Proverbs: Lust & Temptation

Intro:

Good morning! We're diving into Proverbs chapter five today, as Glenn Power teaches. We'll confront a challenging, yet crucial, theme: the warnings about immorality and lust. While intense, these warnings and God's positive vision for sexuality are vital medicine for our souls in our "Summer of Wisdom" series.

Scripture References: Proverbs 5:1-14, Proverbs 5:15-20, Proverbs 7:26, Proverbs 16:6, Matthew 5:27-29, John 4, 2 Samuel 11, Romans 5, 2 Peter 1

Key Points:

• Proverbs' Urgent Warnings:
  • Chapters 5-7 are almost entirely dedicated to warnings against immorality and lust.
  • This feels like a "fear tactic" to modern ears, but Proverbs is not embarrassed to warn. It's the fear of the Lord (Proverbs 16:6), avoiding evil by understanding sin's devastating consequences.
  • Jesus amplifies this: "If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out... better to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell" (Matthew 5:27-29). He goes to the heart, where lust begins.
• A Positive Vision for Sexuality:
  • Proverbs also gives a positive vision for sex within marriage. Proverbs 5:15-20 graphically depicts the joy and pleasure of marital intimacy.
  • God created sex as a beautiful gift within the marriage covenant.
  • We need to move beyond shame; the problem isn't being "too sexual," but often not experiencing sexual fulfillment in God's intended way.
• The "Immoral Woman" in Modern Context:
  • Proverbs' "immoral woman" represents a spirit of temptation (a profile of darkness) that pulls both men and women astray.
  • Today, this "immoral woman" takes many forms, notably pornography, which statistics show is a pervasive struggle even among Christians and leaders. Proverbs 7:26: "Many are the victims she has brought down; her slain are a mighty throng."
• The Path to Freedom:
  • Run to God, not from God, even in failure. Romans 5:8: "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." God doesn't shame; He washes and loves.
  • Embrace a Kingdom Gospel powerful enough to set you free. God gives us "everything we need for a godly life" (2 Peter 1:3). Don't settle for addiction.
  • Overcome lust through daily connection with the Spirit: Prayer, Word study, fasting.
  • Overcome lust through divine purpose: Idleness and boredom lead to sin (2 Samuel 11 – David and Bathsheba). God has a unique mission for you.
  • Overcome lust through true intimacy with God: For singles, the highest pleasure is intimacy with the Creator. John 4: "Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst... a spring of water welling up to eternal life." God's love satisfies deeply.
  • Overcome lust through transparent relationships, self-control, self-imposed boundaries, and specialized support. If you've tried everything, get help!

Conclusion:

Sexual sin is deeply personal and can feel shameful, a padlock without a key. But God offers life, not death. In our deepest, darkest moments, He says, "I choose you. I love you. Come to me." Breaking sin's power isn't about bootstraps; it's through Him.

Call to Action:

Receive prayer today; breaking sin's power isn't done alone. When we open up and invite God's light, amazing things happen. Come to the table to remember Jesus' broken body and spilled blood—His ultimate price for our freedom. He gave His life so we could have life.

Transcript

This morning we're going to be reading from the book of Proverbs in chapter five, verses one through 14.

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If you don't have a Bible with you this morning, there are Bibles in the seats,(...) in the racks just below the seats there. You're welcome to use those, but you're also welcome to take one if you don't have a Bible. And so it's our gift to you.(...) So reading from Proverbs chapter five, verses one through 14 out of the new international version.

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My son,(...) pay attention to my wisdom.

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Turn your ear to my words of insight,

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that you may maintain discretion(...) and your lips may preserve knowledge.

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For the lips of the adulterous woman, drip honey.

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And her speech is smoother than oil.(...) But in the end, she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword.

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Her feet go down to death. Her steps lead straight to the grave.(...) She gives no thought to the way of life. Her paths wander aimlessly, but she does not know it.(...) Now then my sons, listen to me.(...) Do not turn aside from what I say.

