A Passion for Purity Vs Passive Prayers
May 26, 2006 Print This Post
//MOOD: Amazed
//NOISE: Birds Chirping
John Piper has an amazing article out for anyone who struggles with lust and other thought life issues. If that is you (and you know it is), read this amazing article. Here’s an excerpt:
When you are enticed sexually, do you fight with your mind to say no to the image and then mightily labor to fill your mind with counter-images that kill off the seductive image? “If you put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit, you will live” (Romans 8:13). Too many people think they have struggled with temptation when they have prayed for deliverance, and hoped the desire would go away. That is too passive. Yes, God works in us to will and to do his good pleasure! But the effect is that we “work out our salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12-13). Gouging out your eye may be a metaphor, but it means something very violent. The brain is a “muscle” to be flexed for purity, and in the Christian it is supercharged with the Spirit of Christ.
What this means is that we must not give a sexual image or impulse more than five seconds before we mount a violent counterattack with the mind. I mean that! Five seconds. In the first two seconds we shout, “NO! Get out of my head!” In the next two seconds we cry out: “O God, in the name of Jesus, help me. Save me now. I am yours.”
Good beginning. But then the real battle begins. This is a mind war. The absolute necessity is to get the image and the impulse out of our mind. How? Get a counter-image into the mind. Fight. Push. Strike. Don’t ease up. It must be an image that is so powerful that the other image cannot survive. There are lust-destroying images and thoughts.
May 28th, 2006 at 12:10 am
On Friday, I prayed, “God, show me some verses or something that I can use to replace the harmful/destructive thoughts that I have.”
You literally just answered my prayer.
:-D
Great article, thanks Noel!