Often when I speak or write about the sin of lust, someone protests, arguing that lust within marriage is a good thing. I don’t believe it is. At all. Here’s why: Husbands and wives are called to love each other. Lust, as I would define it, is using another person for one’s own selfish gratification. And that ain’t love. Although sexual desire is not the only realm where lust creeps in, it seems...
Years ago, a friend of mine from Colorado went backpacking with his new wife in early summer. They were buying some last-minute supplies and the guy at the store asked if they wanted to rent snowshoes, too. “Uh, no,” my friend thought to himself, “It’s summer. Why would I need snowshoes?” Turns out, that was a mistake. The salesman knew what they didn’t: there was an early summer storm coming. My...
When Katie first learned that her husband of ten years had been viewing porn, it rocked her world. She’d known he had struggled with pornography in college, but he had promised it was a thing of his past, and she had no reason to doubt him. Until she discovered porn on one of their devices. When she confronted him with what she found, he eventually confessed that his old habit had started again...
Recent events have lit up news and social media feeds with concerns about the mess that “purity culture” has made of people’s perceptions of sex. I don’t know enough about what does and doesn’t constitute “purity culture” to address that formally here, but I do know that many Christians have approached the topics of sex, desire, and marriage in ways that may be well-meaning, but in the end...
I remember as a college student crashing full force into James 5:16 (The Courage to Confess). “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” (James 5:16). For nearly a decade, I had been returning to pornography and other sexual sins at least weekly. I loved Jesus and I hated (and loved) it. James’ words offered me hope. But his words also cast me...
In my own journey away from pornography, there came a point when I recognized that lust had impacted my ability to see people accurately. Normal life would sometimes seem more sexualized than it was, so that there were times when seeing someone sunbathing, or out for a run, or wearing a form-fitting outfit, or even grocery shopping would become for me a battle with temptation. As a Christian man...