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Keep to a path far from her. Do not go near her door of her house, lest you lose your honor to others and your dignity to one who is cruel.(...) Lest strangers feast on your wealth and your toil enrich the house of another.(...) At the end of your life, you will groan. When your flesh and body are spent, you will say, how I hated discipline, how my heart spurned correction. I would not obey my teachers(...) or turn my ear to my instructors.

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And I was soon in serious trouble in the assembly of God's people.

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Thanks, Ken.

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Let's pray for a second before we jump in.

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Father, we ask for just a spirit of wisdom and revelation here this morning that you would speak to us. We open our hearts to you. We ask that the word would just make entrance into our hearts.

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Yeah, we love you, Jesus.

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Amen.

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Okay, so I got the passage and proverbs about the adulterous woman.

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So that's why I needed to start with a little bit of prayer. You'll notice sometimes I'm up here with the fire and brimstone message, sometimes the adulterous woman message.

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It's interesting though in proverbs,(...) if you're reading it just straight through chapter one to the end, that chapters five through seven, so towards the beginning of the book, are almost all about this one subject.

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Almost the entirety of these three chapters is about lust, warnings about immorality.

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So you can't miss the emphasis if you're just reading through proverbs. This is something that matters to the authors of proverbs.

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And it makes sense, you know, because the context, one reason I wanted Ken to read it is it's the context of this book is a father speaking to a son,(...) and he's trying to impart wisdom, life, practical wisdom to his son.(...) And so it makes sense that he would want to talk to his son about an issue this big, an issue this encompassing, something that's sure to affect his son as he grows up and to be a young man, the issue of lust and temptation. And so he goes for it, he warns him. I mean, most of those three chapters are warnings.

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They're not soft, they're not gentle. They are warnings about the destruction and devastation that will come to your life if you go down this path of lust and temptation.

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And as I was reading it these past couple of weeks, I was kind of taken aback a little, and I thought, this is,(...) this feels like a fear tactic.

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Like it is so intense, and there's so much, I think I've been trained to recoil at this kind of fear tactic, like these kind of warnings.

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I think, you know, I started to think about the 90s purity culture.(...) How many of you grew up in 90s purity culture?(...) Yeah.

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And there was a little bit of this in 90s purity culture, like it was very heavy on warnings.

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And I think since then there's been a little bit of a switch to the other side of the spectrum where like, we don't want this anymore. We don't like warnings. We don't wanna hear it this way. We wanna hear someone tell us about the positive.

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I was listening to John Christ, the comedian. Has anybody ever listened to him?(...) He says that 90s purity culture was one moment getting a purity ring and making a vow of chastity in front of your whole church.(...) And then the next moment going to an all night church lock-in with no parental supervision.

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He's like, those two things don't go together.

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I thought that was my youth upbringing right there in a nutshell.

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Lock-ins and purity rings.

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I also kind of imagined, like my daughters are really young right now, but I kind of imagined talking to them when they're older about my

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purity culture upbringing, telling them, yeah, like I took a vow of chastity in front of my whole church. They're like, what? Was this the middle ages? Like, no, this was the 90s. Like, this is what we did. Like we vowed in front of our whole church that we were gonna remain pure.(...) It wasn't the middle ages. It was called true love waits.

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And I just imagine them like, wow, dad, that's crazy. (Audience Laughing) Did you wear the ring? I wore the ring. I wore it for years. Took it everywhere.

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So we don't like the warnings. We recoil at it. We're still kind of like, you know,

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responding to our 90s purity culture upbringing. But what I've noticed is that Proverbs is not embarrassed to warn.

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That there must be a place for this because Proverbs like, it really goes at it. And I think what it's giving us is the fear of the Lord.(...) And this is what Travis talked about a few weeks ago.

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The fear of the Lord is a reverence for God. But I think sometimes we can water it down by just saying, oh, it just means revering God and honoring him. When I think the fear of the Lord actually involves some actual fear of the consequences of what will happen if you go down a life of sin. There is a real fear. I am afraid of what will happen if I disobey God over a long period of time.

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Proverbs 16 verse six says this,

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through the fear of the Lord, evil is avoided.

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The fear of the Lord is medicine that we take that helps us to avoid sin. The warnings of Proverbs are medicine that we take that help us hate sin and avoid sin.

