Good morning,
As part of our reflections on" Seven Deadly sins" we will look at the sin of "Lust". Lust in Greek is an impulsive, passionate desire. We are called to have a deep passion toward God. Psalm 42:1-2, "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?"
Lust has been described as an agitated longing, a frightening craving, an out of touch desire for something or someone that is not yours. It is a desire to possess, to own, to consume without caring about the needs or feelings of any other being or the will of God. Lust is a form of passion that has been misdirected and twisted by the power of sin. It is taking a beautiful gift of God and making it an terrible sin. Because it never satisfies, lust leads to greater perversion.
Romans 1:25-27, "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Concentrate on honoring the Lord with your thoughts, emotions, and every action and avoid tempting situations. "Flee sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside of his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Therefore, honor God with your body and spirit, which are God’s." (I Cor. 6:18-20) "Love not the world neither the things in the world for all that is in the world the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not of the Father but is from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever." (I John 2:15,16)
"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards God?" (James 4:1-4)
Consider how lust wars against one’s inner well being, peace. "Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul" (I Pet. 2:11). As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance" ( I Pet. 1:14). "Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart" (2 Tim. 2:22). "Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary to one another: so you cannot do the things that you please" (Gal. 5:16,17).
Paul wrote, "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. Teaching us that, denying godliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world" (Titus 2:11,12).
"For sin will not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace" (Romans 6:14). We can only live by grace through the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Paul Harvey tells the story of how an Eskimo kills a wolf. The account is grisly, yet it offers fresh insight into the consuming, self-destructive nature of sin. "First, the Eskimo coats his knife blade with animal blood and allows it to freeze. Then he adds another layer of blood, and another, until the blade is completely concealed by frozen blood.
"Next, the hunter fixes his knife in the ground with the blade up. When a wolf follows his sensitive nose to the source of the scent and discovers the bait, he licks it, tasting the fresh frozen blood. He begins to lick faster, more and more vigorously, lapping the blade until the keen edge is bare. Feverishly now, harder and harder the wolf licks the blade in the arctic night. So great becomes his craving for blood that the wolf does not notice the razor-sharp sting of the naked blade on his own tongue, nor does he recognize the instant at which his insatiable thirst is being satisfied by his OWN warm blood. His carnivorous appetite just craves more--until the dawn finds him dead in the snow!"
It is a fearful thing that people can be "consumed by their own lusts." Only God’s grace keeps us from the wolf’s fate.
In Christ,
Brown
Actual analogies and metaphors . . .
Actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays:
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E.coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.
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