“And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him.”
John 13:2
Your battle for sexual purity takes place in your mind. You may think that pornographic websites are the enemy, or that immodestly dressed women are the problem. You may even think you are an addict. But if you watch pornography habitually, if you masturbate compulsively, but long to quit, you must first realize that you don’t have a sexual problem—you have a thinking problem.
Your enemy is the devil. And the battleground is your mind. The devil puts thoughts and desires and beliefs into your mind, just as he did with Judas. Judas probably thought that betraying Jesus was his idea. But where did that idea come from in the first place? From the devil. The devil put the thought of betrayal into the heart of Judas.
In the Bible, the heart refers to the seat of the affections, desires and passions, as well as of wisdom and understanding. When the devil “put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him,” he put the idea into Judas’ understanding. He put the idea into his mind, that part of his body that controls his desires and thinking.
This is where you fight your battle with sexual temptation and sexual immorality. The stimulus to sin might be external (a pornographic image, for example), but the temptation to continue watching, the urge to act upon that image by masturbating, that battle takes place between your two ears and nowhere else. That’s where you either win or lose your battle.
To gain victory over sexual sin, you must gain victory over your mind. First, understand that the devil still puts thoughts into believers’ heads. Or, to be more precise, the devil still puts lies into believers’ heads. Your first order of business is recognizing these lies, and then replacing them with truth you find in God’s word, The Bible. Sexual purity comes when you change what you believe. Or, rather, when you change who you believe.
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