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And then we find out that it's not just Proverbs that warns about this area of temptation. It's actually Jesus.(...) And actually Jesus is even worse than Proverbs.

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So Matthew five,(...) verses 27 through 29, Jesus says this, you have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

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And I've heard many over the years say, this is Jesus making this really strict standard. He's being so strict.(...) But Jesus wasn't trying to be strict. He was trying to take it back to the heart.

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You know, it's easy and can even be superficial to just stay at the actual act of adultery or fornication.(...) Jesus says, let's go back to where those kind of huge sins start in your heart with a lustful glance, with a lustful thought. Jesus has actually been really helpful. He goes, let's go back to where it begins and then we can cut it off. And then you'll never go to one of these bad places. But he goes on and he says, if your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

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And again, I just think like, man, Jesus, this is so uncool to talk about hell and lust

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being thrown into hell. Like who talks like that?

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Randy Alcorn, the author was once talking to a pastor who was involved in a sexual scandal, who had to step down from ministry.(...) And Alcorn asked him, he said, what,

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well, I'll read the quote.

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He says, what could have been said to you that might've prevented this? And after a moment's thought, he replied, if someone could have helped me envision the tragedy it would bring to my ministry and the disgrace it would bring to Christ's name, I might never have done it.

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And I read that and I thought,(...) oh wow, that's really helpful because that's exactly what Proverbs gives us. Is it helps us envision the disastrous end that comes from persistently going down this path of sin. And that's why Proverbs continuously says, choose wisdom or folly, wisdom or folly

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helps us imagine the end. That's what the fear of the Lord does. So, but the Proverbs are not only full of warnings. They do motivate us with the positive and the Bible gives us a positive vision for sexuality as well. And this is medicine just as much as the fear of the Lord is. We need both, we need a positive vision. So, one way that Proverbs does this, this is in Proverbs five. It paints this really graphic and almost embarrassing depiction of married sex.

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It says, may your fountain be blessed(...) and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer, may her breath satisfy you always. May you ever be intoxicated with her love.

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So, there you have it. It's Proverbs is not anti-sex.

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I mean, this is one of those passages that when you're 15, you like underlining giggle in the Bible.

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But it's making a point, it's saying sex is not just for procreation, it is. It's not just for relational bonding, it is, but it's also for joy and for pleasure.(...) And it sets that out with graphic detail for us.

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God created sex and it's a gift in the right context. I mean, we know this, but I'm just laying a foundation for what Proverbs is talking about. God created sex to be enjoyed within the marriage covenant.

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No other way, within the marriage covenant, it is a gift and a blessing.

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Jay Stringer, he writes this in his book on sexual brokenness. He says, "Rather than fearing we're too sexual, "we should be more concerned that we have not yet "become sexual enough.

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"When I spend time with people experiencing "lifelong struggles with unwanted sexual behavior, "especially pornography, I'm always struck "by how little they enjoy sex.

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"God gave us the most remarkable minds and bodies, "specifically or specially designed "to experience the fullness of pleasure.(...) "If we move out from our hovels of sexual shame "and meaningless hookups, there is so much more "awaiting us as children of God."

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So we need a vision of the fear of the Lord and we need a vision for the gift that God has given us in the right context.

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Okay, so one of the characters in Proverbs, one of the ways that Proverbs communicates this message of the danger of lust is through this character known as the immoral woman or the adulterous woman or the strange woman, kind of depending on your translation.

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And this is another thing that threw me off in Proverbs because as I read it,(...) and actually even when we would read through Proverbs in Gappier, our discipleship school that went through the whole Bible, and inevitably almost every year, somebody would raise their hand and they would say,(...) "What does Proverbs have against girls?"(...) Like, my gosh, stay away from the immoral woman. The immoral woman, like she's this wicked seductress. It's almost like the man is just innocently going along and then there's all these wicked seductresses out there. And it's like, okay, is that really how it is? Like are men just innocently going along and then there are all of these like evil women trying to pull them off of the path of wisdom? And so as I began to look into it and think about that,

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I realized two things. One is that in the book of Proverbs, the villain and the hero are women.

