The Painful Reward of Sexual Lust

For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God…For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification. Consequently, he who rejects this is not rejecting man but the God gives His Holy Spirit to you.
1 Thessalonians 4:3-8


Observation:
There is nothing more unwelcoming to the Holy Spirit than a heart prone to the desires of the flesh. Sexual immorality has devastating consequences in our personal life, but more than anything, in our relationship with God. Rejecting God’s calling of purity is to evict the Holy Spirit from our daily affairs. That’s why King David was so devastated when his improprieties with Bathsheba. He felt the presence of the Holy Spirit departing from him. David realized that immorality and the Holy Spirit cannot cohabitate in the same heart. If one is entertained, the other will be evicted. Sexual lust is a powerful enemy that has the potential to destroy everything I hold dear—my relationship with God, my relationship with my wife and family, and my relationship with my coworkers in the harvest. Lust is a woman dressed to kill. She looks very pleasing with the first impressions, but at the end it only brings death. Sexual lust brings nothing but a momentary placer loaded with pain and a high long-term cost. Its reward is a place where God is present to pour His wrath, not His mercy.

Application:
We know that immorality is wrong and detrimental for our growth. The worse part of it is that lack of sexual self-control evicts the Holy Spirit from our hearts. We wrongly think that we could somehow entertain both, God and lust. This old challenge is set before us in the form of a crossroad. In one way is our purpose to live morally pure and on the other way is the lustful desire to seek satisfaction with all kinds of selfish sexual pleasures. We cannot do both. The biggest lie from Satan is to believe that we have place in our hearts for both. We must chose who we will be entertained, and who will be evicted. We cannot trade the giver of life for the giver of death.
The strategy must be clear and put into immediate practice when lust comes demanding my affection. I must decline her invitations by ignoring her first attempts to grab my attention. I must reject every single thought of sexual immorality when it’s starting to appear. That will keep my heart clean. But also, I must be aware of the need of my recently clean heart to be inhabited. If the Holy Spirit is absent from my heart, then my former lust will come back seven times stronger to find a clean but empty house. That’s why lust is a monster that only can grow stronger if we continue giving her room. We must be unwelcoming towards immorality and very receptive to the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.


PRAYER: Dear Jesus, please forgive me for keeping my heart empty after each time you clean the house. No wonder the enemy returns seven times stronger! Don’t let me make the same mistake again. Please take over my heart and make it your home. Give me wisdom and determination to ignore lust each time she’s knocking at the door. But more than anything, let my fight against lust not in a defensive mode but in the offensive by walking in the Spirit. Let me have a life that welcomes your presence from dawn to dusk, and form dusk to dawn. Lust cannot be around your presence. Saturate me with your Holy Spirit and let me be more like you—pure and holy. Let me walk according to your will for me, sanctified, and causing my entire life to be a vessel of honor, not an instrument of uncontrollable passion. Amen.