Command 7 : Do Not Lust | Day 49

Remove Ensnaring Provisions!

A man tried to conquer years of lustful passions; however, he never gained any long-lasting victory. For a short time he would have freedom, but when his lust overcame him, he would go to his secret store of pornography and indulge in lustful desires. One of the obvious causes of his defeat was a violation of the following instruction:

“Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Romans 13:14).

Many fathers are totally unaware of the damage that sensual provisions bring to them as well as the moral defeat that it brings to their sons and daughters. One day a teenager shared with me that he was at home alone when he had a sudden desire to take out his father's bottom dresser drawer and see what was underneath it. This was a strange prompting, but he followed it and discovered a stash of pornographic magazines, which became an addiction to him.

In another situation a father justified having television in the home because he only looked at sports. However, his son later confessed to me that he was in the habit of watching indecent movies after his father went to bed.

Fathers cannot be too careful in this matter. I remember the time when one of my sisters told my father that she was having lustful thoughts as she read the newspaper accounts of sexual crimes, so my father stopped our subscription. I respected him for that decision. Now we have the greater problem of the Internet. If a father does not have protected access through programs such as CharacterLink,¹ he is only inviting moral defeat in a son or daughter, as well as himself.

There is good reason why Paul gave this instruction:

“I want to see you experts in good and not even beginners in evil" (Romans 16:19—J. B. Phillips Translation).

Today would be an excellent time to carefully evaluate things in your home that might be causing temptations or moral defeat. Just as Jesus, Nehemiah, and others cleansed the Temple, so we need to cleanse our homes and lives of those things that are displeasing to the Holy Spirit, because our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit.

Make sure you remove only what belongs to you. However, if your sons and daughters have brought sensual things into the home, including wrong music, you need to wisely and firmly deal with it. Peter's appeal would be a good starting point: “I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul" (I Peter 2:11). A testimony of progress in this area would be a marvelous entry in your journal today.