Lust

Hello, and welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. Well, good morning, Salt Church. Is everybody awake today? Had their coffee, hot tea, whatever it is that wakes you up in the morning before you came today, I hope.

So what really happened was last week after Miranda finished, Leon and I looked at each other. We played paper, rock, scissors to see who was going to have to follow that and do this this week, and I lost. And so I am now up here speaking, and I've got to follow Miranda. And if you weren't here last week, get online, listen to it. It was powerful.

Convicting, challenging, just an amazing, amazing message on anger. And if you're anybody like me, and you have dealt with that issue your entire life, from the time that you were probably my son's age four, he's already dealing with it, man, it was a message that just, it really hit home for me. So I would encourage you, if you missed last week, to make sure you get that message online and listen to that, put it in your car. So, final installment of Kryptonite, and we get to go after something that everybody loves to talk about. One person in the house is excited, because they saw lust pop up on the screen.

I saw people sneaking out. They looked, oh boy, where is the emergency exit in this place? Yes. I know. I know.

We have locked the doors. You can't leave. I know this is hard. This is something that I have dealt with a lot in my life, and it's something that we all deal with. And the problem is, is that our world has inundated us with sex.

They have perverted, they have taken what God meant for good, and they have perverted it, and they sell it to us. And so it is a major, major deal. I gave you guys a very simple outline today, because I had some people tell me that they liked it when they didn't have an outline, so they could take notes. So, for those of you who do like to have fill in the blank, I gave you a few, but there's still some room on the notes for the back. Lust, this is your first one.

Sexual lust is a big deal. This is not some small, little, push it under the carpet. Ah, not a big deal. I can handle it. I'm strong enough.

It's not going to affect any other part of my life. Sexual lust is a big deal. And the problem is, is the world tells you that sexual lust is not a big deal. They tell you that everybody deals with it. It's okay.

What you do in the privacy of your own bedroom is your deal. What you do in the privacy of your own bathroom, or wherever it is that you go to hide in the closet, is okay. And for the world right now, they don't even have to hide it. They just do it out everywhere. I, uh, we had a college weekend here a few weekends ago.

I took my dog out, went for a walk on the beach. Y'all, disgusting. Disgusting. I've been to Spring Break, Panama City, Daytona Beach. I look back now, disgusting.

We have perverted what God meant for good. And we have taken it to a whole new level. I'm going to read a couple scriptures to you here real fast. Our main scripture is 1 Corinthians 11, 30. And out of the NLT, it says, That is why many of you are weak and sick, and some have even died.

See, we take these things that we think are small. You know, we hear about murder, and we hear about, you know, embezzlement, and we see these guys on TV getting arrested for, you know, selling drugs and having prostitute rings, and we're like, now that's bad. They're going to hell. But this little thing, it doesn't really affect me. It doesn't really affect me.

You know, maybe a little bit, but no, no, not really. And the world tells you, you're right. It's okay. It's good. Sure, no problem.

In fact, it is so inundated, it's all for free on the Internet. And guess what else, guys? Blank number two. Because I know the minute that we put Lust on the screen, most of you women went, Oh, husband. No, this is not just a male thing.

There is a reason that Danielle Steele is like one of the best, most overproduced, nasty, perverted, pornographic novelist on the planet ever. I remember when I was younger, and there used to be bookstores. Now there's really only one. But you would walk in to the bookstore, and the first thing you would see is this massive Danielle Steele novel place. And it would have all of her stuff, and on every single one, it looked like they took Gone with the Wind and mixed it with Playboy and put that on the front page.

It's real. And so, you know, wives think, Oh, it's just the men. It's just the men. They're the only ones that have a problem with lust. Well, you may lust in a different way, but it's the same thing.

Those books are just as pornographic as Playboy. Because as soon as you start reading about what that guy is doing to that girl, your mind starts moving. And you start planting seeds that you can't unplant. You will reap what you sow. So if you sow these things into your mind, eventually you will reap them.