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So yes, there is this nefarious immoral woman character that we need to stay away from, but there's also the Proverbs eight lady wisdom who's really the Christ-like figure of the book of Proverbs. And then there's also the Proverbs 31 wife of virtue who is the culmination of 31 chapters of wisdom. Proverbs chose to depict it as a woman, as a wife.

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And so no, Proverbs is not anti-sex and no Proverbs is not sexist.

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It's choosing to convey its message through a certain lens. The second thing I realized is that in context, again,(...) this is a father talking to his son in ancient times. And so this would have been one of the common temptations.

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So what we need to do is we need to apply that to our context today. And I think the best way to do that is that when Proverbs talks about the immoral woman, we need to interpret that as a spirit that tempts both men and women alike. That's the most helpful way to read it. It's talking about a spirit. It's talking about a profile of darkness that pulls both men and women astray.

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So what does that look like today? We're applying it to our day 2025, our culture. What does the spirit of lust look like today? Probably like that's a really easy question. Like it's everywhere, you know, it's pervasive in our culture.

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In fact,(...) Sabrina Carpenter was interviewed by the Rolling Stones a few weeks ago.

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And she was responding to people are constantly criticizing for her sexual songs and her innuendos and concerts.

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And this is what she said.

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She said, "It's always so funny to me "when people complain," she told Rolling Stone. They're like, "All she does is sing about this. "But those are the songs that you've made popular.(...) "Clearly you love sex. "You're obsessed with sex." You're obsessed with it.

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I read that and I thought, "She's got a good point.

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"It's too easy to blame Sabrina Carpenter."

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Now is she part of the problem? Yeah.(...) But would there be a Sabrina Carpenter if there wasn't a culture in a society full of people who were clamoring for lustful images and songs? No, there wouldn't. She's just making money off of the need, the desire. So it's too easy just to blame the pop stars of our day when the problem starts with us. It starts with our own hearts.

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Statistics show that Gen Z, we're talking about the pervasiveness of lust in our culture.

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And don't worry, we're gonna get to hope and solutions in a minute. We're just painting the picture. Statistics are showing that Gen Z are actually having less sex than any generation of the last hundred years.

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It's interesting, right? Like less, I mean, that doesn't seem to compute.

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But when you get into it, the reasons are that it's not just Gen Z, this is just in general, millennials, Gen Z, people are finding in our generation that it's easier to fulfill their own lives than in our generation, that it's easier to fulfill their sexual desires through pornography,(...) masturbation, and online relationships that cost them hardly anything.

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That's the easy way to fulfill their desires. And so yes, people are getting married less,(...) they're having less kids, and they're even having less sex because all of their sexuality is moving towards online.

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So we could say that yes, the immoral woman today, it is adultery, it is fantasy,(...) it is premarital sex, it's all these things, but it's also pornography is one of the biggest faces of our day, of this immoral woman.

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So I wanna just look at a few,(...) again, we're still in this, a few statistics.

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And I wanna go right to the church, because again, it's easy to point at the world, I wanna go right to the church because we're the ones who need freedom and power in this area, if we're going to be a light to the rest of the world. So Christian men and women, what does pornography look like?(...) About two-thirds of Christian men and a third of Christian women say they have an ongoing struggle with porn, and 69% of pastors say porn has adversely impacted their church.

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Young adults, Christian young adults, of Christian men, 18 to 30, 77% say they watch porn at least monthly.

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Within this group, 36% say they watch it daily.

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And here's one last statistic on this, young Christian leaders, this is all from a book called The Healing Church,

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Sam Black writes, "The horizon looks troubling for Christian leadership. In 2019, the freedom fight surveyed Christian college students who said their faith was very important to them. Of this group, 89% of college men involved in collegiate ministry said they watched porn.

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63% said they watched porn weekly, and 51% of these future Christian leaders said they believed they were addicted to pornography." Okay,(...) so I'm painting a picture that this is massive. This is not just some thing off to the side. This is one of the giants of our day.(...) And it makes sense of this verse in Proverbs, it kind of makes you read this verse differently. In Proverbs 7, verse 26, it says,(...) "Many are the victims she has brought down. Her slain are a mighty throng." That kind of has new meaning after looking at these statistics.

