Not that women don’t have to deal with sexual temptations; I know that you do. But the impression I’ve gained over my lifetime, and especially through eighteen years of marriage, is that women and men experience sex differently. This article, like just about everything else posted here, comes out of my own experience, and one thing I have obviously never experienced is being a woman. So for all my sisters in Christ, you’re free to read this if you like. There’s nothing here that’s secret. And if you find something that helps you, that’s fantastic. But it really isn’t aimed at you.
Now for my brothers:
Stop me if you’ve heard this one; you’re not doing anything in particular, maybe sitting in front of the TV, or your computer, and you just kind of drift into thinking about sex. Images pop up in your head, or you find them on your screen. You try to push lustful thoughts out of your mind, but they keep coming back. After what is probably a very short time, you give up and just enjoy the fantasy. And then afterwards comes the guilt. The feeling of being dirty. The shame that makes you feel like a hypocrite if you try to pray or read the Scriptures. It could be hours, and sometimes days, or even longer before you feel like you can enjoy a relationship with God again.
This is a story that most of us are only too familiar with. Not long ago I was praying with a Christian brother about this very issue and I realized that, while this used to be my experience, it hasn’t been so for a while. It occurred to me to wonder what had changed. Thinking about the answer to that question led to this article.
The tools that I’m going to share today are not things that I learned by being smarter than anyone else, or more spiritual than anyone else. I really just stumbled over them, and it’s only in hindsight that I even figured out what I was doing. I’m not writing these ideas down here in the order I figured them out, but rather in the order that I think is the easiest to explain.
The Lies We Believe
The first key to winning the battle for our minds, the key that unlocks everything else, is to recognize the lies that we believe about sexual temptation. And, obviously, once we recognize that they are lies, stop believing them.
Lie Number One: it’s a sin to feel a desire for illicit sex. It’s critical that we get straight in our heads that temptation is not sin. Even Jesus was tempted. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Guys, trust me; this lie will kick your butt if you let it. You can’t fight a battle you think you’ve already lost.
Lie Number Two: I have to purge lustful thoughts from my mind before I can pray. Believe me, I get it. A lot of the images and thoughts that come into my mind are exactly the kind of thing I don’t want Jesus to see. Especially if I’ve started beliving the first lie. But all that means is that I’m trying to defeat sin on my own, before I go to Jesus, even though I know very well that’s not the way it works.
Lie Number Three: I have to summon up the willpower to stop feeling what I feel. That might work for Mr. Spock, but as humans we don’t generally have much control over what we feel. We only control what we do about what we feel. We’ve all heard the saying that courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s feeling afraid and doing the right thing anyway. The same principle applies to all of our emotions. But instead of focusing on my response, I think that I have to respond to sexual temptation by trying to control my feelings, and I try to do it without God, and while believing that I’ve already lost. Is it any wonder that we so ofter fail?
To have any chance of resisting temptation, we have to reject the lies that temptation is sin, that we must, or even can, control what we feel, and especially that we must win the battle before we can pray. Success depends on knowing the truth. As G.I. Joe used to say (yes, I know I’m dating myself), “knowing is half the battle.”
So what’s the other half? Based on my own experience, evaluated in the light of Scripture, I recommend four practices:
1. Live in the presence of God
2. Live intentionally.
3. Treat temptation as a distraction.
4. Only fight today’s battle today.
All four of these are simple to do, provided I remember to do them. Taken together, they have made a huge difference in my own experience, and I believe they can in yours as well.
Practice 1: Live in the Presence of God
God is always with me, but if I don’t pay attention I can forget that truth. Living in the presence of God means remaining constantly aware of his presence. In simple terms, I try to keep up a running conversation with God in my head throughout the day; thanking him, asking for help, or just talking to him about whatever comes to mind. And I listen. This most emphatically does not mean that I try to force myself to only think about things that I think God would approve of, but that I’m sharing everything I think about with God, whether it’s a “proper” subject or not. And, of course, if I’m doing something that requires my full attention I can let the conversation go into the background, and then pick it up again when I’m able, just as I would if I were talking with anyone else.
I was first introduced to this practice by a booklet titled The Practice of the Presence of God, written in the 17th century by a French monk named Brother Lawrence. It sounds absurdly simple, and it is, but at the same time I find, just as Brother Lawrence found, that it’s very hard to keep it up for more than a few minutes without getting distracted. But the cool thing is that, when I realize that I’ve become distracted, all I have to do is quickly apologize and pick up the conversation again. The very title of the booklet says practice, after all!
This is prayer, but of a type many of us are not used to. In 1 Thessalonians 5:17 we’re told to “pray continually.” Some translations say “without ceasing.” As long as we define prayer as formal requests made with head bowed and hands folded, this verse can only be hyperbole. Once we recognize that living in God’s presence in this way is also a form of prayer, then even if we don’t obey the command perfectly, it’s something we can reasonably strive for, and fully expect to get better at as we continue to practice.