Men, if you think, Oh, I'm just going to look just real quick. No, you're sowing. You're sowing seeds that will be reaped. It's a big deal. It's not just for males.

And, guys, this is starting young. This is starting super young. They are telling us now that the largest consumer of porn, does anybody guess what the base age is on this? 12 years old. 12 to 17 is now the largest consumer of pornography.

And we've made it so easy. Like, all they've got to do is go into their room, get on their PlayStation, pop up on the browser, and they've got everything in the world they could ever want to know. Here's the problem, guys. And I'm going to use, I love using myself as an example, because you can look at me however you want to look at me. I'm all right.

I have repented. God has corrected me. I have reaped, and I continue to reap, the consequences of my sins. When we were first married, my wife thought she was marrying an angel. She really did.

She thought, like, I was the knight in shining armor. You can ask her. She did. She had been hurt in the past a lot. She thought, oh, I have found the knight in shining armor.

If he was on a white horse, the light would shine down upon him, and this would be, like, that's what she thought she was getting. We weren't married but a couple weeks, probably. Maybe a couple months. And she found out her newfound knight in shining armor had an addiction to porn. And let me tell you what that does to someone.

To a wife who thinks she has this really amazing husband that is going to treat her better than all the other men treated her in her life up to this point, it crushes her. It crushed her. We still deal with the pain. We still deal with the pain. We still deal with the pain.

We still deal with the pain. We still deal with the pain. We still deal with the pain. We still deal with the pain. We still deal with the pain.

We still deal with the pain. The consequences of that. Because my wife went from thinking, here's this guy who loves me for who I am, who loves me. You know, we didn't have sex before we were married. She thought, he just loves me for me.

I'm not just a body to him. I'm not just a sexual object to him. And when she found that out, that image of her face and her weeping will forever be burned in my heart. It crushed me. Absolutely crushed me.

But guys, here's the deal. We still in our marriage are dealing with that. Almost, what are we at now? 16? 16 years.

We've been to hell and back a couple of times together, but 16 years and that seed that was sown two months into our marriage is still reaping consequences. There are things that just take years to overcome. It takes years for someone who has dealt with the stuff that she dealt with in her childhood, for when she sees this from her husband, it takes years to be healed from that. And guys, I believe in a supernatural, miraculous God. I do.

And we have prayed. She has been prayed for. And I believe that God is working in her and healing her. And there will be a day that she will be whole, but we are still dealing with it. It still affects us.

I still have to be very careful how I approach my wife. Because I know in the back of her mind, she still has this memory of her knight in shining armor falling off his horse. But we try to make it not a big deal. It's like, ah, it's all right. You know, my sex life and marriage is not all that great.

And so, you know, my wife's really not meeting my needs. And so I've, you know, it's okay if I go over here to meet these needs. Here's the problem. And this is why we're dealing with this in 12 to 17 year olds. Is that when you do that, it produces these chemicals in your brain that have the same effect as a drug.

You get the same high as a drug. And that is why there is an addiction to pornography. Because you literally are addicted. You could be a crack addict. You could be addicted to any other drug.

Any of them. It is the same release of chemicals. And so you get this high for just a brief moment. And so you keep coming back. And you keep coming back.

And you keep coming back. And we keep telling ourselves, I'm not really doing anything wrong. I'm not really affecting myself. Nothing's really going to come of this. My wife's okay with this because this just means she doesn't have to have sex with me as often.

There's women this affects the same way whose husband might not be as sexually driven. And so, oh, it's okay. You know, he doesn't really take care of me. He doesn't romance me the way that, you know, I deserve to be romanced. And so I can read these books.

Or I can, guys, one in six women have an addiction to pornography right now. It ain't a man thing. It has crossed boundaries. And so you deal with the same thing. And we just think, ah, it's all right.

It's okay. It's not. When it starts affecting our men and our young girls that early, let me tell you what it does. Because I can tell you from experience. It warps the expectation of what marriage is supposed to be.

Young boys think marriage is all about sex. We're going to do it there. We're going to do it here. We're going to do it this way. We're going to do it that way.