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And again, I'm looking at this from a Christian perspective. There would be some outside of a Christian perspective who would say there's nothing wrong with porn.

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We know from what Jesus said that it's not true, but we also know from a growing number of secular statistics that porn contributes to a lower quality of life in several different areas. So this is now a question that I'm going to ask you. So this is now across the board becoming more and more clear.(...) Okay, now that I've painted this abysmal picture and we're all sitting under it, that was part of the goal,

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I want to share a little bit of my story. I mean, I think talking about something like this, it's helpful just to know where I'm coming from.(...) When I grew up high school, again, purity ring on my finger.(...) I took that purity ring to every party that I went to and I dove headfirst into hookup cultures in the 90s, in the early 2000s.(...) I was in the church, but I did what I wanted to do.(...) So that was my experience as a teenager for the most part, is just diving headfirst into hookup culture, one hookup to the next, and really not even feeling that bad about it. It was a game to me. And in the process, I hurt many people.

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When I was 19, I had several experiences with Jesus that convinced me that he was real. He came off the pages of the Bible into my life in a tangible way and everything changed.(...) But what didn't change was that I had been sowing to my flesh for five years and those addictions and tendencies did not go away overnight.(...) And so I did withdraw immediately from hookup culture and partying and drinking,(...) but my struggle then went underground into pornography.(...) And for the next four years of my life, I was passionately pursuing Jesus,(...) praying, fasting, studying the Bible,(...) leading prayer meetings, and struggling with an ongoing porn addiction.

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And so I know what that feels like

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to struggle with pornography and also hate pornography, but feel like you can't get free.(...) I have one vivid memory of being a senior at college, at university,

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and I was in this men's group, and it just happened to be a group of many of the senior leaders on campus. The main worship leader from campus was there. Some of the main Bible study leaders were there.

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And I don't know if I shared first. I was one of the first, but I remember confessing to this group and saying, "I looked at pornography this week." And they were gracious.

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And then the next person said, "I too looked at pornography this week." And I was like, there's like a little bit of relief. I was like, "Oh, good. Okay. It makes me feel a little bit better. You know, I'm not the only one here."(...) And then the next person confessed pornography that week. And then the next person, literally every person in this group of 10 people, again, the leaders of on-campus, started confessing that they had looked at pornography that week. And my relief turned into despair.

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And I thought, wait a second.(...) Is this my life? Like, is this my future? 10 years from now, am I going to be sitting in a small group and we just all go around and confess pornography, and then that's the end of the small group? Like, is that what this is coming to? And I felt so depressed.

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And I began to just cry out to God, "Is it possible to get free?"(...) This was like a couple of years before smartphones came out, okay? And still, like, the addictions were ubiquitous among young men.(...) And I just was asking God, "Is it possible?

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You know my heart. I want to be free. Is it possible?" And God began to answer that question for me,

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reminding me of the gospel,

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not just a flimsy, superficial version of the gospel, but the robust kingdom gospel. And He began to give me practical principles to implement, where I did find lasting freedom from pornography in my 20s. And to this day, I found out firsthand that it's possible.

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And that's part of the hope that the Bible brings, and that I can say from experience, and not just me, but even my friends. I've had friends who have taken their addictions into their marriages and into their 30s, and then finally they got desperate and started to seek help, and they got free in their 30s. Better late than never. And those friends are still walking free to this day. And so, our last just seven minutes together, I want to just talk about the path to freedom, what the gospel says. About the "immoral woman," quote-unquote. The addictions, the sexual brokenness of our day. And first, just a little commercial break here.

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I had to cut my notes down from 12 pages to 6 pages.

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And so, I felt so pained about it, because I felt like part of it was stuff that had really helped me get free.

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And so, we're making the notes available online, if you guys want them. We're going to put a QR code.

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These are the extended edition notes.(...) Please take a picture.

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Maybe you'll look at them later, maybe not. Because at the end, I'm just going to go super fast, and you're going to be like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" And it's going to be like, "Sorry, you just have to go to the notes."

