Every Young Man's Battle: Stategies for Victory in the Real World of Sexual Temptation: The Every Man Series (10 page)

Actually, I couldn’t. Though I had received salvation, I was still
looking at women in dishonor.

“Oh, don’t be so hard on
yourself,” you might say. “It’s natural for guys to look.
That’s part of our nature.” But what you’re doing is
stealing. The impure thought life is the life of a thief. You’re stealing
images that aren’t yours. When you looked down the blouse of a woman who
isn’t your wife, you were stealing something that wasn’t yours to
take. When you had premarital sex, you touched someone who didn’t belong
to you. It’s just like walking down Main Street behind someone who drops
a hundred-dollar bill, and you pick it up. If you choose to keep the money
instead of saying, “Hey, Mister!” then you’ve taken something
you’re not entitled to.

Similarly, if a well-built woman bends
over and shows you her breasts while you continue to stare at her, you’re
a thief. You need to leave that valuable creation in the hands of God and her
husband or her future husband. When we’re thieves with our eyes,
we’re grabbing sexual gratification from areas that don’t belong to
us, from women who aren’t connected to us. In this arena, Jesus, having
never looked on a woman with dishonor, is clearly our role model.

“Well, sure!” you say. “He was God. It’s unfair to
expect me to live like Him!”

Maybe. But if, because of His deity,
Jesus’ personal standard seems unattainable to you, let’s look at
another manhood role model from Scripture in the area of sexual purity.

His name was
Job, and though you wouldn’t think it, this man is the essential role
model of sexual purity in Scripture. Job’s story unfolds in the Old
Testament, where in the first chapter of the book that bears his name, we see
God bragging about Job to Satan:

Have you considered my servant Job?
There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears
God and shuns evil. (Job 1:8)

Was God proud of Job? You bet! He
applauded His servant’s faithfulness in words of highest praise. If you
walk in purity, blameless and upright, He’ll speak just as proudly of
you. But if you don’t, this passage from Scripture may actually
discourage you when you compare your life with Job’s. Don’t be
discouraged. Instead, learn from Job.

First, we need to learn more
about how Job did it. In Job 31:1, we see Job making this startling revelation:
“I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a
girl.”

A covenant with his eyes! You mean he made a promise with
his eyes to not gaze upon a young woman? It’s not possible! It
can’t be true!

Yet Job was successful; otherwise, he
wouldn’t have made this promise:

If my heart has been enticed by
a woman, or if I have lurked at my neighbor’s door, then may my wife
grind another man’s grain, and may other men sleep with her. (Job
31:9-10)

Job had been totally successful, otherwise he couldn’t
have made this statement from his heart. He knew he had lived right, and he
knew his eyes and mind were pure. He swore to it upon his wife and marriage,
before God and man.

Let’s go back to the beginning of the story
and read the opening verse of the book of Job: “In the land of Uz there
lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared
God and shunned evil.”

Job was just a man! As you realize that,
these precious words should gloriously flood your soul:
If Job could do it,
so can I.
God wants you to know that even with your manhood and all its
bothersome tendencies, you can rise above sexual impurity.

When I
(Fred) first gave serious consideration to Job’s example, I meditated
upon his words for days on end. Job and I were different in only one
way—our actions. God called him “blameless.” I wasn’t
blameless, but since I was a man, just like Job, there had to be hope.

After a few days, my mind turned to the word
covenant
. What was
that? I learned that a covenant is an agreement between God and man. So how
would I go about making one? And if I did make a promise to God, could I be
counted on to keep my word?

And then there was the issue of my eyes.
Could I really expect my eyes to keep their end of the bargain? Eyes
can’t think or talk! How do they keep a promise?

Day after day,
my mind returned to this covenant concept, trying to intellectually grasp it,
all the while remaining in my sin. Yet something was stirring deep in my
soul.

Then it happened. I remember the moment—the exact spot on
Merle Hay Road in Des Moines—when everything broke loose. Minutes before,
I had failed God with my eyes for the thirty-millionth time. A female jogger,
her glistening body capturing my eyes as I drove past her, made me all excited.
Yet as soon as I passed her, my heart churned in guilt, pain, and sorrow.
Driving down Merle Hay Road, I gripped the wheel and through clenched teeth, I
yelled out: “That’s it! I’m through with this! I’m
making a covenant with my eyes. I don’t care what it takes, and I
don’t care if I die trying. It stops here. It stops here!”

I made that covenant and built it brick by brick. Later, Steve and I will
show you the blueprint for building that brick wall, but for now, study my
breakthrough:

• I made a clear decision.

• I
decided once and for all to make a change.

I can’t describe how
much that decision meant to me. Floods of frustration from years of failure
poured from my heart. I’d just had it! I wasn’t fully convinced I
could trust myself even then, but I’d finally engaged myself for battle.
After making a covenant with God regarding my eyes, all my mental and spiritual
resources zeroed in on a single target—my impurity.

You may be
thinking,
Who in their right mind would ever make a covenant with his eyes
like this? It seems crazy.
What I did on Merle Hay Road may seem odd to
you. But remember, acts of obedience often appear strange, even
illogical.

To help you understand where I’m coming from,
let’s look in the Bible at the story of a man who just didn’t get
it. His name was Zedekiah, the greatest sissy in the Bible. He was reigning as
the king in Jerusalem when the Babylonians were threatening to capture and
destroy the city and bring an end to the nation of Judah.