We laugh. But the truth is, that's what happens. You have these pictures that are in your mind. And men, let's raise your hand if you know the truth. We are visual people.

And when those visions are implanted in your brain, they don't go away. I was in a small group a few, man, it's been about 10 years ago. This guy starts weeping. We were addressing lust with the men. This dude just starts weeping next to me.

We're like, dude, what is up? Man, I have been thinking about another girl every time I have sex with my wife now for the last two years. Like, making love to his wife that had just had a little girl. And he's thinking about another woman. He's thinking about these other visions, these other pictures that have been put in his head for who knows how long.

He's allowed them to go in there. He's allowed them to be put into his mind. And so here he is, a Christian man. And he is struggling with an addiction. And he doesn't even have to go look at the, open up a magazine or look at the TV anymore.

He doesn't even have to get on his computer because it's like a Rolodex in his head. All those women he had sex with before he got married. Guys, this is why God says that you abstain until marriage. I know that's not a popular thing right now. They'd rather teach safe sex.

But here's the deal. The reason that you abstain before marriage is because the last thing you want to do is be making love to someone that you really love, that you want to spend the rest of your life with, and your mind is showing you pictures of somebody else. You do not want to put expectations on a person that they cannot meet. And pornography is what does that. And it sets us up with this lust where, man, you come home and it's like uncontrollable at times.

And then we turn on the TV and it's like, oh, there's Victoria's Secret. And now it's not just Victoria's Secret. There's like eight different bra commercials. I have to like have a pillow ready at all times when I'm watching TV because it's like in front of my face. My wife used to like reach over and cover my eyes.

And now I know I can hear the music and it's like, whoop. Like don't watch that. Don't see that. Because if you do, you're implanting these things in your head and it causes this urge. It brings up this chemical thing in your head, in your body, that is just like a drug.

Real quick, if you are not a Christian, this really doesn't totally apply to you. Because until you've given your heart to the Lord and you're walking the walk, God doesn't expect you or hold you to the same standards that he holds Christians to. I hope that by the end of this, you'll hear something and go, man, no wonder I'm so screwed up and I need help. And I'm going to show you at the end how to get help, the only help that you can really get for this. But Christians, this is for us.

Like we forget so often that like when Paul is addressing everybody in the New Testament, he comes to the lost in love and care and grace. Yes. When he addresses the church, there's love and grace. But he wants you to fulfill what God has for you. And if we don't walk the walk, God can't use us in the way that he wants us to be used.

That's just real. Like you wonder why we teach these things, why we've done this kryptonite thing, why we keep trying to help you stay connected to the power source of the Holy Spirit and connected to God is because, man, if you're not connected to the power source, if you allow kryptonite to push you away and draw you away from the Holy Spirit, man, you can't do what God's called you to do. You can't walk in power if you are disconnected from the power source. And that's what lust does. Man, it clouds your mind.

You sit down to try to have your quiet time and you're sitting in a room by yourself and you're sitting there trying to read Acts or you're sitting there trying to read Psalms or Proverbs and your mind starts moving and you're like, I'm by myself. It's dark. My wife's asleep. Or I'm in a hotel room because I travel for work and no one's around. And all of a sudden, these thoughts begin to go and they begin to spin and it takes over.

And all of a sudden, this need for this chemical begins to like pump. And before you know it, you've gone from having your quiet time and talking to God, it's real. Like it's real. I always know when I'm hitting the nerve because this place gets cold. Leon and I kind of joked the other day.

He's like, you know, I've driven enough people out with this lust message. It's your turn. At least I can blame it on you if four or five people leave after this. It's all right. I'm going to preach the truth anyway.

Lust is a bestseller, and we buy it hook, line, and sinker. We buy in. We buy in hook, line, and sinker, man, and that Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition comes out. I don't even want to know the number of Christian homes that goes to. I don't even want to know the number of godly men who are like, ah, it's just a swimsuit edition, or we're not Victoria's Secrets.

