(this is a blog i wrote in the ukraine about four months ago. i havent changed anything, and it’s been sitting, waiting to be posted. so here it is, way late…and an update on where i am today will follow in just a bit)
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some of Satan’s best deception isn’t found in his lies, it’s in the way we hear the truth he tells us. and example is in genesis 3:5. Satan tells man, “God knows that when you eat of the tree, your eyes will be opened, and you’ll be like God, knowing good and evil.” It’s true. their eyes were opened. they did understand good AND evil from that point. but the sad reality is that before that, they knew good…and God protected them from evil. the only thing new Satan brought to the conversation was evil…but he packaged it real nice, disguised in truth.
for a few days i’ve been thinking about that passage in relation to the stronghold of lust and comparison or image found here in ukraine. lust is taking the good thing God created known as love, and giving us a cheaper way to arrive at the feelings or pleasure or joy or hope found in it…but coming on it’s tails is a slew of evil. hurt. depression. insecurity. broken relationships. and the list goes on and on.
talking with a friend who had an unfortunate run in with a man a few weeks back, he explained that this country has been tormented by American men coming to ukraine for sex tourism. he explained how the pursuit of “no strings” satisfaction has led to a broken country, to bitterness, and to women who have had their value stolen.
and when women find their value through their pursuit by men…especially men desiring little more than to use them, it’s no wonder the girls on our teams are struggling with image in this atmosphere as well. we’ve defined beauty so poorly. men were created in the garden to define beauty through the woman God has designed them to commit to for a lifetime. one’s wife should be their standard of beauty. we’ve defined love so incorrectly. we’ve been told to guard love, to not awaken it until it so desires. but instead we flirt with our heart and our emotions and our passions, often crossing lines we have no business toeing in the first place.
so i ask where lust stems from? satan is using a variety of root issues – be it insecurity in who we are supposed to become as men, be it past rejection by women and an inability to find acceptance thru Christ, a false understanding of beauty, misdirected affection or an unanswered cry for affection, or numerous other roots – and has led us to a dangerous outlet. almost every man i’ve ever met struggles with lust in some degree. for some it’s as simple as noticing a beautiful woman on the street and letting his eyes gaze at her a second too long. for others, it goes as far as pornography, masturbation, or even engaging with others in their sin.
but that’s what makes it such a tricky sin. the root is different for each guy
i dont have all the answers, but i love that in the same chapter that man fell, God was already active in redeeming them. I heard a man say recently, “before we fell in Adam, we were redeemed in Christ. mankind has never been without redemption.” in genesis 3:22 it says, “Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever- therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.”
God understood that he had given us a good thing. he also knew that we now had sin, that we now had evil. so instead of allowing us to live in sin forever, by reaching out for that tree of life, he graciously kicked us out of the garden to receive redemption. i think in the area of lust, God is asking to give us a swift kick in the pants, as an act of grace. he’s asking us to understand that there’s redemption from the knowledge of evil. we dont need to know anything but the good, now that Christ conquered sin and death on the cross.
