“Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.” 1 Peter 2:11
If your fleshly lusts war against your soul, as Peter says they do, then that means you are in a battle. And if you are in a battle, then that means you have an enemy. But your enemy isn’t without. It’s within.
In your war against pornography and masturbation, you are at war with yourself, with your fleshly lusts. That is, you are engaged in a daily conflict with inordinate bodily, animal, unregenerate desires. These lusts come in the form of sexual fantasies, sexual temptations, sexual urges. They attack you when you are watching pornography, when you are lying in bed, even when you are sitting in church.
Your job as a soldier in this war is to never surrender to these fleshly lusts. You are commanded to abstain from them. You are to keep away from them as an alcoholic stays away from the bottle. You are to be distant from them, as a drug addict stays distant from the friends and places where he used to get his supply.
Your soul is immortal. Your fleshly lusts are on active service against your soul. They are not dug in on a hill far away. They are actively marching against your position, seeking to kill and destroy your soul. The only way your fleshly lusts win in this battle is when you give into them. When you lower your defenses and let the enemy overrun your position, you lose the battle. When you click that link, when you linger on that image, when you browse that website, when you pleasure yourself, you let your fleshly lusts win the campaign against your soul. You let your lusts defeat you.
If you want to get the victory over pornography and masturbation, remember that you are in a drawn-out conflict that only ends the day you die or the day the Lord returns. And your enemy isn’t the devil, or pornographers, or the internet or an app. Your enemy is you—your inordinate sexual desires. Meet them today, head on. When a sinful thought enters your mind, recite a Bible verse. When you are gripped by a sexual urge, take a cold shower, go for a run, lift weights, climb stairs, skip rope, play with your kids. Do whatever you have to so that you defeat sexual lust.
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