The following two articles both recently appeared by Paul Tripp closely related to our miniseries on sex. The first is an opinion piece he wrote for Fox News. The second appeared on his Wednesday Word. They both fit nicely with the topic of sex as we have been discussing. Many men and occasionally women struggle with an inordinate desire for sex. Our friend Paul helps us think through this issue.
Sex is not the problem, THIS is: How to avoid the dangerous road of addiction
When it comes to sex, we’ve gone culturally insane. Just think about how much sexually explicit and sexually driven material is pushed in front of your eyes every day.
With all of this so readily available, it’s very tempting to blame sex, societal values, the mainstream media, or technology as the problem. But here’s the humbling truth: sex is not the problem, nor is our environment the primary problem.
The act of sex, as God designed, is beautiful and rewarding – not evil. And we can’t try to live as modern-day monastics, as if retreating from the TV and Internet would suddenly cure our hearts from sexual sin.
The counterintuitive reality is that it’s only ever the evil inside our hearts that magnetizes us to the evil that’s outside in our world. Likewise, it’s only ever our sin that turns pure gifts from the Creator into dangerous idols.
In summary, we are the problem. More specifically, our heart, and what it asks of sex, is the problem.
If you look to something that God created to give you what it wasn’t intended to give, either you get discouraged quickly and wisely abandon those hopes, or you go back again and again, and in so doing, begin to travel down the dangerous road toward addiction.
Sex will give you a short-term buzz of pleasure, and it may even make your problems seem to disappear momentarily, but you’ll hate how short it is. So you’ll have to go back again quickly to get another shot, and before long you’ve spent way too much time, energy, and money on something that can’t satisfy.
Because of what it has briefly done for you each time, you’re convinced that you can’t live without it. You’re hooked, because the thing you once desired, you’re now persuaded you need, and once you’ve named it as a need, it has you in its addictive grip.
However, sex has no capacity to satisfy your heart. In a word, it cannot be your savior.
If you look outside of the Savior for something to be your savior, that thing will end up being not your savior, but your master. The sexual pleasure you hoped would serve you pulls you into its service. What seemed like freedom ends up being bondage.
You see, sex has never the problem; what we’ve asked of it is.
Is there wisdom in protecting ourselves (and others) from what we see? Absolutely. But our sex madness needs to be dealt with spiritually and theologically for us to experience lasting sanity.
I want to end with this question: Are you asking sex – or something else that God created – to provide for you what only Jesus can offer?
Sex is glorious, but it was created to be a sign that points you to the one glory you were designed to live for and that can truly satisfy your soul — the glory of God.
What Do You Desire Most?
You and I are creatures of desire. We do not live by biological, animal-like instinct. God designed us with the capacity to desire. It is good and right to desire, seek, and want. There would be something wrong with you if you did not.
But you must be aware of your desires and how they shape your life. There is nothing you ever choose, do, or say that is not first the product of desire.
Remember this biblical principle: whatever desire rules your heart will ultimately control your words and behavior.
Desire forms your moments of greatest joy and darkest grief. Desire makes you envious of one person while being glad you’re not another. Desire keeps you awake at night or puts you soundly to sleep.
Desire makes you expectant and hopeful in one moment and demanding and complaining in the next. Desire sometimes makes you susceptible to temptation and at other times is the thing that defends you against it. Desire can make you the best of friends or cause you to drive people away.
Desire can cause you to lovingly edit your vocabulary or allow you to let it rip with little regard for the damage your words will do. Desire will make you willing to give or cause you to hoard everything you have.
Whatever desire rules your heart will control your words and behavior.
You cannot allow yourself to think that the war for godliness is merely a war of behavior. If you fight the battle of behavior on its own, the battle will not be won. You must be willing to fight the spiritual fight at the place where your behavior is formed – in the desires of the heart. (See James 4:1-4 and 1 Peter 2:11).
How are you doing in your battle with desire? I don’t know about you, but it’s tempting for me to say that I desire God alone, when in fact at the street level, my life is shaped by the anxious pursuit of other things.
Could you say, like Asaph in Psalm 73:25,
“Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.”
Does this sound ethereal and impractically super-spiritual? Does it feel like a moral impossibility?
Don’t be discouraged. Though it may appear as if Asaph has conquered his spiritual battle with desire, the entire Psalm is a war between anxious and selfish desire (see v. 3, 21-22, etc.) and a desire for the things of God.
Psalm 73 is an invitation for us to be honest with Asaph about the desires of our heart. Will you be honest and humble today? Will you cry out for help once more and seek God’s rescue and power?
There are times when Jesus is our priceless treasure, but there are other times when we would rather have other things than him. This means we cannot quit seeking his help until the day when we can say with complete singleness of heart,
“Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
Dr. Paul David Tripp is a pastor, speaker, marriage counselor, and award-winning author. With more than 20 books on Christian living, including the best-selling “What Did You Expect?” His driving passion is to connect the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life. Paul and his wife Luella live in Philadelphia; they have been married for 47 years and have four grown children.
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