August 25
Overcoming Immorality, Pornography, and Lust – Part XVII – Critical Transformations – Seeing evil as God sees it (continued)
“Why do you boast in evil, O mighty man? The lovingkindness of God endures all day long. Your tongue devises destruction, Like a sharp razor, O worker of deceit. You love evil more than good, Falsehood more than speaking what is right. You love all words that devour, I deceitful tongue.” (Psalm 52:1-4)
Yesterday we discussed how we want to define good and evil, and we resist or openly rebel against God’s definitions of immorality found in His word. Today we will continue mining that vein for the rich insights I believe it contains.
We don’t fully accept God’s ways and God’s laws. We want to bend them a little and not fully subject our thinking to His thinking. The problem is that we want to define good and evil, we want to decide what is acceptable practice and what isn’t. This is the way of those who do not know the Lord, this is the way of the world, to define truth and to set standards for behavior apart from God, and in every case I am aware of, these standards are far, far lower than the standards God sets.
It comes back to Who is in charge, Whose law are we following, God’s or man’s? Frankly, who cares what you and I think? Why should your and my opinion matter in the universe? They simply don’t. God’s opinion is the only opinion that matters, and it is our job to get our thinking aligned with His. Those Christians who are engaged in immorality or pornography usually suffer greatly in this area. They don’t see certain things as all that bad. They don’t understand why God hates this or that thing. And they become arrogant and think that their opinion matters more than God’s, just like the world.
Maybe some immorality is repulsive to them, but other acts of immorality are acceptable, and maybe they fantasize about them. Do you find yourself in any way engaging in or fantasizing about things that the scripture clearly says are wrong? Would you want what you are doing or thinking broadcast on a movie screen in God’s judgment for all to see? Would your thoughts and actions pass His test? This hypocrisy and double standard are a clue to you that your understanding of God’s holiness and His standards are incomplete; you have opened the door to immoral thinking, and although some things may be detestable to you, other immoral things aren’t, and therefore you cannot gain the victory over immorality.
We HAVE to accept God’s standards. We HAVE to think like God thinks and call it like God calls it. We can never accept as “okay” any thought or action that God would consider to be sin, not even in our secret thoughts. We cannot entertain or fantasize about things that God considers evil. We have to develop the habit of confronting our sinful thoughts, turning away from them immediately. We have to get in the habit of calling immoral behaviors what God would call them, speaking truth in our hearts and telling it like God would tell it. Immoral sins can exist in our minds because we refrain from naming them as they really are, such as “adultery,” or “homosexuality,” or “perversion,” or “harlotry,” or “wickedness,” or “lust,” and these thoughts become the open door for greater temptations of immorality and pave the way for stumbling into pornography and the like.
ASSIGNMENT: First, do a Bible study on words like “immorality,” “evil,” “adultery,” “homosexual,” “harlot,” “prostitute,” “dog,” and any other word you can think of that will help you uncover what God thinks about various types of behavior that He would consider to be physical immorality. Second, begin developing a habit, a mental reflex in your mind, where every thought with any type of sexual activity attached to it that comes into your mind call it as God calls it. Name it as Jesus would name it. If you lust for a woman in your heart, call it “adultery” as Jesus did. Get into the habit of knowing what God says about various behaviors and aligning your thinking with His thinking. Pray that God would change your mind and give you the same mind in these things that He has.