Women, if you have a Victoria's Secrets catalog coming to your house, cancel it. If you get any type of lingerie magazine that comes to your house, get rid of it. Help your husband out. And I know we can sit here and say, oh, I don't make him stumble. No, I'm just being real with you.

You're not helping your husband, or your boyfriend, or whoever. You are not helping them. You are setting a stumbling block up. And it takes a long time. It takes walking in a serious place with the Holy Spirit to be able to just pick that up and throw it away and walk away.

Because naturally our eyes are drawn to it. You pick it up, and it's like just a quick glance, and then you're like, oh, man, I hope my wife buys that. Here's the problem. Most of our wives don't look like that, even if they bought it. That's not a shot at women.

That's real. Those women are painted. Those women are like the top 3%. Maybe one. Maybe half.

I don't know. I have not done a survey on this. This is not a statistical analysis. I'm just throwing a low number out there. But now Miranda is telling me it was not low enough.

So we'll go, maybe these are the top 0.3%, and they're painted. And so here's what happens. These women that are looking at me like, oh, I don't think I should have to do that. Here's the deal.

So if you don't have that same body, and your husband sees that, and he gets this expectation in his head, and then you walk in, and you think, I'm going to knock him out. I got some lingerie. And you walk in, and he sees you. He is trying really, really hard to think, man, my wife is hot. But if you have allowed yourself to plant the seeds of lust, your wife's standing there, and you might be seeing somebody else.

Here is why that is so disgusting, whether it's a man or a woman. It's because God has this purpose for you. He has this person for you. This is not just a woman. This is a sister.

This is a princess of the Most High God. Like you're not just messing with this flesh and blood person. When you do that to her, or you do that to him, and you demean them in that manner, God's watching. He knows. He sees it.

We're supposed to care for each other, lift each other up, value each other. And when we begin to demean, when we allow lust to take over, that's not what happens. It is not what happens. Because you become exposed to a sexual impurity. And that impurity doesn't just go away.

It doesn't just disappear. It injures you. It gives you a mental injury. It's not a temporary thing. And so we see these things and we think, ah, no big deal, no big deal, no big deal.

But we don't realize we're doing permanent damage to our heart and our mind. Man, and when your thoughts are dealing with this all the time, guys, you can't even turn on like TBS. Like, it's not like there's like a safe place. Drive down the highway. If you're coming from Norfolk back to Virginia Beach, I know where it's at and I stay in the left lane.

And you may, I know some of you guys know me and you guys know I am, because of what I have been through, things like I just shared with you and things with my wife, I go over the top protective mode and prevention mode because I'm still dealing with consequences from these kind of issues. And so I'm the guy who like, you're looking at, you're thinking, why is he like, keep not looking that direction as he's driving down the highway? It's because I know Hooters has a billboard right here. And I know that anybody in here who commutes between here and Norfolk, you know exactly what I'm talking about because I've seen it 8,000 times in the last 20 years. It's been there forever.

And it's some young girl with big boobs. That's what they put up there. Why? They want you to come in and they know how to get you there. It isn't about the wings.

Now here's the deal. I make my wife go and get wings and bring them back to me because I do like their sauce. But that's not why people go there. That's not why, if your husband is telling you I'm going for the wings, honey, we're going to watch the game, I pull him aside real quick. Yeah.

And if your woman is reading Danielle Steele and she tells you it's because she likes the writing style, it's because when you walk in with your beer belly and your hair and you like make that provocative pose somewhat sarcastically in the doorway, she is now picturing Fabio. Wind blowing in the air. It's real. Like we can joke, but it is flat out real. And it does damage to our marriage and it does damage to our souls.

And most importantly, it hinders God from using us the way that he wants to use us. Guys, that's the, we talked about this a few Wednesdays ago. I may have shared this in the last message. We had an incredible conversation at our small group deeper on Wednesday night at my house. Shameless plug.

And we talked about the reason that we're going over these things. The reason we're doing these things is because God has a greater purpose for you. It's not just about your job. It's not just about your marriage. It's not just about this.

