Part VIII of the “I Love–lust you” series..
Team KGKL Joshua De Gracia
*Before I start, I just wanted to clarify a few things that were asked by a few people via e-mail. First off, thank you for e-mailing. Your thoughts, comments, encouragement, etc. are very much welcomed. Secondly, I am not an expert in relationships. My team and I are simply writing based on experience and biblical principles in regards to maintaining a healthy relationship and overcoming sin. If you haven’t realized it yet, doing it God’s way is much better than the world’s. Sure the world offers a lot of immediate satisfaction, but it’s also temporary.
What is your lust trigger(s)?
Everyone has a different way in which we are tempted to lust. We never take the time to think through how the process of lust and its consequences unfolds until it already happened. Lust is kept alive and thrives by the small compromises that we give it and it is very important that we recognize and act on them to demolish the stronghold of lust in our lives. Lust triggers are simply times or activities that we are most susceptible to lust and filling in our sexual fantasies. Now let’s take a look a few possible lust triggers that you may encounter in your life.
Internet: Talking with people over the years and through reading, the internet is the primary dominant area of lust. Many of us flirt with lust online all the time because it’s everywhere. Mostly every website you visit has some sort of image that catches your eye (start of that lust thought). For example, men, we may be checking out ESPN.com, looking at sports scores and all of a sudden, some sort of a gorgeous woman in a bikini pops out and invites you to “talk with her.” Ladies, during a routine check of your e-mails, you might get spam with the message subject a long the lines of “feeling lonely, meet these handsome single men now.” I gotta say the worst might be on Facebook. I swear it disgust me. Ever look at the advertisements on the right hand side of your FB page? Some say “meet single Christian girls” or “single, horny girls now” and they use very provocative and attractive women to entice you to click on those links. I have to admit that I was tempted on multiple occasions, but rather than giving into lust, I simply delete (or press the “x”) every time they come up.
Pornography is the main battleground of lust on the internet. In a click or two, you can easily find erotic porn to satisfy your sexual desires. Once your on those type of sites, it’s extremely hard to overcome lust because you are feeding your fleshly desires and won’t stop until your body is pleasured. It doesn’t necessarily need to be pornography, but the images we feed ourselves with enhance our desire for sexual impurity.
Television, Media: You need to be careful of what you fill your body with. You reap what you sow. If you watch shows that have a lot of seduction, half naked people or maybe even a character that you find very appealing, it’s not good for your heart. Next time you are flipping through channels and see that exercise show with the well toned, attractive host or a show with a lot of sexual content, do the right thing and change the channel or just your television off.
Books/magazines: Women like to read those romance novels where the sexy male character rides into town on his horse and carries the girl off into the sunset and they live happily ever after. After reading, they put themselves in the shoes of the woman who needs rescuing and don’t realize they are the ones that need help. Men, where do I begin. Maxim, Import Car magazines with the import models on the cover and pornography (Playboy,etc.).
Music: What we listen to has a big influence on the thoughts we think and the actions that follow. Sorry if I offend you but I am rather disgusted with a lot of the music in mainstream America today. Across the airwaves, we got songs with the lyrics, “call me Mister Flintstone, I can make your bed rock” and “birthday sex.” Music can entice to user to sin, so ask yourself, “what am I filling my head with?”
People: Living in Hawaii, we are blessed to be constantly surrounded by God’s beautiful sons and daughters. They are everywhere: Beach, malls, schools, grocery stores, CHURCH. We need to choose to honor God with our eyes and not make that person the object of our affection. With that said, we need to be aware of our wandering eyes. We are not living in holiness if men, we constantly look at girls’ breast, butt, legs, face, etc. and women, butt, muscles (sorry, I don’t know what you girls look at).
Time of the day: Before going to bed or waking up in the morning. Think about it.
I could have gone deeply into every section, but for the series sake, I’m going to save that for another time. Besides these triggers, I’m sure there are others in your lives that you may identify with as well. Take some time to reflect on your triggers and what you can do to defeat lust.
Next Post: Defeating the cycle of Lust
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