Zedekiah’s lack of manhood rose to the surface in the events
described in Jeremiah 38. Jeremiah, as God’s prophet, knew what the
outcome of the Babylonian invasion would be, and he made it known by
stating:

This is what the L
ORD
says: “Whoever
stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague, but whoever goes
over to the Babylonians will live. He will escape with his life; he will
live.” And this is what the L
ORD
says: “This city
will certainly be handed over to the army of the king of Babylon, who will
capture it.” (Jeremiah 38:2-3)

When Zedekiah heard about this,
he let his officials throw Jeremiah into a deep cistern to shut him up. He
later ordered his servants to lift the prophet out, but he still kept Jeremiah
under arrest. Then one day, with Jerusalem under siege, the king summoned
Jeremiah to a secret meeting. The prophet told the king what to do.

This is what the L
ORD
God Almighty, the God of Israel,
says: “If you surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon, your life
will be spared and this city will not be burned down; you and your family will
live. But if you will not surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon,
this city will be handed over to the Babylonians and they will burn it down;
you yourself will not escape from their hands.” (Jeremiah 38:17-18)

Surrender! God, through Jeremiah, was asking the king to do something very
difficult, something that made no sense. Who in their right mind would ever
leave the fortress and go over to the enemy? It seemed crazy. Still,
God’s Word was clear. The city would fall whether they stayed or
left.

Zedekiah expressed his fear, but Jeremiah remained firm, saying,
“Obey the L
ORD
by doing what I tell you. Then it will go
well with you, and your life will be spared” (Jeremiah 38:20). But
Zedekiah, indecisive and fearful, failed to obey. The right thing to do was too
illogical, too costly. The results for himself, his family, and his nation were
tragic.

When it comes
down to it, God’s definition of real manhood is straightforward and
simple: Hear His Word and follow it. It’s not someone deciding that
“it’s my way or the highway” or “I’ll do what I
want when I want.”

Have you ever known a guy whose beard is so
heavy that he uses two blades to shave in the morning—one for each side
of his face? By late afternoon, his four o’clock shadow is so thick that
he has to shave again. Four blades in one day! For those of us who are
“smooth men,” we hold this tough guy in awe.

But God cares
nothing about that. When God looks around, He’s not looking for what
everyone else calls a man’s man; He’s looking for
“God’s man.” His definition of a man—someone who hears
His Word and acts upon it—is tough, but at least it’s clear.

Meanwhile, the results of failing to be a man according to God’s
definition could have a tragic end. The fact is, as Galatians 6:7-8 tells us,
God is not mocked: You reap what you sow, both the good and the bad.

By
now you understand God’s command that you should eliminate every hint of
sexual immorality from your life. If you do that, as Job did through his
covenant with his eyes, then you’re God’s man. If you don’t
eliminate every hint, are you headed for trouble? Surely.

Earlier in
the book of Jeremiah, we read these desperate words spoken by the prophet to
the people: “How long will you be unclean?” (13:27). That’s
the question for you as well: How long will you choose to be sexually unclean?
How long will you keep shutting down the new life within you?

We’ve seen what God expects through these role models. We’ve
seen it can be done. Jesus and Job were authentic men, and they didn’t
mix standards even when their lives were on the line. Are you God’s man,
hearing the Word and doing it? If you want to turn things around, authenticity
with God is the place to start.

Many single guys wonder how they can be expected to toe
God’s line. To some, it seems impossible to please God in their
sexuality. There are just too many obstacles, in spite of our role
models.

But all things are possible through Christ—if we have
faith in Him, we can do it. The first half of Hebrews 11:6 says, “And
without faith it is impossible to please God.”
Oh that’s just
great! I don’t have any faith!
We’re not talking some
superspiritual, emotional faith, where if you claim, “I’m going to
be pure”—and claim it long, loud, and early—then your
positive mental attitude will carry the day. No, we’re talking about the
kind of faith found in the rest of that verse:

And without faith it is
impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he
exists
and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
(Hebrews
11:6)

Sure, you have faith that God really exists, but do you believe
that God rewards those who earnestly seek Him? If you do, you’ll also
believe that your relationship with God is worth the sacrifice of giving up sex
with your girlfriend. Is your relationship with God as gratifying as her
breasts on Friday nights?

Since many of us go for the gusto today, we
go for the breasts. Even if some of us
say
we believe in that stuff
about God, we don’t
live
like we do. That’s why, when
given the choice between meeting God’s standard and being accepted by
Him, or ignoring those standards and being accepted by our peers, we choose our
peers every time. We don’t really have the faith that God exists or
believe that He’ll reward those who earnestly seek Him.

Evidence of that mind-set flourishes everywhere we turn. A lot of us talk
a good game while sitting on the bench, but when given the chance to play, we
keep our eyes on the babes in the stands, not on the pitcher holding the
ball.

Granted, there’s a lot to look at in the stands. Even
Christian girls push their wardrobes far beyond modesty, sporting short shorts,
tight T-shirts, and bare midriffs. You can get an eyeful and even masturbate
from the memory when you get home later that night.

Sex is
everywhere—even in church settings. The custodial staff at my church has
even found used condoms and torn condom wrappers in some classrooms on the
mornings after youth group meetings. Can you believe that? While it sounds like
I’m making this up, there’s no reason to doubt that Christian youth
are just as sexually active as their non-Christian peers. Surveys and research
back it up.

One Wednesday evening at a youth group meeting, several
boys were laughing hysterically as they waited for things to start. The youth
pastor approached the group. “What’s up, guys?” he
asked.