God wants to use you in mighty, powerful ways. He has anointed you. He has a specific purpose for your life. And if you allow kryptonite to weaken you, to draw you away, to pull you away, guess what? You can't do it.

If you're not, it is seriously, talk to Pastor Leon. I will be more than happy to tell you. I'm sure Miranda would, my wife would, Alex would, anybody who has been a part of this ministry now for a couple of years, it is impossible to deal with what comes with ministry if you are not walking in the power of the Holy Spirit. Because you will get devoured if you try to walk it in the flesh. So we have this injury.

We become conflicted. We're looking at this stuff. It gets these chemicals going. And then our heart and the spirit is like convicting us. And we're in this turmoil.

And it's like, there's this part of us that goes, I want to look at this. I want to look at this. I want to read this. I want to see this. I want to hear this.

And there's part of us inside that is going, you are not supposed to do this. This is hurting you. This is bad for you. Turn it off. Run.

And so we become conflicted. So now we have this impurity in us. We have this injury to us. We're conflicted. We don't know what to do.

We're telling ourselves it's okay. It's not hurting anyone. My wife just isn't meeting my needs. And so this is how I'm handling this. And this way I don't go out and have a real affair.

Let me help you out with that. Jesus tells you in the New Testament, if you even look upon a woman with lustful laws, if you even look upon a man with lustful thoughts, you have had an affair. So there is a lot of men running around who think, I've never had an affair, because I was ever actually with a woman. But let me help you out with this. If you open that Playboy, since you've been married, or you looked at that thing on the computer, or you opened up Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, and you had any type of lustful thought, and let me tell you, if you intentionally open up the Swimsuit Edition, or you pick up that Victoria's Secret catalog, and you look at it just a little bit too long, you're gonna be lusting.

See, Jesus took the standard and said, whoosh! And so that's where we end up. We end up addicted to this stuff, because we have this chemical thing going on in our head, and we don't realize the damage it is doing to us. We don't realize the damage it's doing to our soul. We don't realize the damage that we're doing to us as a vessel of the Most High God.

We just don't. And so what it leads to is just a life of frivolous sexual impurity, because it doesn't take much to get from that to an actual affair. Well, it's just for sex anyway. I still love my wife. I still love my husband.

They're just not meeting my needs. You know, I still love him. I just need somebody to really make me feel better about myself. It doesn't take much, guys. That's the thing about Satan.

He lies. He deceives. He twists the truth. And so he wants to feed these little bitty tiny things to you that you think you can put under the rug, that you think that you can walk past, that you think you can dance around. And what you don't understand is here is our power source.

Here is God. Here is the Holy Spirit. And slowly but surely, this kryptonite is pulling us the other direction. And before you know it, you're dead. And it could be in terms of physical or spiritual death.

You're dead. You're lifeless. Because that's where we end up. So what's the solution to this? First and foremost, you need to clean the wound.

How many know that hurts? How many have any idea what I'm about to say you need to do when it comes to cleaning the wound? There's this R word that we really don't like. It's called repentance. It's called we have to repent.

I was part of a men's group and our leader one time said, listen, if you have had an addiction to porn, I would not tell your wife about it. You're just going to cause more damage than good. You weren't really hurting her. It's God you really need to repent to. I disagree 110%.

Guys, if I had dealt with it and repented of it early on when I knew it was a problem in my teenage years, my marriage to my wife would be much different. I would have not injured her in the way that I injured her. And now both of us are having to deal with this injury together. Repentance, it requires not just turning away from what you're doing, but it requires running back to God. Like people think repentance is I just got to stop what I'm doing.

No, no, no, no. Sin takes us away from God. Repentance requires us to turn and run back to him. And what that means is standing in front of somebody that you love the most and saying, I am so sorry. I have a problem.

I have this issue. I need help. I need God to come in and clean this wound out. I need to scrape this to the core so I can be healed. And so it requires repentance.

