From Desire to Lust is Only a Breath Away: And Why Desire is killing Men

For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God. 1Th 4:3-5 

 

We are More Creatures of Selfishness than Love

I think the chief business why our foreparents went into marriage was to make children – for children are wealth. So their purpose was purely utilitarian. Today’s accent is on making love – and it is a good thing and we are not going to stop it - ‘for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God.’ 

Today love is both a science and an art. One word wrongly placed in the mouth can ruin a whole evening or a month’s conversation. Love is a chemicals and aesthetic event. It makes everybody a poet - it is the palm wine with which words are eaten.

It is for this reason Paul chose (and advocated for) celibacy – not because he hated women and marriage – but because love demands one’s whole heart and mind and soul. And for someone whom God had called even before he was born – marriage can be a distraction (1 Co 7:35) and a cause for great unhappiness. I read in a biography of John Sung where he made the startling admission that he had been better off in his ministry if he had been single and not married.

Perhaps we should have more biographies of pastors today talking candidly about their marriages and ministry like that. What is their understanding of Paul in First Corinthians Seven? Has the Catholic Church got it wrong on celibacy?  Was Paul a misogynist?  What about Jesus? What about God? Should we revise the whole Bible for gender equality purposes?

A pastor who was officiating at a wedding gave the young man this advice: ‘A man must tell his wife that he loves her at least fifteen times a day… for that is what ladies want.’ Now take a man like Paul and give him that advice. And it will make that relationship rocky before it starts. When will he date? When will he love her (fifteen times a day), and when will he mull over his books and his thesis on Justification by faith in his Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans?

That is what distraction means. It is a weighing in of two good options – and choosing one. It is hard, but we make it even harder when we can’t decide – or when we choose wrongly in life.

To enter into the business of love making today (and marriage) requires time, skill and purpose. Are you both of the same mind about it?

And then out of Desire to Please Men have started to die!

Nightfall should normally herald thoughts of peace and not anxiety. But now the bedroom has become a deathtrap. And men are no longer certain they will come out alive…

However men ought to learn that it’s ok to be humiliated once in a while. It is good for character.

Or perhaps we have lusted too much like the children of Israel lusted in the wilderness? God gave them flesh to eat until it started to come off their mouths – until it killed them (Nu 11:33-34). He gave them their request but sent leanness into their hearts. The pharmaceutical industries cannot fill that emptiness. Only God can. Let us first be at peace with him (and his truth) – and that peace will extend all the way to the bedroom.

Whoso walketh uprightly shall be saved: but he that is perverse in his ways shall fall at once. Pro 28:18 

The integrity of the upright shall guide them: but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them. Pro 11:3  

The righteousness of the upright shall deliver them: but transgressors shall be taken in their own naughtiness. Pro 11:6  

Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions. Ecc 7:29  

We Get Sanctified through His Word – For His Word is Truth

God is radical and he is looking for radical believers. Are there any commandments of him which you are uncomfortable with in this our modern age? Mind you God is the same yesterday, today and forever. That is a radical proposition. Can you live with that?

Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Col 3:5  

For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. Rom 8:13 

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Gal 5:19-21   

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 1Co 6:9-10  

For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. 

But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. Rom 8:6- 9