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So, take a picture of that.

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The second thing is,

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my wife Jess and I are going to be talking about this next week with the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders.(...) And so, we wanted to give just a heads up, for those of you who are parents of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. We are going to be talking about it in an age-appropriate way, but we are going to be mentioning pornography by name. And so, if that interests you, then please bring your kids. If not, then feel free to keep them in the service next week.

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Finally, end of the commercial break. We're going to have more people available on the prayer line this morning than usual. And so, if you want prayer for anything, whether it's a struggle related to this, or maybe you've just been hurt by this, maybe somebody in your life has struggled and it has devastated you,(...) we're just prayer for anything. Please feel free to get it. Okay, finishing up.

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How good is your gospel and how big is your gospel? And this is what I mean.

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Does your version of the gospel, do you have to clean yourself up before you run to God? Or can you run to Jesus while you're struggling and while you're failing?

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Romans 5 says that, "But God demonstrates His own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.(...) I heard a preacher say, in my 20s, in the depth of my struggle, he said, "When you fail, run to God, not from God." And that one sentence changed my life. Because I learned that I could run to Him no matter what. He wouldn't shame me. He wouldn't turn me away. He'd wash me. He'd love me. And that was part, that was an essential part of my path to freedom, was running to Him and not feeling like I have to clean myself up first. Secondly, how big is your gospel? Is your gospel merely a gospel of a million second chances? He's the God who forgives you and that's it? Or is it a kingdom gospel that's powerful enough to set you free?

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Because the real gospel can set you free. It can change your desires, your emotions, where you actually begin to hate what you used to love and love what you used to hate. That's the gospel at work in us.

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Second Peter says, "His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of Him." Everything.

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This is not just, I used to hear people at that same university, I went to say, "This is just my thorn in the flesh, my porn addiction. This is my thorn in the flesh. God gave it to me to humble me." I go, "No, God didn't give that to you to humble you. That's the worst theology I've ever heard.

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That is from the enemy and you need to get free of that.(...) Don't settle for an addiction.

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God wants to set us free."

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Okay, how does He set us free?

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This is the part where it's just rapid fire. I'm just going to just rattle off a few of these things that helped me on my own journey. They're from the Word. The first one is overcoming lust through daily connection with the Spirit. I'm not going to go into that. These are the things we know to do, but often don't. Prayer, study of the Word, fasting. I often, when I'm talking to young adults especially, I'll say, "Have you ever tried fasting to get free of your porn addiction?" And usually they look at me like, "I've never thought of that."

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It's one of the gifts that God gives us. Okay, number two, overcoming lust through divine purpose. And I am going to spend a minute on this one because I just love it.

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Often we don't get free because there's something bigger wrong in our life and that's that we haven't grasped the mission and calling that God has placed on us. We're sitting around idle and bored. We're just bored Christians scrolling endlessly. And of course we're going to get caught in sin and addiction when we have no bigger story to live for. We have no adventure to live for.(...) The best picture of this in the Bible is David who was the adventurer.

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He was the man after God's own heart. And there came to be a time in his life in 2 Samuel where it says this, "In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Raba, but David remained in Jerusalem. One evening, David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace.

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From the roof, he saw a woman bathing." And we know the rest of the story of him and Bathsheba, adultery, murder. But don't catch how it all started off. Everyone went off to war. It even says when kings go off to war, hint, hint, hint. David, you should have been off fighting God's battles. But instead you were chilling. You were just laying there. In fact, he's laying there all the way until the evening. He's just chilling in bed until 5, 6 o'clock p.m.

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Of course you're going to fall into sin and temptation and addiction if that's how you live your life. But God has something bigger for you. He has a mission. He has something that only you can accomplish, a way for you to bring the kingdom to the earth.

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Okay, number three, and this is the last one I'm going to really comment on. We overcome lust through true intimacy.

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So we've talked about how the Bible gives us a positive vision of sex,

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but more than half of the American population is single,(...) actually for the first time in generations.

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Most people in America are now single.(...) So what does it mean to overcome lust through true intimacy for the singles? And it means that there's actually something higher than married sex, as beautiful as that is. And that's intimacy with the Creator.