Guys, if you have ever known anybody addicted to anything, the first false belief is I can do it on my own. Right? Like how many people addicted to anything do you know who became clean and they just did it on their own? If you do, it was a miraculous thing. Because everybody I know needed help.

They needed people standing by them, standing with them so that when they were driving by that bar that they used to go to, they would call and say, I am really, really having an urge right now. I want to go in and get a drink so bad. I had a really bad day. And that person says, no, go to the coffee shop. I'll meet you there right now.

I'm coming. We have to have that. And so as we are cleaning this out, as we repent, we need to find somebody to walk this out with. We repent before God. We repent before the people that we have hurt, the people that we have offended.

That is a biblical thing. And then the other biblical thing is that you walk this out with brothers and sisters who keep you accountable. That you can call in the middle of the night when you're at a hotel on the West Coast, away from your wife or husband, and you're having these thoughts, and it's, man, I need help. I'm about to lose it. Bro, I need you to pray for me right now.

I've had those phone calls. I've made those phone calls. And they'll walk it out with you. Let me pray for you right now, brother. Let me sit here.

I will talk to you until I bore you to death. In fact, let me read Leviticus to you. You'll be asleep in 10 minutes. The second is we have to protect the wound. Like, when you get a cut, as a matter of fact, I have one.

I got one the other day doing a walkthrough on a house. I sliced my finger open. Really, really good. Bleeding like crazy. So the first thing I did was do what?

I cleaned it out. I took peroxide, dumped it on it, burned myself, ran around like a little kid. Like, dancing like crazy because it hurt. Dried it off, put it under a fan, get it nice and dry. And then I've had a Band-Aid on it for two days to protect it, to keep other stuff from getting in it.

You have to protect it. How do we protect a wound? If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. Like, guys, we have to make the choice to remove these things from our life.

If you're having issues with your computer, get rid of it. Or hand it to your spouse and say, hey, listen, I can't get on this unless you're around me. You know what, honey? Cable just got to go. That HBO thing that we've had now, I've been dealing with that a lot.

The temptation is there. It's got to go. I'll just have to read Leviticus more. I know I'm hitting Leviticus really hard, but I know that when you read through the Bible and you see Leviticus pop up, you think to yourself, dear Lord, I need your strength to get through this. So then we prevent further wounding.

Guys, the Bible tells us to flee temptation. It doesn't say, stand and let the Holy Spirit give you strength for temptation. It says, flee it. So when you know that there's temptation, you run from it. Another very overprotective thing that I do, it is very rare when we have a babysitter at our house that you'll find me in the house the same time as a babysitter.

Until I have a relationship with that person that I know really, really well. We used to have a babysitter. Her name was Madi. She was actually here last weekend as a guest. She used to come over to our house and babysit.

I would get home before my wife. Or if I knew she was coming and I was leaving to go meet my wife, I would be done early waiting for her on the porch, let her in, and I would leave. I wasn't overly attracted to Madi, but I know how Satan works. And I'm not going to give him a bit of room. I'm not going to crack the door for him.

Man, if my computer is causing me to stumble, if there is, I had a friend who had an affair at work. His wife was a stunner. I mean, flat out stunner. He married way up. Like, way up.

I mean, I married way up. This dude married like he was really ugly. He married way up. Ask my wife. They were our neighbors.

She's shaking her head yes. And when we found out he was having an affair with this person, we looked. I looked at him as men and went, what is wrong with you? But he opened the door. He hung around a little too long.

They went to coffee one day, and she opened up, and he opened up. And it wasn't about physical attraction. It was about a need that was met. And it opened the door for other things. And so you flee it.

Don't turn on the TV. If you've got an issue with pornography on your phone, man, woman, it doesn't matter, go get a flip phone. They sell them again. It's like the new fad. They are coming back.

And you know what? I want one. Get rid of that junk. No Facebook, no Instagram, no Twitter. I don't have to do any of that.

Give me a flip phone. It removes all that crap. Guys, run. I'm not saying this lightly. Women, run.

