Every Young Man's Battle: Stategies for Victory in the Real World of Sexual Temptation: The Every Man Series (20 page)

You probably
don’t meet that many receptionists, but there are clothing store clerks,
ticket takers, waitresses…maybe a few teachers…tons of
sexy-looking women out there you might run into as you go through life.
Remember to bounce those eyes away promptly!

So there you have a
practical example of a useful battle plan. Have you developed some personalized
strategies for yourself? More to the heart of the matter:
Have you finally
made your decision for sexual purity?
If so, great! You now understand why
failing to eliminate every hint of sexual immorality from your life can be
dangerous. You understand how the visual sensuality of immodest dress, racy
movies, over-the-top commercials, and all the rest feeds your eyes and ignites
you sexually. You understand how the brain gets pleasure from the chemical high
it experiences when arousal happens.

We’re simply saying that to
break through to the other side, you must start by cutting off the sensual
images reaching your mind through your eyes. In other words, go cold turkey on
the chemical highs. It’s time.

You’ll need to develop your own
strategies for bouncing your eyes, as your weaknesses are different from ours.
After all, your school is likely swarming with girls wearing spaghetti-strap
tops, low-cut dresses, and underwear as outerwear. You’ve got access to
X-rated sites on the Internet that weren’t there when you were in junior
high. When your friends head to the beach or water park, every girl you know
sports a bikini.

While we face different obstacles, the principles
are the same, and the strategies will be similar. But it’s important to
remember one thing: Our strategies for bouncing the eyes may sound rather
simple, and maybe even easy to do, but they aren’t. Satan fights you with
lies while your body fights you with the desires and strength of deeply
entrenched bad habits. To win, you’ll also need a sword and a shield. Of
all the parts of your battle plan, this is likely the most important.

You’ll
need a good Bible verse to use as a sword and rallying point.

Just
one? It may be useful to memorize several verses of Scripture about purity
since they work to eventually transform and wash the mind. But in the
cold-turkey, day-to-day fight against impurity, having several memory verses
might be as cumbersome as strapping on a hundred-pound backpack to engage in
hand-to-hand combat. You aren’t agile enough to maneuver quickly.

That’s why we recommend a single “attack verse,” and it
better be quick. We suggest the opening line of Job 31:

I have made a
covenant with my eyes.

When you fail and linger over some hot babe,
say sharply, “No, I’ve made a covenant with my eyes. I can’t
do that!” When you look at a busty billboard, say, “No, I’ve
made a covenant with my eyes. I can’t do that!” This action will be
a quick dagger to the heart of your enemy.

Your shield—a single
“protective verse” that you can reflect on and draw strength from
even when you aren’t in the direct line of fire—may be even more
important than your sword because it places temptation out of earshot. We
suggest selecting this verse as your shield:

Flee from sexual
immorality.… You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore
honor God with your body. (1 Corinthians 6:18-20)

We’ve
distilled this shield verse to its core kernel and repeated it in the face of
many tempting situations when facing sensual images or thoughts:

I
have no right to look at that or think about it. I haven’t the
authority.

A shield such as this will help you think rightly about the
real issues involved as you face temptation in your fight for purity.
Satan’s power of temptation lies in your supposed right to make decisions
regarding your own behavior. If you didn’t believe you had this right, no
tempting power could touch you.

Consider a specific example. I (Fred)
recall once walking down a hotel hallway to the ice machine. On top of the
machine lay a
Playboy
magazine. Believing I had a right to choose my
behavior, I asked myself this question: Should I look at this
Playboy
or not?

The moment I asked that question, I opened myself to counsel. I
began talking pros and cons to myself. But far worse, I opened myself to
Satan’s counsel. He wanted to be heard on this issue.

He cajoled
and lied, keeping my mind focused on the conversation so I didn’t even
notice my body slipping down the slope of lust. By the time he finished, the
only answer I wanted to hear was “Yes, you can look at it. Just make sure
to read the articles.”

Therein lies the power of temptation. You
may fear that temptation will be too strong for you in this battle, but
temptations honestly have no power at all without our own arrogant
questions.

Put yourself in my situation. You take a seat in the back of
the library, and on the chair is the latest issue of
Playboy
magazine.
This is when your shield verse—the words from 1 Corinthians
6—should come to mind:

I have no right to even consider looking
at it. I haven’t the authority.

That conviction leaves no room
for pros and cons to drift deceitfully into your brain. And as for Satan, since
you asked no questions, no conversation with him transpires—a
conversation in which he could try to get you to change your mind.

Your sword and
shield will help strengthen you, not only in controlling your eyes, but also in
establishing a defense perimeter with your mind (which we’ll explore
thoroughly a little later).

Here’s an example. You’re
minding your own business as you do some homework. Then you go online to do
some research. You decide to check your e-mail. It becomes apparent that
you’ve received some spam from an X-rated site. What’s your
reaction? Note the great difference in perspective between the following two
possible responses:

1. Should I open this e-mail right now?

2. I don’t even have the
right
to ask such a
question,
because I don’t have the
authority
to make that
decision.

The first response implies that you have the
authority and the right to make that decision. The second implies that the
question itself is moot. You not only
won’t
consider it, you
can’t
consider it. You’re not your own. You have no
right.

We call this second response “living within our
rights.” If we submit always and live within our rights, God’s laws
of reaping and sowing protect us. Once we step beyond our rights, the sowing
and reaping laws work against us. We’re in mutiny, having stolen
authority from our Captain. Do that, and we’re back within earshot of
Satan.

