Breaking Through Lust

- Deliverance from sexual sin The following article is still under construction. I have included it because it might be of enlightenment to you even as I write it.

Lust can be a very powerful and gripping thing in a person’s life. Often you will find yourself doing things you don’t even want to do because the spiritual push is so strong within to walk down this path that it is impossible to bear or even battle against. Like trying to swim upstream while falling down a waterfall. Even your best efforts and intents fail because of a seeming lack of ability. Does this sound familiar? Don’t worry, many have been there. It is frustrating sometimes almost not being in control of your own body and even mind as you become assumed with this very strong and gripping spirit.

Why is lust so gripping? Unlike other areas of our lives, lust is directly tied to our deeply rooted spiritual self. We are spiritually made to physically desire and spiritually desire the love of another (God and or individual) and it does not take much to twist that natural, healthy and pure desire ever so slightly so that our natural desires enslave us and overpower us. Look at food for example. Overeating is another hard one to shake because eating is also a natural part of our primitive self. No matter what we do we will feel hunger in our lives and we must be careful as to how this natural instinct is applied. If hunger leads someone to eat too much or even ingest strange objects instead of food and that becomes a gripping spiritual habit, we can’t just say “I will never eat again for the rest of my life” and be done with it. We must be able to separate what aspects of this desire are healthy and what aspects of this desire are damaging. It is what you do with the hunger and what you do with the sexual desires that define their ability to hurt or to help our lives.

So how do you break through lust? Well, it starts quite simply and often surprisingly with identifying the fact that sexual desires are natural and you can thank God for blessing you with a healthy sex drive. There is nothing un-pure about desiring sex, or even sexual relationships with others. This is in part how we are built. Just like there is nothing wrong with enjoying or anticipating the flavor of ice-cream. Just don’t punch a kid to obtain your ice cream and just don’t openly have sex or deep lustful desires with multiple partners because it is equally damaging.
Unlike food, sexual desire is tied to a spiritual desire in our life so the second step to overcoming lust is to differentiate when this desire leaves a healthy desire and becomes an unhealthy one. Again the feeling of sexual desire or even arousal for another individual is perfectly natural. It is ok to appreciate the physical and spiritual beauty in another. It is where our thought life progresses after that stage that is important. As they say, you can’t stop a bird from flying over your head but you can stop that bird from building a nest in your hair. You can’t stop your sexual desires from happening however can stop those desires from becoming sexual sin. As soon as our desires cross the boundaries to fantasy of specific acts or cleaving to the other person, that is where the sin begins. The bible says that when married a man leave their family and “cleave” to their wife. This is an important hint as to what happens with sexual sin. The word also says that when two people get married the two flesh become as one. So what does this mean? In my spiritual understanding, the beauty of sex and sexual intimacy between two people draw two independent sprits to become one. Through that act, underlying connections are made between both parties that naturally strengthen the relationship between the two. When done within the journey of marriage, it helps strengthen the marriage between the two and with God, and when done outside of marriage, it closens the relationship between the two but without God to bless it and then the enemy can more easily come in an taint these natural sexual desires to then control us.
A perfect example of how sex joins two parties is a story that I know of that pertains to a person that lived a happily married life of many years. She was the typical “good girl” churchgoer who never swore, was always nice and supportive and all of the traditional things you would expect from someone who grew up with a conservative church background. One day when she was on vacation in Jamaica she had sex with a Rastaman in Jamaica and after she got back home her behavior began to change. Over the next few months, she began to start swearing, abusing alcohol and drugs and living a completely opposite life of what she once knew. Her friends seeing these changes finally got to the bottom of the issue by identifying that she was now sharing her spirit with a Rasta thousands of miles away and that this stronghold/connection was damaging her deeply. Thankfully she chose through deliverance ministry to sever those ties to the Rastaman and begin a new life in victory of these sins. I believe she has been completely restored and is still married today. God is faithful and we can take background that Satan once took. But that is another story.

Ok so we know that sex can bind two people together in healthy and unhealthy ways. So how do we defeat the bondage of lust you ask again?

Thank God for a healthy sex drive and ask him to continue to bless your sex drive in healthy ways and remove unhealthy desires from your heart
Identify when a desire bends from that of a healthy appreciation of another and becomes something more “gripping”
If and when something like that happens in my life, I pray and most importantly anoint myself with water or oil when I pray. For some reason, this specific action has STRONG relevance to my victory in these areas. I have yet to figure out why exactly but I thought I would share that detail with you. I normally anoint the front and back of my head as I pray to consecrate my mind back to Christ to keep my life on the healthy side of my sexual desires.
Unhealthy sexual desires (for example a single person desiring multiple partners or a sexual experience outside of marriage) often happen when we try to fill a natural spiritual desire with a sexual one. Let’s read on to find out how to defeat this area

When a natural healthy desire tends to run away from you, two things need to happen. RUNAWAY from the sin. There are some sins we can face head-on with prayer and self will, but this is one area that this is definitely NOT the case. This sin/spirit is so strong and gripping that there is absolutely no way in our flesh to battle and win against it. The ONLY way to find victory over this area in our life is to avoid situations and circumstances that allow it to grow. If you find yourself alone with another and these desires begin to go, LEAVE and thank God for a healthy desire as you build your relationship toward marriage. If you find yourself alone and wanting to go to pornography, LEAVE and thank God for a healthy sexual desire and your ability to leave the unhealthy desires behind. Simply avoid situations where you would be tempted and then you will be able to battle against this. Once the current of lust grabs a grip on you, there is next to nothing you can do to stop it so we must see the waterfall coming in advance and GET OUT OF THE WATER because no one can survive the current that will happen if you let yourself keep floating downstream.