In my experience, practicing the presence of God makes it dramatically easier to resist temptation. For one thing, I don’t have to go to prayer when I’m tempted; I’m already praying. Since I’ve gotten used to sharing my thoughts with God, there’s far less urge to hide, or to pretend I’m not thinking what I’m thinking. If I see, for example, a hot girl, I can acknowledge the attraction – he knows what I think already, so why deny it? And then she’s forgotten and the conversation can move on. The battle is won without a struggle.
Practice 2: Live intentionally
In 1 Corinthians 9:26 Paul writes, “Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air.” The practice of living intentionally is basically just this: whatever you do, do it on purpose. Don’t just drift or veg out. Watch TV because there’s a particular show you want to see. Go online because there’s something specific you want to do. Notice that I did not say anything about how you should spend your time – that’s a different article – only that however you choose to spend it, be clear in your mind that it is your choice. Whether you’re working, playing a game, taking a nap, or whatever you do, don’t just wander into it; make it a deliberate choice.
Being deliberate about what I do prompts me to continually ask, “Is this how I really want to use my time, my money and my brain cycles?” The result is that I often wind up making better decisions. Living intentionally also promotes accountability, as it makes it harder for me to make excuses. When I make a bad choice, I have to accept the fact that it was my bad choice, not a thing that I just happened to fall into.
In the gospels, when Jesus was temped by the devil in the wilderness, he hadn’t just randomly wandered out there. He made a deliberate choice to go into the desert, and to fast, in obedience to the Holy Spirit (Matthew 4:1; Luke 4:1). I can say for myself that it’s easier, much easier, to resist temptation when there’s some other specific thing that it’s interrupting. As long as I’m doing some specific thing when temptation arises, even if it’s just laying in bed trying to fall asleep, I have something that I can decide is a higher priority than paying attention to the temptation. This leads naturally to my third practice…
Practice 3: Treat temptation as a distraction.
Are you beginning to see how these practices fit together? If I’m intentional in my choices then temptation, when it comes, is not some great must-win battle, it’s just a distraction from whatever I intended to do. And how do I treat distractions? I don’t know what you do, but I acknowledge them, and then set them aside and go back to what I was doing before. I don’t ignore distractions, since I find that only makes them stronger, but neither do I spend a lot of time thinking about them. I simply make a conscious decision to do one thing rather than another.
Looking again at the account of Jesus’ temptation in Matthew 4 and Luke 4, notice that for each temptation, the Lord answers decisively and that ends the matter. In each case he replies with Scripture, and there’s no question about the results. But I don’t want to get caught up into thinking that I have to know all the right Bible verses before I can resist temptation. Victory over sin does not require a seminary education! The Word of God is powerful, but if I don’t know the perfect verse I won’t spend half a hour trying to look it up. This is a distraction, remember? The less time I spend thinking about it, the better. The key, I’ve found, is not necessarily remembering the perfect Scripture, but deciding that paying attention to the temptation, is a lower priority than whatever it is I was doing. Even just saying, “yeah, that would be fun to think about, but I don’t have time right now” is surprisingly effective.
Practice 4: Only fight today’s battle today.
Many years ago I went through a period of depression, to the point that I seriously considered suicide. By God’s grace I survived, and the way he did it was by teaching me to say, “I don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow, but I will not die today.” Then, having survived one day in that fashion, I could say the same thing again and survive another day. I never had to live more than one day at a time.
I’ve listened to the stories of enough recovering alcoholics and drug addicts to know that I’m not unique in this discovery. But I’ve found that this same principle also applies to resisting sexual temptation. In my case, for example, there are some habits of thought that I know aren’t right, but that are so ingrained in my mind that, not only can I not make a decision to give them up forever, whenever I think about it I realize that a large part of me doesn’t even want to. But I can still decide not to let my thoughts go in that direction today.
One day is all I ever have to manage, because what I can do on one day, I can do again on another. Victory over sexual sin, or any persistent sin, does not look like one great battle, but like a long string of minor successes. You want proof? At the end of Jesus’ temptation Luke 4:13 says, ”When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.” Notice those last four words. The devil did not leave forever, but only “until an opportune time.” Even Jesus resisted temptation one day at a time.
Remember who you are
Finally brothers, don’t forget who you are. If you are trusting in Jesus, if you believe in his name and call him your Lord, you are a son of God. Holiness is what we were made for, and what we are destined for, in our sexuality just as in every other area of our lives. Even if it doesn’t look much like it yet. Don’t get frustrated and quit when you stumble, and get up, only to stumble again. The four practices I described are just that: practices. To get good at them we have to practice. Instead of being discouraged if you’re not progressing as quickly as you want to, give thanks to God that you are able to progress at all. It’s only because of Christ, and through Christ, that victory over sin is possible in the first place.
“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:5-10).
Remember who you are, my brothers, and walk in victory.