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Here's something fascinating. In Proverbs 5, the chapter we read today,

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sexuality is likened to water three different times. There's a water metaphor three different times for sexual activity.(...) When Jesus meets the woman at the well in John 4,

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who's gone through five different marriages and is in an interesting relationship currently as well,

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Jesus uses the water metaphor for her broken relationships, and he also uses the water metaphor for something higher that will save her and heal her that she's never tasted before. This is what Jesus says about it. He says, "Everyone who drinks this water, the water of sexual brokenness, the water of relational brokenness, will be thirsty again." I mean, how many of us have felt that? You just get, you're never satisfied. You just stay thirsty. You need more. You need more and more and more. But Jesus goes on and he says,(...) "But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.(...) Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

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The highest pleasure we can experience in this life and the next, but in this life, is to touch the heart of God and experience his love.

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That's the positive vision that we need. We need the fear of the Lord. That's how we started it off. But we also need a positive vision of the joy and the pleasure of experiencing God's love again and again and again.

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Okay, the last points, I'm just going to rattle off. And if you guys want more, you can read the notes.(...) "Overcoming lust through transparent relationships." This is about getting real with the people around you.

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"Overcoming lust through self-control."

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"Overcoming lust through self-imposed boundaries."(...) "Overcoming lust through specialized support." And I want to say with that last one,

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if you feel like you've tried everything,(...) get help.

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There are so many counselors, therapists, that specialize in this kind of thing in our Central Valley area. And in fact, at Radiant, we have a men's group.

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If you are interested in that, email DannyCanTellMe. It's just DannyC.at radiantvisalia.com. And he can talk to you and see if the group is right for you.

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But again, I've had friends who have found this to be really life-changing.

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So don't hesitate.

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Let's pray and we'll worship and take communion.

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Jesus, would you come and just remove everything that hinders us from running to you in this area?(...) Every bit of shame, every bit of pride,

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would you come and just put a desperation in our hearts this morning to get all that you died for?

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We just say yes to that this morning in your name, Jesus.

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Yeah, amen. Thank you, Glenn, for diving deep into a really--

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(Applause) Say hard topic.

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Yeah, worship team, thanks for coming up. We are going to go into a time of prayer and communion.

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I would say for those who are like, "Whoa, a little shock and awe this morning." They're like, "Gosh, I don't know if I was ready to go there to not miss this time to go there." One of the real, I'd say,(...) challenges with even kind of being open and seeing God unearth things deep in our heart like this is that sexual immorality, sexual sin, sexual addiction, it's like personal and deep when it comes to the sin spectrum. And it's easy to feel like shame in these areas. It's like a padlock you don't have the key to that just, "I got to keep this buried. I can't open this. I can't open this. I hurts too much. I can't talk about it." How will people look at me? What will they do?

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And I'd encourage you to listen to the words of the Lord that, when he says, "Whoever finds me finds life."

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See, to hide and bury something like this is to embrace death and almost like a thousand small deaths when the Lord says, "No, I have life for you. I have something so much better." And the reality is in our deepest, darkest, most shameful moment, if you can go there in your mind at the time like, "I want no one to see me in this moment of my life." In that moment, the Lord says, "I choose you. I love you. Will you come to me?"(...) And so we're going to close with people to pray because honestly, this is not something breaking the power of sin that we do on our own. You can't pull up your bootstraps enough. None of us is good enough on our own to find life. The Lord invites us to do that through him, through his power, through the way he breaks bonds.(...) And a good start to that is to receive prayer and to even verbalize.

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Man, when we open up and invite the Lord in his light, you'd be amazed at what it can do to what you thought darkness was forever going to consume.(...) We also will have the table open and take communion. Communion really is a time to remember what the Lord has done, the price he paid to bring us this kind of freedom, where he gave his life to break the power of sin and death. And so we take the little cracker, we take the cup of grape juice to remember that he broke his body and he spilled his blood. He told his disciples at the end of his life, "Do this in remembrance of me for what I'm going to do as a reminder,(...) as a reminder that he gave his life

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so that we could have life."

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