From Dream to Destiny: The Ten Tests You Must Go Through to Fulfill God's Purpose for Your Life (10 page)

The reason Joseph didn’t fall when temptation came was because lust was not in his heart. And lust was not in his heart because he had not allowed it into his eyes.

“Don’t look” should become a motto for all of us. Don’t look at pornography. Don’t look at inappropriate sites on the Internet. Don’t look at movies that are sexually explicit. Don’t look at television programs that are seductive. Men, if you see a woman who is not dressed appropriately, the first thought that should come to your mind ought to be,
Don’t
look!—because if you look, lust is the next step. And after lust is immorality.

This is a practical thing that all of us can do. So let’s remember to control our looking!

We’ve all heard this convenient lie: “I’ll just look, but I won’t do anything.” You know how well that works. Have you ever heard someone say, “I’m just going to look; I’m not going to buy”? It doesn’t work. If you look, you will buy because looking gets your desire stirred up. If you start looking for homes, you’re going to buy a new house. If you start looking for cars, you
will
buy a new car—the auto dealers call it new-car fever.

We bought a new home a while back, and for some reason I started looking at these new stainless steel barbecue grills. They are so bright and shiny, and I guess guys just like shiny things. Of course, I already had a perfectly good barbecue grill. It worked just fine, but it was black. It wasn’t shiny like those new ones. Somehow I started looking at the new ones, and every time we went into a store, I’d say to Debbie, “I’m going to go look at the barbecue grills.”

But I got to thinking and praying about it, as I pray over every financial decision. And I felt like the Lord said to me, “You don’t need a new barbecue grill. Stop looking!” If I had continued looking, I would have eventually bought one. So what I had to do was to just stop looking.

Here is my point: If you’re not going to buy a barbecue grill, don’t go to the store where they are sold.

And if you’re not in the market for adultery, don’t lust after beautiful people. Don’t drive by that adult bookstore. Don’t wander into the adult section at the video store. Don’t pick up that sensual magazine. Don’t look!

Let me show you what a thoroughly biblical principle this is. Psalm 101:3 says, “I will set nothing wicked before my eyes.”

What if we purposed to do that—to set nothing wicked before our eyes? Think about how that would affect us, just in terms of the movies and TV programs we watch. Every time we go to a movie or pick up a magazine, we are setting something before our eyes, so we should be careful about the movies we watch and the magazines we read. And we should resolve to set before our eyes nothing that could stir up temptation.

Proverbs 27:20 says, “Hell and Destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied.” The Bible says the
eyes
are never satisfied. So the eyes have a lust of their own. This is also described in 1 John 2:16 as “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” So there is lust of the eyes, or to put it another way, a lust of looking.

In Matthew 5:28 Jesus tells us, “But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. And if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you.” Jesus is showing us a progression here. He is telling us that the
eye
can cause us to sin. He is talking about the sin of looking. The progression He describes involves first looking, then lusting and finally immorality. Before immorality occurs, there is lust. But before lust is stirred up, there is looking. So, implicitly, He’s giving us some real wisdom here: Stop looking!

Jesus tells us more about the eyes in Matthew 6:22-23: “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.” Jesus is saying that what we set before our eyes is what will eventually end up in our hearts and will affect our entire body. If we continue to set darkness before our eyes, our bodies will end up full of
that darkness. If we look at things that stir up lust, our bodies will end up full of that lust. So we must set before our eyes what is good and wholesome. If we set what is “light” before our eyes, our entire being will be affected by that light.

Job said, “I have made a covenant with my eyes; why then should I look upon a young woman?” (Job 31:1). That is a good Scripture passage for every man to memorize! Job made a covenant with his eyes, and you should do it too. Make a covenant with your eyes, and make a covenant with God at the same time. Say to God, “I will not look! If I see something I know is seductive, I will look away. I will not look a second time. I will not look a long time. I will look away.”

I know only too well that the eyes can open the door to darkness, because the Lord has really dealt with me in this area of my life. For many years this was a very difficult area of struggle for me.

The Importance of Honesty

One thing you need to understand is that Satan works in the darkness. So if you have a difficulty in this area, you need to expose it and uncover it. Because the more you keep it hidden, the more power you give to Satan.

A man who struggles with lust is often afraid to come clean with his wife about this, because he is afraid that she will reject him. He needs to understand that it is actually his deception that destroys his wife’s trust, not the lust. It is the lying and covering up that could cause his wife to reject him or lose respect for him.

I have talked to many couples that have suffered in this area of their marriage. In every case, it was the deception and resulting loss of trust that hurt the spouse the most, far more deeply than the immorality.

The Importance of Accountability

So if you struggle in this area, run to your spouse, not away from him or her. Go to your spouse and say, “I love you. I want only you. But sexual temptation is so pervasive in our society, and I’ve adopted some practices that I should not have. I don’t want to do these things anymore, and I want to make myself accountable.” It will help you immeasurably
if you will just be honest, be open about it and make yourself accountable to someone.

