Dealing with Sexual Appetites



First blog:  A ‘source’ must be found for your morals.  Mine is the Bible.
Second blog: How to live and teach morality in an a-moral culture.
Third blog:  Bible Morals and Marriage.


So, what happens when a person has

  • an appetite for fornication?
  • an appetite for adultery?
  • an appetite for pornography?
  • an appetite for ‘same sex attraction’?


Is that appetite wrong?
Simply put—no.  Having an appetite for misdirected ‘wants’ or ‘desires’ in and of itself is not wrong.  It is not sin.

Adam and Eve could have looked at the ‘forbidden fruit’ for a decade—thinking about eating it—and not sin.  Now standing there,or even pining after the fruit would have hurt their intimacy with the Father—but they still wouldn’t have sinned.  In the same way, having an appetite for mis-directed sexual expressions is not wrong.

When does the ‘wrong’ begin?
It is wrong when that is acted upon.  Once Adam and Eve ate the fruit—they sinned—and not before. Expressing the misdirected sexual appetite is sin…and wrong.

Now, if you think about it, there is hardly a person alive who—at some time in his life—had a misdirected sexual appetite.  The question then goes back to this:  do we act on our misdirected sexual appetites?  Our culture says: ‘Absolutely!  Don’t let anyone tell you what to do!’  This now takes us back to blog number one in this series—what is your source of morals?


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning to hate your sin

Image
   John 5:13-15 (NLT) 13 The man didn’t know, for Jesus had disappeared into the crowd. 14 But afterward Jesus found him in the Temple and told him, “Now you are well; so stop sinning, or something even worse may happen to you.” 15 Then the man went and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had healed him.   Lord give me grace, power, and effort to maintain a resilience against sin.  Sin is ALWAYS a dark path. It ALWAYS pays wages.  The wage of sin is death.  Sin will always hurt, always destroy, always wound—you, relationships, stuff, goals, etc.  It is a killer.  It is a wound-er.  It is a consumer of all that is healthy, strong, good, and perfect. Learn to hate sin. Learn to fear sin. Learn to run as fast as you can away from sin. Search deeply for hidden sin. Be disgusted with your sin.  Repent, repent, repent daily for your sin. Be afraid of your sin. Be petrified of your sin. Be worried about your sin. And keep repenting, keeping running into the arms of grace and the arm
Read more

Dumb Mistakes

Image
      Dumb Mistakes   Why do Christians, pastors, leaders, ushers, —everyday Christians— make real dumb mistakes.  Now I am talking about real dumb moral mistakes—lying, cheating, immorality, thievery—-like why? Christine Pohl warns us as follows: “By compartmentalizing aspects of our actions or thoughts, we are able to ignore major inconsistencies and wrongdoing.” Ever heard yourself asking this question: ‘What was he thinking when he did that?’   You think of moral failure or just plain —dumb decisions—and you ask that question!   How does that happen?  What were they ‘thinking?’  Well, Pohl suggest “he wasn’t thinking he had stopped thinking and reflecting.  Instead, the person deliberately excluded a part of his or her life from spiritual and moral scrutiny.”   So now a word of help!  Do the daily examen!  (See.  https://pwcusick.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-examen.html )   If there ever was a culture, a time, a season when Christians need to act like Christians —it is now!   The ancie
Read more

It's just too noisy!

Image
  “Be still and know that I am God:   Ps 46:11 Silence What a pile of noise! Noise—Noise—Noise. Noise in my head. Noise in my ears. Noise in my eyes. Noise—Noise—Noise. Are you crying out for silence? His presence manifests itself, not in fire or wind or thunder, but in a still small voice.  Only in this quietness does he give us the certainty of his presence.  We usually cannot hear this because we are making so much inner noise… The word from the Word is often something like “Grow up!”  I suddenly see the far more important things are at stake than my feelings…We do not always get specific answers, even when we invoke his name, but we always get the Answerer! … Peter Kreeft- Payer for Beginners Silence is not just silence or emptiness or nothingness but…the best preparation there is because then there is no obstacle.  And God’s love—since it is no pervasive—just comes in, like the weather, and like it fills any empty spaces. …Thomas Keating— Silence and Centring P
Read more