Session 3: Week 3 Notes

Wisdom – To be skilled at living

TODAY'S TOPIC = LUST

While our desires and appetites can be the source of great pleasure they can often captivate and enslave us. 

By the time you are 18 researches tell us we’ll see over 70K images…this was from 8 years ago.

Temptation vs Spirit = a War we face daily

God gave us desire, our desires aren’t good or bad, it’s the direction we take with those desires.

When it comes to sex it’s not that we think about it too much it’s because we don’t think about it in the proper manner.

Pornography is a trillion dollar business.  Lust lies in our longings, and our wants.  We somehow live in the extreme where we make all things good or make all things bad.

God can take what’s broken and weak and make it strong.

1 John 2:15-17: Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.  The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

Lust – Selfish Desire, Extreme Desire, Unhealthy Obsession, Perverted Love, Strong Sexual Desire, Obsessive Craving, to fixate, to mentally objectify, misplaced or misdirected desires or appetites.  It’s not an honest appreciation, awareness or appropriate reaction to another person.

Cognitive Dissonance – Self-awareness of incorrect action or feeling.

We change our belief or we change our behavior, we struggle with recognizing the price tag of our actions.

The Price tag with lust can be: Divorce, Depression, Devalues human life. 

James 1:13-15 When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

Beauty isn’t an illusion but the world makes illusions, having us believe something that isn’t there. 

Proverbs 25:28 - Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.

We shouldn’t strive to destroy desire, we should try to redirect it.

Video Clip: Gone in 60 Seconds “Nicholas Cage talks with Giovanni Ribisi about being drawn to the wrong desires, and how they can lead to a world of where you don’t like who you are.”