[b]Watch your thought life with all diligence[i]by Zac Poonen
Every young person is sooner or later tempted by unclean
thoughts. The sexual urge being stronger and more aggressive
in men than in women, the former face this problem much more
than the latter do. In Mark 7:21, Jesus listed evil
thoughts as the first things that proceed from the heart of men.
The hearts of all unconverted men are equally wicked
and so the description Jesus gave is true of all. Unclean
thoughts plague the mind of the morally upright man as much
as they do the mind of the adulterer - even though lack of
opportunity and fear of society may have prevented the
former from committing adultery in the flesh.
We need to distinguish however between temptation and sin.
Even Jesus was tempted "in every respect as we are" (Heb. 4:15).
But He never once yielded to temptation (even in His mind)
and so never sinned. We too shall be tempted till the
last day of our life on earth. But we need not sin. We sin
only when the evil desire is permitted to conceive in our
minds (James 1:15), i.e. when we accept the lustful thought
flashed into our minds. If we reject the suggestion at once,
we do not sin. As the old Puritan said, "While I cannot
prevent the birds from flying over my head, I can prevent
them from making a nest in my hair". When an evil thought
presents itself to us, if we cherish it even for a moment in
our minds, we allow it to "make a nest" there and so sin.
Lustful thinking, once indulged in, will make a person more
and more its slave. Deliverance becomes increasingly
difficult with the passage of time. The sooner we seek for
deliverance the easier it will be. Victory over evil
thoughts (like victory over all other sin) comes through an
honest confession of failure, a real longing for
deliverance, an acceptance of the fact of our death with Christ,
and an utter yieldedness of our bodies and minds to the Lord (Rom. 6.1-14).
We must also "walk in the Spirit" and cooperate with Him in
disciplining our lives, if we are to enjoy continuous
victory (Gal. 5.16-19). If we fail to discipline our eyes
and ears (cutting off all reading and seeing and hearing
that is lustful), we shall not be able to discipline our
thoughts either (this is the real implication of Matt.5:28-30).
Discipline of the body is essential for deliverance
from lustful thoughts. The greatest of saints have confessed
that they had to battle constantly with sexual temptations
in their minds. They had to discipline their bodies severely
in order to get victory.
Job, though a married man with ten children, recognized that
if he was to be delivered from lustful thinking, he had to
control his eyes. He said, "I made a covenant with my eyes
not to look with lust upon a girl" (Job 31:1-LW). For men,
the greatest temptations come through the eyes. If care is
not exercised here and an unclean thought or picture is once
allowed to enter our minds through the eye-gate, it becomes
almost impossible to remove it from there.
We must fill our minds with the Word of God - for
saturating our minds thus with God's Word is one of the
surest safeguards against evil thinking. David said, "I have
thought much about Your words, and stored them in my heart
so that they would hold me back from sin" (Psa. 119:11-LW).
The Bible also says, "If you value the approval of God, fix
your minds on the things which are holy and right and pure
and beautiful and good" (Phil. 4:8 -JBP).
Some may say that the prevailing standard of morals in the
world around us is so low that it is difficult to be totally
free from unclean thoughts. But this state of affairs is not
peculiar to the twentieth century. Corinth in the first
century was a centre of licentiousness and immorality, yet
the Spirit of God urged the Christians there to lead their
every thought captive into the obedience of Christ (2 Cor.10:5).
He tells us to do the same today. The way to life may
be narrow and difficult, but the Holy Spirit can strengthen
us to walk that way.
To discipline our lives thus, does not mean that we should
develop a repugnance for the opposite sex. Far from it! The
fact that we find the opposite sex attractive is, in itself,
not sinful. It is quite natural. It is not wrong for us to
admire a pretty face as a part of God's beautiful creation.
But being fallen creatures, if we are not careful, we shall
soon begin to notice the beautiful form and then to lust.
Thus the attractiveness of the opposite sex, though clean in itself,
can become for us, an occasion for unclean thinking.
Our safety lies in instantly obeying the voice of the Holy
Spirit within us, when He checks us and tells us to turn our
eyes and our thoughts in another direction.