Pity Party
Theme of the Week: The Sexual Fantasies Struggle
Monday, April 14, 2008
 1 of 1
Key Bible Verse:And even when you do ask … your whole motive is wrong—you only want what will give you pleasure James 4:3.Bonus Reading:James 4:1-10
Tom, a 35-year-old single, sincerely came to Christ when he was 15. At about the same time, his 20-year struggle with sexual lust began. He was deeply discouraged about his recurring lapses into pornography and masturbation. After he came to me for help, I asked when he was tempted.
"Only on Friday nights."
"What's with that?" I asked.
"I go out and buy Playboy magazine as my temper tantrum at God," Tom explained. "I come back from work to the apartment. I'm all alone. I imagine that my single friends are out on dates, and my married friends are spending time with their wives. I build up a head of steam of self-pity. By nine or ten o'clock, I think, God has cheated me. If only I had a girlfriend or a wife. I can't stand how I feel. Why not feel good for a while? Then I hop in the car, head to 7-11, and fall into sin."
Tom had turned his whole relationship with God into flimsy scaffolding. If he managed to avoid lust for a stretch, he believed that God should come through by getting him a wife. Though Tom professed a sound faith, in daily practice he'd reduced God to, in Bob Dylan's words, the "errand boy to satisfy [his] wandering desires."
—David Powlison in Sex and the Supremacy of Christ
My Response: How have I rationalized succumbing to sexual temptation?
Adapted from Sex and the Supremacy of Christ (Crossway, 2004) by permission.
Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity. 1 of 1
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I've tried, Lord, to shut out sinful compulsions, but what I really need is an intense hunger for You that will crowd all that out.
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