Years ago I made the decision to be accountable, not only to Debbie but also to my friends. Being accountable has not been easy, but it has proved to be a good and healthy thing.

Just a few months ago one of the elders of our church checked up on me, and that didn’t offend me at all.

He asked me, “How are you doing in this area?”

I said, “I’m doing very well in this area. Thank you for asking. Debbie and I are doing great, and I’m doing well.”

“Great,” he said. “I know that God is blessing us as a church. And I just want you to know that I’ll help you, if this area should become a problem. If the enemy attacks you, I want you to know that you’ve got a brother who will help you.”

I appreciated that. That is a good thing! That is healthy!

But arriving at the decision to be accountable is not always easy or comfortable. When I decided to make myself accountable to Debbie, we had been married about seven years. I sat her down and said to her, “I need to come clean with you about my past. You know that I have an immoral past—but I want to tell you
everything
about my past.” Then I told her everything.

Now I have a very bad past, and I thought she would be shocked. I was actually afraid she would leave me. I was afraid she would say, “You’re a pervert”—and then leave. That is really what I thought. But despite my fears, I knew that I needed to bring my struggle out into the open. So I said to her, “That’s it, there is the truth. That is who you really married.”

But God had a surprise for me. Instead of rejecting me, Debbie said, “I knew that you were bad when I married you. I knew that, but I love you anyway. One thing I really love about you is that you’re not dishonest about it. You know when you’ve been bad, you tell God when you’ve been bad, and you allow God to work in your life. That is the best thing that you can do.”

Then I told her that I had a habit I needed to break—a habit of looking. And I asked for her help. I made myself accountable to her.

“I don’t want to look, but I need some help,” I said. “Will you help me? If you see me looking, I want you to pray for me. I want you to talk to me about it. And I want you to call me on it.”

I had no idea how quickly my request would be answered. Soon after that we took a vacation and were at the swimming pool. Needless to say, that is a very hard place not to look! Sure enough, a lady walked by me and I was looking. The next thing I knew, Debbie had reached over and pinched me right where no person should ever be pinched—on the back of my arm. She grabbed my skin in a very painful squeeze, looked into my eyes with intense determination and asked with great seriousness in her voice, “Do I need to pray for you?”

Believe me, after several pinches like that, you quit looking! If you have struggled with looking and with lust, I want to encourage you to become accountable to someone whom you trust. It has helped me, and it will help you too. Bringing your struggles into the light is a good and healthy thing. Because lust does not begin in the heart—it begins in the eyes.

Impurity Will Affect Your Family

If someone tells you that impurity will not affect your children, that person is either a liar or is greatly deceived. Your children
will
be affected if you allow impurity to become part of your life.

In 2 Samuel 11, we find an illustration of this reality. This passage describes how David fell into adultery with Bathsheba. And by chapter 13, we are reading about how his children began to commit gross immorality. Isn’t that amazing?

I believe David had a chance to stop the sin in his children, but he didn’t see it coming. And the reason he didn’t see it coming was because that weakness was in his own life. He had a blind spot for that weakness in his kids, because he had the same weakness. So don’t let anyone deceive you. Immorality in your own life will have a negative impact on the lives of your children.

The Bible says the iniquity of the fathers is passed down to the children.

God…keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation (Exod. 34:6-7).

So if we do not deal with the iniquity in our own lives, we will see it repeated in the lives of our children. That is simply what the Bible says. But notice that this passage does not say that the
sins
of the fathers are passed down to the children (even though it is frequently quoted this way). Rather, it speaks of the
iniquity
that is passed down.

Lust is an iniquity. And iniquity dwells in the heart.

There is an important difference between sin and iniquity. Sin is the outward movement, and iniquity is the inward motivation. Sin is the action, and iniquity is the attitude. Sin is in the hand, and iniquity is in the heart.

If iniquity is in the heart, the hand will follow accordingly. If the attitude is in the heart, then the action will follow. Therefore, if we want to overcome our struggles in the area of sexual purity, we must deal with the inward motivation. We have to deal with the iniquity because the iniquities, or the hidden things of the heart, are what our children will inherit from us.

The word “sin” means to “trespass,” to transgress or to step over the line.
²
If you step onto another person’s property, and a Private Property
sign is posted, you are trespassing. That is transgression, and that is what sin is. Sin is going where you are not supposed to go or stepping over the line that you are not supposed to cross.

When God says, “Don’t step over this line,” and we step over it—that is sin. That is transgression. But the heart attitude behind that action is iniquity. For example, adultery is sin; but lust is iniquity. Adultery is the outward movement, but lust is the inward motivation. We need to understand that lust is an iniquity, and iniquity is in the heart.