Ever notice that the same voice that tempts you to sin is the same voice that condemns you for sinning after you are done. There is a reason why this is. When you hear this voice turn away and tell it off See my article RRBBB for more.

Guilt form past sins and current sins are only intended to lead us to the point of repentance. If you have asked God for forgiveness of a particular sin and you don’t feel forgiven or you still feel guilt then this is BONDAGE from the enemy as God is a loving and forgiving God that will NOT hold you to past sins after repentance. Please know that as it is the first steps toward victory in this area. The guilt will only bring you down the same dark path again if you let it.

Ok so the one place I didn’t cover is the raw sexual desires that you know are simply unhealthy, not tied to a specific person or relationship that you can’t turn away from. This answer is also fairly simple to understand.
As I said earlier God gave us a healthy sexual desire and Satan often twists that ever so slightly to become unhealthy. Once that twist happens and especially as soon as we fall prey to it, the unhealthy desire can now root itself and we then crave the unhealthy desires even sometimes over the healthy forms.
Here are a few solutions:

As always you can thank God for healthy desires and ask him to return to you what was stolen and make your desires healthy again
Sexual / spiritual desires are often a desire for intimacy and we learn that intimacy can come from another person so we go person to person trying to fill that void of intimacy. There is a better way. Read on

Many married Christians still look outside of their marriage for physical, sexual and even spiritual intimacy. It is because they are not finding it in their marriage. And many un-married individuals get lost in dating life or yearning for marriage for that intimate hole to be filled, but I have news for you. Much of this hole can and will NEVER be filled by an individual. Our physical desires for sexual intimacy is bound to our emotional desires for emotional intimacy and our emotional desires for intimacy is bound to our spiritual desires for spiritual intimacy and all three need to be filled. When one of the three is not filled, we often try to make up the difference with the other two but fail miserably. I am sure you can identify with this. So if you feel as though no matter what you do you can’t get enough sex to feel satisfied then you are right because the other two components might still be empty. If you feel as though no matter how many partners you give you love and heart and emotions to, you can’t find fulfillment and only find hurt, then you are absolutely right because there when we love in certain ways out of wedlock it does lead to damage and hurt and a person can never fill in some of the “hole” we are trying to fill. So that leave spiritual intimacy. Some find this in Yoga, or meditation and other adulterous directions when you view things from God’s standpoint. That is why they feel fulfilled but also have a certain percentage of un-fulfillment at all times no matter how “high” they get. Take it from someone who was been deep down that path. I know and counsel many that have experienced the same. I have personally found that no matter how deep and good you might feel through the new age movement, nothing will ever remotely compare to what I now know and experience with my direct relationship with my creator. It makes all of the deepest areas of new-age look like a sideshow compared to my main attraction of Abba Father God.
So now we know that no matter how we might try to fill our desires with unhealthy sexual sins, all we will find would be short term fulfillment and long term pain. What we must do is align ourselves with the person that granted us our healthy sexual desires in the first place, ask Him to return to us our healthy desires and keep guiding us on the right path.
When it comes to sexual desires that are unhealthy or physical desires that control us, we know we must run away BEFORE it happens and if we slide off path and physically sin, we can ask forgiveness and not listen to the condemnation that our enemy might delve to us after the fact. Know that every time you commit sexual sin, you are hurting your spirit and through that process, we feel distance from God and even condemnation from him (which most of the time is not the case and the condemnation is coming from another source). Through that hurt and condemnation we often even more desire intimacy to battle it so we commit the next sexual sin and then the downward spiral begins. So I will leave you with this.
God blessed you with a healthy sexual desire. He wants and can see you live a whole and fulfilled life. As the word portrays, he is a father to the fatherless, a mother to the motherless, a spouse to the single individual and can fulfill your every desire. Next time you experience lust and temptation, identify the path early on and steer away. If you find yourself beginning to be swept away here is where you stop and WORSHIP God because this does a few specific things:

It fills the deep spiritual desire for spiritual intimacy and when spiritual intimacy is fulfilled all emotional and even sexual intimacy desires are also met (this is how single people can find even sexual fulfillment without sexual sin or a sexual partner)
It automatically puts our spirit, soul and body in line so that the needs of our flesh does not overrun the needs of our soul and the needs of our soul does not overrun the needs of our spirit.
It instantly and often selfishly fulfills us without falling to sin

I am sure there is much more I can say but this article is long enough. I will try to refine it in the future to be a little more clear but I hope that this raw version may be of fulfillment and strength to you.

Can I end in a brief prayer?

Father God I thank you for my brother or sister that has read this article. I pray you speak to them. You love them, you nurture them, you deliver them, you be their rock and stronghold, and you be their lover. As you become our first love we find true love so I love you Lord with all of my heart and I pray that they love you too. And through this love they will find the same joy, fulfillment and completeness that I have found in my personal life. I thank you for their willingness to journey with you and live a right and righteous life with you and I pray the many rewards of such a life lived will be known in their life and the lives of others they value. I pray sexual blessings and completeness for the person that is reading this prayer now and I pray you continue to guide them on the right and righteous path. Deliver them Lord from their sexual sins, continue to teach and guide them on how to become whole with you. Be their lover, deliverer and peace bearer and help them turn away from the sins that once bound them I pray in Jesus' name.
Thank you God for being God.

Amen

Feel free to write if you have any questions. Because this article is so raw at this moment it might not have been totally clear. I look forward to hearing from you.

This following subsequent article may also be of assistance to you:
How To Sexually Abstain