“Sin is always pleasurable in the beginning, until it’s not… and then it rots away at your soul and your just… why am I here? I’m miserable… I am broken… but I’m a slave to this and it’s controlling me… and I’d give anything to be free from it!”
Brittni De La Mora
Lust
When we see this word… our first inclination is likely adultery, or porn, or desiring someone outside of a marriage relationship. It is only four letters in the English language… in reality however lust is not so much about sexual desire as it is about the condition of our heart…
Lust is defined by Websters dictionary as “having an intense desire or need : crave. specifically : to have a sexual urge.”... There is an underlying part of the above definition I want to focus in on… “intense desire or need… a craving”...
In Genesis 3 we read the word "desire" for the first time in the Bible. The setting is in the garden of Eden. Eve is relaxing in the garden when she strikes up a conversation with Lucifer… who the Bible describes as “the serpent”. He says to Eve “Did God ACTUALLY say “you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?”. Eve correctly states that she can eat from any tree except the one called the tree of life. Lucifer then tells Eve that the reason God doesn’t want her to eat the fruit from that tree is because he’s holding something good back from her… “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
The Bible says that Eve looked at the tree and saw that it was… “good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desired to make one wise... so she took of its fruit and ate”… soon Adam joined her in this place of desire.
The word "delight" here is the Hebrew word “taavah”, which means “a desire”.... then following this… as if to further emphasize what happened in this moment the writer added that she saw that the fruit was “desired to make one wise”. The word translated “desired” here is the Hebrew word “chamad”, which means “covet, desire, take pleasure in”. Note that this moment was not a sexual desire… it was however the moment where our nature, our spiritual dna changed… and mankind would never be the same.
From this moment on… desire, lust, selfishness and the consuming of pleasure was woven into the fabric of every man and woman's soul.
From this moment on desire and covetousness consumed and controlled the heart of men.
Cain coveted Abel’s relationship with God and killed his own brother
Joseph’s brothers sold Joseph into slavery because they were coveting his relationship with their father
King David coveted Bathsheba and committed adultery with her… then rather than face his sin he killed her husband.
David’s son Amnon sexually assaulted his sister because he lusted for her... after which hate filled his heart.
Sampson lived a life of compromise that robbed him of effectiveness for many years because of his desire for pleasure and drunkenness.
This condition, this curse is what we call “original sin”… an inherited DNA glitch that entered humanity like a virus... from the moment Adam and Eve lusted for the fruit that would give them more power than their physical condition allowed.
The Bible has much to say about lust and desire… it is hard to ignore the message and the call to repentance that is contained in this book that in its brutality honest storytelling describes how messed up the human condition is. The Bible shares the stories of both those who overcame their sin state through faith and those who surrendered to it. It shares stories of raw humanity and hope for a future!
Every…
single…
person... has been... or will be caught in the trap of some kind of all consuming desire…it may be small or may be big... but our condition remains until we surrender it to Christ.
There are many desires:
A desire to be wealthy
A desire to be liked
A desire to feel good
A desire to be respected
A desire to be important
A desire to be powerful
In each point there is a driving want that propels us to push back against the boundaries God has for us.
Lucifer… let’s call him “Satan”...
did NOT ask... “did God ACTUALLY say that you cannot eat of that particular tree?
No...
he made God sound entirely unreasonable… “did God ACTUALLY say that you can’t eat ANY of the trees in the garden?”. God sounds pretty unreasonable here - it’s like he doesn’t even want us to have any fun at all…
This is the essence of the human condition… we are broken inside. We have within us a battle between “God desires” and the corrupted hard drive passed down from Adam and Eve.
Those “Lusts” that appease our flesh are working against the desire to do good. Paul says in Roman’s 7 that... there is “another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.”. The word members here is the Greek word “melos” which was meant to indicate “any function of human personality, such as "sanctified imagination".
Britnni De La Mora, currently a pastor/leader at Love Always Ministries was once one of North Americas most successful adult film actors. She lived in this lifestyle for 7 years… much of that being pimped out, high and borderline suicidal. At the beginning of this blog post I quote her talking about the sin… which for a season are “pleasurable”… but she continues… and then they are not… and they begin to rot your soul and your life becomes trapped in this cycle of being a slave to desire, lust and sin. Her journey is indeed inspiring… and if you are struggling with porn and sexual addiction I’d recommend the "Love Always Ministries" book on becoming free from sexual addiction. Brittni, and others like Joshua Broome… who was also a top tier adult film actor show that purity is NOT your past shame or addiction… but rather purity is the holiness and renewal one gets through Christs death and resurrection.
Audrey Meisner was a popular Canadian Christian television host who ended up in an affair which ruined her reputation, her ministry and her marriage… but she worked together with her husband Bob to rebuild their marriage and her oneness with Christ. Today she works side by side with Bob in their ministry. Audrey shared of how she began to feel that rot in her soul... and then prayed God would help her break free. It was a hard journey of healing and brokenness that her and her husband had to go through... but they did it with reliance on the Holy Spirit, the Bible and counseling.
Alice Cooper, who was the lead shock rocker from the group “KiSS” was vomiting blood and hopelessly trapped in his alcohol and drug addiction… at 75 he recently shared his story with pastor Greg Laurie in Harvest Christian Fellowship Church in California. Today Cooper uses his platform to help at risk kids.
Then there is Becket Cook... Becket lived the high life in Hollywood... he lived a gay lifestyle with all the pleasurable trappings of Hollywood. Then one day he met real Christian's... the ones that actually live what they preach. He eventually found Christ... he now runs a podcast and helps believers understand his former lifestyle while also clearly pointing the way to emotional and spiritual wholeness. His testimony is powerful and honest about what desire is and the call to those who follow Christ to overcome.
This world - our broken sin nature needed a God-man to come into the world and redeem it… that’s Jesus Christ in case it’s not obvious!
I could get into so many scripture passages here… I’ll just leave this as a starter. Read Romans chapters 7 and 12…
It is time to break free from the past... from the regret... the shame... to surrender our desires back to the Creator so our hearts can be "transformed" and "renewed" as Romans 12 says. The word "transformed" means to be "transformed...
after being with...
transfigured"...
If your stuck in a sin, struggling with desire, trapped in emotional hell because of shame, an addiction, a hidden desire or a rough past... God loves you and He intensely wants a relationship with you! As a matter of fact... He loves you so much that He took the disease of desire on himself to rescue you! By spending time in relationship with Christ our desires can be contained and aligned.... so that our character and our minds are transformed and metamorphosized to align with Christs...
It is not through a list of laws and willpower we are changed.... it is a relationship that transforms us from the outside in.
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