Every Young Man's Battle: Stategies for Victory in the Real World of Sexual Temptation: The Every Man Series (23 page)

He was also smoking
heavily and getting high, but the highs he liked the most came from the porn
magazines and videos that he stashed away in his bedroom and car. Eventually,
he wanted to see the real thing in action, so midway through his senior year,
he began dropping by Big Earl’s Gold Mine, a strip joint on the northeast
side of Des Moines.

One night Garrett was hopping around from
friend’s place to friend’s place, partying pretty heavily. While on
the interstate to the next spot, he noticed a mass of lights and sirens in the
distance. He exited the freeway to check things out, only to find Big
Earl’s club engulfed in flames. Garrett stared at the scene, mesmerized
while remembering his nights in the Gold Mine. Then a disturbing thought
pierced him between the eyes: “That’s my sin going up in flames.
And that’s where this life of mine is leading—right into
flames!”

Garrett didn’t heed this first wake-up call, but
then came his arrest for shoplifting. What did he steal? Robitussin—an
over-the-counter cough medicine. “You probably don’t know it, Fred,
but there’s a chemical in one type of Robitussin that gets you high if
you drink enough of it.”

“But why’d you steal it? It
couldn’t cost that much,” I replied.

He grinned wryly.
“Think about it,” he said. “Why would an eighteen-year-old
in perfect health walk into a pharmacy to buy four bottles of Robitussin in the
middle of summer? We figured that would make any clerk suspicious, and we were
afraid we’d get caught. So we stole it but got caught anyway.”

He was released right away that evening, but he’d heard that second
wake-up call. Things weren’t going well.

Amazingly, the next
morning he was scheduled to sing in a youth choir. With his eyes still bugged
out a bit from the effects of the Robitussin he’d finished off before the
shoplifting attempt, he sang and sang. When the final chords and notes drifted
into silence, he found himself overcome by emotion. He knelt right there and
returned his full heart to Christ. “I dropped the sin and turned to
Christ that day, including walking away from pornography. But the temptation
was still there, and I felt I needed protection. I decided I’d better
head for a Christian college because I knew that would keep me out of
trouble.”

A decent athlete, Garrett turned to intramural sports,
making friends and adjusting to college life fairly well. Soon, he was growing
deeply in the Lord.

Early in his sophomore year he met Tracy.
“Tracy and I started getting pretty close, and I got to thinking that
this could end up in marriage. Simultaneously, I also started thinking that I
really might be able to do a little better than her physically. She was cute
enough, but certainly no knockout. I’d always dreamed I’d marry a
real babe.”

I motioned for him to continue his story.

“Well, I was just a few days away from breaking up with her when my
mom called me about
Every Man’s Battle.
Wow! I’d stopped
the pornography the day I sang in church…but not the rest of it. My eyes
roamed over every girl I saw. Looking back, that’s probably why Tracy
didn’t look so good to me.

“Honestly, I’d never
really guarded my eyes before or even thought about it. I watched any movies I
wanted, and I looked way too long at the girls at school, but I really
didn’t think these things affected my life. But after my mom read your
book and told me about it, I began to wonder. So I paid more attention to my
eyes over the next day or so, and I found that they were collecting more sexual
gratification than I’d thought.

“I read
Every
Man’s Battle
and started bouncing my eyes. You can probably guess
what happened. Tracy started looking incredible to me. I even started getting
offended when other guys looked at her, like a big brother protecting his
little sister. I know this sounds trite, but when I stopped lusting over Tracy,
I really did start seeing more of what was inside her heart instead of what was
outside her, and I really liked what I saw. I never thought about breaking up
with her again.”

Garrett didn’t say it, but he was getting
exactly what we can expect when we follow God.

Earlier in
the book we discussed how women become sex objects when we view porn or lust
over them in our minds. It even happens with girlfriends. Clearly, Garrett had
seen Tracy as an object, and he was ready to exchange her for a prettier
one.

One of the spoils of this victory was how God reversed the way
Garrett had objectified women. When He did, Garrett’s relationship with
Tracy changed. But there’s more.

“When Tracy read
Every
Man’s Battle,
she was blown away,” said Garrett. “She
had no idea how men’s eyes work, and she was surprised to learn what
Christian girls like her were doing to their Christian brothers with the
clothes they wear.

“She has become the best help to me. When
we’re watching TV together and something bad comes on, she covers my eyes
and we both giggle together. She’s also real careful not to bend over in
front of me, and things like that. She’s just so sweet, and we’re
so close now. You can see that our spiritual walk has real teamwork now.
I’m beginning to understand for the first time what the Bible means when
it says two people become one flesh in marriage. She even calls out her friends
when they’re wearing skimpy things around. She’s quite the little
evangelist on that score!”

Even though I’ve lived through
this kind of restoration myself, I was enthralled by Garrett’s story. I
had to know more, so I asked, “What about God? What happened
there?”

“You wouldn’t believe it!” he
exclaimed. “I’d been in ministerial studies for a year and a half
already, so you have to know that I was reading my Bible plenty. I was praying
a lot too.

“But when I started bouncing my eyes, and the lust
rolled away, it was as if the Bible opened up like a blue sky before me after a
really dark night. Bouncing my eyes really helped me read my Bible better.

“And I’ve noticed an interesting thing: When I read my Bible
less and don’t stay close to the Word, it’s harder to bounce my
eyes. They really go hand in hand, and one can’t be done very well
without the other.