Derrick was confused about his rights. “My girlfriend,
Janice, and I had a big fight the other day,” he said. “We were
walking along, and I saw some pretty hot babes and gave a low, little whistle.
She got angry and said I shouldn’t be looking at other women. Well, I
think it’s okay to scope them out. Sure, I love Janice and plan on dating
her a long time. I’m not going to hop into bed with them or anything, but
like my dad always says, ‘Just because I can’t order doesn’t
mean I can’t look at the menu.’”

Our response: First
of all, we don’t think any man has the biblical right to scope out anyone
lustfully. But if a girlfriend says she’s bothered by it, all rights
surely vanish. That’s unloving. Derrick stepped outside his rights when
he thought he could look at other women like an epicure regarding the menu of a
fine restaurant. He opened himself up to Satan’s confusing counsel.
Here’s what the Deceiver may have whispered:

1. “God made
them beautiful on purpose. Of course you should look. He intended that for
you!”

2. “It won’t hurt anything…you’re
only looking.”

3. “Life is unbearable if you’re
going to live by such tight standards. God couldn’t possibly have
intended that for you. Go ahead and look. He loves you and wants you to live
life more abundantly.”

4. “So what if your girlfriend is
bothered when you look at other women? She’s immature. She has the
problem, not you!”

Stepping outside his rights, with his shield
down, Derrick was nodding his head to all four statements.

But it
didn’t have to happen. Shield yourself from the power of temptation by
submitting to God’s definition of your rights.

Okay,
you’ve made a covenant with your eyes to starve them and to train them to
bounce. Maybe you’ve defined your weak areas, creating a custom defense
for each one, and you’ve picked up your sword and shield. What can you
expect to happen over the next few weeks and months? Here’s a bit of the
timeline that unfolded for me (Fred) as my defense perimeters went up.

•
Short-Term Results:
The first two weeks were
largely failure after failure for me. My eyes simply wouldn’t fall in
line and bounce away from the sexual. My shields from Satan’s lies were
weak, but I kept plodding ahead in faith, knowing that God was with me.

During the third and fourth weeks, hope dawned as I began to win about as
often as I failed. I can’t overemphasize how dramatic and surprising this
change was for me. God’s blessings and gifts truly go beyond what we can
ask or think, for when we sow righteousness, only the mind of God can conceive
of the blessings we’ll reap. For instance, I couldn’t believe how
much I now lived to please Brenda. And I couldn’t believe how intimate I
began to feel with the Lord. The veil between us was disintegrating.

During the fifth and sixth weeks, my eyes found a consistency in bouncing
away from the sensual. The spiritual oppression lifted, and the veil of
distance from God vanished. Though I still wasn’t perfect, the rest was
downhill.

For you, it needn’t take long to raise the defense
perimeter of your eyes. If you really want to do it, you’ll see that
progress comes quickly. More than once, guys have said to me, “Fred, this
is amazing, but it happened just like you said! Right about the sixth week, it
all came together!” But six weeks is surely no hard-and-fast rule. It may
take less time or perhaps more, depending on your strongholds and your
commitment to the task at hand.

•
Long-Term Results:
As you continue to live purely, the hedge of protection from temptation
grows thicker around you. If you’re diligent, it becomes a much longer
throw for Satan to lob temptation grenades into your living quarters.

In the long term, do you still have to monitor your eyes? Yes, because the
natural bent of your eyes is to sin, and you’ll return to bad habits if
you’re careless. But with only the slightest effort, you’ll make
good habits permanent. (On a practical note, if you live in a four-season
region, you may find that late spring and early summer call for a fresh dose of
diligence as warmer temperatures allow women to wear less clothing. Plan to
heighten your defenses at those times.)

After a year or so—though
it may take longer—nearly all major skirmishes will stop. Bouncing your
eyes will become deeply entrenched. Your brain, now policing itself tightly,
will rarely slip, having given up long ago on its chances to return to the old
days of pornographic pleasure highs.

Looking back
at the details of our plan, even we will admit that it all sounds slightly
crazy. Defenses, brain tricks, bouncing your eyes, forfeiting rights. Man! We
wonder if even Job would be a bit startled.

On the other hand, maybe
we should expect a sound plan to look this way. Consider all the men who are
called to purity, yet so few seem to know how to do it. How many of the guys in
your youth group are sexually pure?

Yeah. That’s what we
thought.

What’s the bottom line? It took all our resources and
creativity to destroy the old habits and every inch of freedom in Christ to
walk free from sin. We’d been owned by these habits for years, taking
whatever women we desired with our eyes, whenever we wanted.

Freedom
from sin is worth dying for, according to Jesus. Take it from
us—it’s also worth living for!

Will you move along the same timeline to
success that we outlined in the previous chapter? In some ways yes, but in
other significant ways no. For instance, it will take a couple of weeks to get
the hang of bouncing the eyes, and then a number of weeks to solidify the new,
good habit. But there’s another consideration that you single guys must
keep in mind.

When I went cold turkey with my eyes, I was married. I
didn’t have to go cold turkey on intercourse simultaneously. After
cutting off those addictive pleasure highs through my eyes, my wife could serve
as a kind of cool methadone while I adjusted to my new life of purity.

You don’t have that option, so the battle is going to be tougher,
especially if you’re going cold turkey on sexual intercourse with your
girlfriend or the false intercourse of oral sex and masturbation.