What Lust Leaves Behind

DAY 1 | What Lust Leaves Behind

 

HOW TO USE THIS DEVOTIONAL

IF YOU’RE MARRIED

Complete these devotionals together when possible. Read the Scripture, talk honestly, and pray together. This week deals with sexual desire, temptation, pornography, sexual sin, and the damage those things can cause. Some conversations may be uncomfortable, but discomfort does not have to prevent honesty.

Remember that the goal is not to investigate your spouse or force a confession from them. Let God’s Word examine you first. Be honest about your own heart, your own temptations, and the ways you can better protect the covenant God has given you.

If sexual sin has caused significant hurt in your marriage, these devotionals may begin conversations that require more time, pastoral care, or professional counseling than a few minutes together can provide. Don't feel pressured to resolve everything in one sitting.

 

IF YOU’RE SINGLE

Sexual integrity doesn't begin on your wedding day. The habits, expectations, desires, boundaries, and patterns you develop now can affect future relationships. Even if marriage is not part of your future, Scripture calls every follower of Jesus to honor God with his or her body, heart, and mind.

Use this week to allow Christ to examine your desires and deepen your understanding of holiness, love, sacrifice, and sexual integrity.

 

READ

2 Samuel 11:1–5; 12:7–14; 1 Corinthians 6:18–20

“Flee sexual immorality! Every sin a person can commit is outside the body, but the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body.” -1 Corinthians 6:18

 

THE TRUTH

David's sin with Bathsheba begins with what appears to be a private moment.

One evening David walked on the roof of his palace and saw a woman bathing. Scripture tells us that Bathsheba was beautiful. David desired what he saw, began asking about her, learned that she was the wife of Uriah, and then sent messengers and took her.

What began with his eyes moved into his desires, and what he allowed to grow within his desires eventually became sinful action.

Then the consequences began.

Bathsheba became pregnant. David tried to conceal what he had done by bringing Uriah home from battle. When Uriah's integrity interfered with David's plan, David arranged for him to be killed. One sexual sin became deception, manipulation, abuse of authority, and murder.

And it didn't end there.

The chapters that follow are painful to read. David's family becomes marked by sexual violence, anger, bitterness, murder, estrangement, rebellion, and division. Amnon violates Tamar. Absalom eventually murders Amnon. Absalom rebels against David and publicly takes his father's concubines, fulfilling the judgment Nathan had announced.

David was forgiven when he confessed, “I have sinned against the LORD.” God's grace was real. But forgiveness did not mean that every earthly consequence of David's choices instantly disappeared.

That is one reason Scripture speaks so seriously about sexual sin.

Sexual sin is rarely as private as we convince ourselves it is.

What we watch can affect what we desire. What we repeatedly desire can reshape our expectations. What we hide can affect our ability to be vulnerable. What we pursue outside God's design can create distance from our spouse, distort intimacy, and influence what we eventually bring into our families.

This is why Paul doesn't tell us to casually manage sexual immorality.

He says: “Flee.”

Run from it.

Not because sexual desire itself is evil. God created sexual intimacy as something beautiful within the covenant of marriage. The enemy's strategy is not always to make us desire something inherently evil. Often, temptation takes something God created as good and convinces us to pursue it outside the boundaries God established for our good.

The question, then, is not whether we have sexual desires.

The question is:

What are we doing with them?

 

REFLECT

Think honestly about the relationship between your eyes, your desires, and your actions.

What are you allowing yourself to see that regularly awakens desires you should not be feeding?

 

Are there sexual expectations, fantasies, memories, images, relationships, or habits that have affected the way you experience intimacy?

 

When temptation comes, do you tend to flee from it, or do you remain close enough to it that you continually have to negotiate with it?

 

TOGETHER OR INDIVIDUALLY

IF YOU’RE MARRIED

Talk together about the things that help protect your marriage rather than beginning with accusations about what might threaten it.

Consider your phones, social media, entertainment, friendships, work relationships, travel, private messaging, pornography, and other places where temptation can develop.

Then ask: “Are there boundaries we need to strengthen in order to better protect our marriage?”

The goal isn't control. It is protection.

There is a significant difference between saying, “I don't trust you, so I need to monitor you,” and saying, “What God has given us is precious, so I want us to protect it together.”

If you are currently hiding sexual sin from your spouse, however, don't use the language of boundaries as a substitute for confession. Hidden sin eventually requires honest repentance.

 

IF YOU’RE SINGLE

Consider what you are building into your understanding of sexuality now.

What are your entertainment choices teaching you?

What is pornography teaching you? What is social media teaching you?

What are previous relationships teaching you?

And how does that compare with what God's Word teaches you?

Sexual integrity isn't merely avoiding intercourse before marriage. It involves learning to surrender your eyes, imagination, desires, body, and relationships to Jesus.

Ask God to reveal anything you are normalizing now that could become destructive later.

 

FROM THE MARRIAGE CREED

“I will love my spouse unconditionally and combat the lustful desires that entice my eyes, my flesh and my pride.”

 

The word combat is used intentionally.

Lust isn't something we should casually allow into our lives and simply hope it doesn't grow.

We fight against it.

We guard what enters our eyes.

We pay attention to what captures our imagination.

We recognize situations in which we're vulnerable.

We establish boundaries before temptation becomes opportunity.

We speak honestly when we're struggling.

And when we fall, we repent rather than hide.

Protecting a marriage from sexual sin isn't primarily about distrusting our spouse.

It is recognizing the weakness of our own flesh and taking seriously the value of what God has entrusted to us.

 

RESPOND

TODAY I WILL...

Don't try to solve everything today. Begin with honest inspection.

Complete these sentences before God:
Something that can easily awaken unhealthy desire in me is:

 

A boundary I need to establish or strengthen is:

 

Something I need to stop treating casually is:

 

Then make the response practical.

Maybe you need to unfollow an account.

Delete something.

Change what you watch.

Move a device out of a private space.

Stop communicating privately with someone.

Tell a trusted Christian friend where you're struggling.

Or simply become honest about something you have been excusing.

Paul's instruction is simple: Flee.

Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do when temptation appears is not prove how strong you are.

It's leave.

 

PRAY

Father, You created our bodies, our desires, marriage, and sexual intimacy. What You created is good, and we confess that sin takes Your good gifts and twists them toward selfish purposes.

Search our hearts today.

Show us where our eyes have wandered, where our desires have become disordered, and where we have entertained temptation instead of fleeing from it.

Forgive us for treating sexual sin casually.

Forgive us for the ways our choices may have brought hurt, secrecy, unrealistic expectations, distrust, or distance into our relationships.

For those who have been wounded by someone else's sexual sin, give them compassion, healing, wisdom, and safe people with whom they can process that pain. Remind them that another person's sin does not determine their worth or identity.

For husbands and wives, protect the covenant they have made. Help them create marriages marked by honesty rather than secrecy, faithfulness rather than wandering, and intimate connection rather than counterfeit substitutes.

For those who are single, teach them to honor You with their bodies, minds, and desires now.

Give all of us wisdom to recognize temptation early and courage to flee from what would lead us away from You.

Teach us to love people rather than use them.

Teach us to give rather than take.

And begin transforming our desires so that what we want increasingly reflects what You want for us.

Amen.