“As for my prayer times—my, oh my. I
used to get lustful thoughts popping up all the time during prayer. But now
that my eyes are protected, it doesn’t happen, so prayer has become so
much deeper and uninterrupted. Worshiping God is better as well. Now I feel
free to express my heart to God. Before, I didn’t have the freedom to
express my love to God, probably because I was too involved in impure thoughts
and stuff.”

When I
(Fred) made that covenant with my eyes, before long I felt a new light and
lightness in my soul. My sexual sin had brought a darkness so deep and
smothering that when it vanished, the difference was so real I could
practically touch it. I felt loved and approved by God.

And that can
happen to you as well. Tyler, a college freshman, said,

I
don’t like masturbation. Every time I did it, I felt guilty about it. Yet
I kept on doing it because it felt good. I had the problem for about two years,
until I finally put my foot down and said I wouldn’t do it anymore. For
about five years or so, I haven’t. I am so thankful God has delivered me
from this. I love God with all my heart, and I do my best to show it at all
times, even in this way. I’ve found there’s nothing better than the
love God gives us. It fulfills all my needs.

Some say God’s
standards aren’t fair, but I think His standards are plenty fair. You are
allowed to have godly relationships with girls, and then at some point in your
life you can get married. What’s unfair about that? Besides, it
shouldn’t really matter whether it’s fair or not, because these are
God’s standards we’re talking about here. God is awesome!

Well said, Tyler. Rock on, warrior!

As you may recall, we not only have to guard our eyes, but we
also need a defense perimeter in our mind. You’ll find that the perimeter
of the eyes goes up much faster than the perimeter of the mind. Why?

First, your mind is far more crafty than your eyes and more difficult to
corral. Second, you really can’t rein in the mind effectively until the
defense perimeter of the eyes is in place. Knowing this, you shouldn’t be
discouraged if your mind responds more slowly than your eyes.

The great
news is that the defense perimeter of the eyes works with you to build the
perimeter of the mind. The mind needs an object for its lust, so when the eyes
view sexual images the mind has plenty to dance with. Without those images, the
mind has an empty dance card. By starving the eyes, you starve the mind as
well.

Although this alone isn’t enough—the mind can still
create its own lust objects using memories of videos or by generating fantasies
about girlfriends or busty schoolmates—at least with your eyes under
control you won’t be overwhelmed by a continuing flood of fresh lust
objects as you struggle to learn to control your mind.

Currently, your
brain moves nimbly to lust and to the little pleasure-high it brings. Your
brain’s “worldview” has always included lustful thinking.
Double entendres, daydreams, and other creative forms of sexual thinking are
approved pathways, so your mind feels free to run on these paths to
pleasure.

But your mind is orderly, and your worldview colors what
comes through it. The mind will allow these impure thoughts only if they
“fit” the way you look at the world. As you set up the perimeter of
defense for your mind, your brain’s worldview will be transformed by a
new matrix of allowed thoughts, or what we call “allowables.”

Within the old matrix of your thinking, lust fits perfectly and in that
sense was “orderly.” But with a new, purer matrix firmly in place,
lustful thoughts will bring disorder. Your brain, acting as a responsible
policeman, will nab these lustful thoughts even before they rise to
consciousness. Essentially the brain begins cleaning itself like a hard drive,
so elusive enemies like double entendres and daydreams, which are hard to
control on the conscious level, simply vanish on their own.

This
transformation of the mind takes some time as you wait for the old sexual
pollution to be washed away. It’s much like living near a creek that
becomes polluted when a sewer main breaks upstream. After repair crews replace
the cracked sewage pipe, it will still take some time for the water downstream
to clear.

In transforming your mind, you’ll be taking an active,
conscious role in capturing rogue thoughts, but in the long run, the mind will
wash itself and will begin to work naturally for you and your purity by
capturing such thoughts. With the eyes bouncing away from sexual images, and
the mind policing itself, your defenses will grow incredibly strong.

With that
confidence, you’ll want to be doing all you can to push along your mental
transformation. A helpful concept here is the scriptural imagery of
“lurking at the door.” Job mentioned it. Just a few verses after we
read about the covenant he made with his eyes, we hear Job saying this:

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. For that would have been shameful, a sin to be
judged. (Job 31:9-11)

Have you “lurked at your neighbor’s
door”? Of course, this verse is clearly talking about Job’s own
life as a married man, but this can easily refer to you as a young, single
male. Lurking could mean stealing glances at her rack and rear. Lurking could
mean roaming in areas you shouldn’t be accessing on the World Wide
Web.

When I (Fred) was a freshman in high school, a certain girl sat
near me in French class. She had long, straight, dishwater blonde hair, wore a
jean jacket every day, and had a cute little face that never smiled. She had a
rebellious air, which made her a bit scary to me—and attractive. I stole
glances at her a lot, but mostly at her upper thighs where her tight jeans came
together. I had weeks of intense, wild wet dreams in the aftermath. I was
lurking big-time.

What am
I supposed to do?
you ask.
Those thoughts come on their own. I
can’t help them.
That certainly seems true, since controlling the
mind can seem bizarre. As we’ve seen, sexy daydreams can happen in
church. Where do these thoughts come from? The mind is like a wild mustang,
running free, one thought triggering another in no real order. Still, the Bible
says we must control not just our eyes, but our whole bodies:

You are
not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
(1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

And not just our bodies, but our minds as
well. The Holy Spirit, through Paul, is clear on this:

We demolish
arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of
God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2
Corinthians 10:5)

This is a jarring verse. Reading it, it’s easy
to wonder, “Take every thought captive? Is that really
possible?”