If there is a guy at your gym, or there is a guy at your work who's showing you a little too much attention, and you're married, or you're engaged, run. Hey, boss, I can, I, that dude, I know he's a nice guy, but he's just showing a little too much attention. I got to move desks. Or, or, hey, listen, man, I like you. You're a great guy.

Please don't talk if you're jogging, and a really beautiful woman jogs back the other direction. Just keep running as fast as you can. All of a sudden, oh, I got to turn around right here too. I'm single. It's okay.

No, it's not. You are objectifying a daughter of God. You don't know her. You're just trying to put that picture in your mind for later. If you can't go to the beach, if you got issues with bikinis, and you, and you have those issues, don't go to the beach.

Don't do it. Run from it. We flee from the very appearance of evil, and what we do instead is we pursue a life of God. Ephesians 4 18 says they are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. So we run to this because we feel lonely, because we feel like we need something, because we feel like our spouse is not meeting these needs for us, and the whole time Satan is just sitting there laughing.

Laughing. I got him. And it starts so young. For me, it started at like 16, and I had this lie in my head that I was telling myself, and it, it, something I didn't even think about. My marriage 10, 15 years down the road.

I wasn't even thinking about that. Satan had me right where he wanted me for years. For years. So guys, we have, as we're finishing this up, you know, there has been a lot of really good ones. Lying, pride, gossip, anger, lust.

Am I missing one? Which one? Those are it? And maybe you don't deal with lust. Maybe lust is not your main deal.

All of us deal with it. So if you're saying, oh, I have no problem with lust, then you have a problem with lust. Kind of like when I talked about pride. If you heard me say pride and you went, oh, that's for my neighbor, that's really for you. Same with this one.

Same with all the other ones. But guys, here's the deal. We have an opportunity. We've gone through this kryptonite. We now understand, man, maybe, maybe you, this is the first time you've heard these kind of messages, and you now really understand the power that these kryptonites can have in drawing you away from the power of the Holy Spirit.

Maybe you're here today, and, and you're not a Christian, and you're hearing this, and you're going, no wonder I struggle with all of these things. No wonder my life is such a wreck. No wonder I keep, I can't get right, because I am so cut up in all of these things, and God is over here, and wants me, and I'm just, I'm, I'm like covered in kryptonite. I'm, I'm held to the ground by this massive ball of kryptonite. But we have an opportunity.

One of my favorite verses, Psalms 1, 39, 23, and 24, says, search me, oh God, and know my heart. Test me, and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in it that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life. Everlasting life. See, that's, that's the deal.

This isn't just a like, oh, run from this kryptonite so you can have an okay life. Run from this kryptonite, you know, so, so you can be happy. It's run from the kryptonite. Avoid the kryptonite. Flee the kryptonite so you can have an everlasting life.

So you can lead an abundant life. So you can be used by God in ways you can't even fathom. I see people all the time in here, and they come in to serve, and they think, oh, I'm just putting up curtains, or this is, this is just what I do. You know, I'm not really ever going to do, I'm never really going to preach. You don't know that.

I'm, I'm never really going to be Seth, who's this amazing evangelist and walks in power all the time. You don't know that. I, I, you know, I, I've never picked up an instrument, and I, I could never be up on the stage. Yes, you can. Get up here.

Another shameless plug. Guys, here's the deal. God has something for you. He has something so much bigger, so much better than you can possibly fathom, and he wants to use you to affect other people. He wants to grow his kingdom.

He wants to change this city. Guys, Salt Church is not here to come here and just hear good messages every Sunday and go home. We are here because God called us here. He gave Leon a vision, not just for a hundred people in Salt, to change the city of Virginia Beach. That requires you.

That requires men and women walking in the power of the Holy Spirit so they can be used by God. That requires us fleeing from these things that feel so good in the moment, but are destroying us. So if you'll stand with me, I want all of us, we're going to pray that verse. And my prayer is that as we pray this verse, I want you to have an open heart. I want you to be open to these last six weeks, five weeks, and allow God to really point out to you that place that you need to go to work, that place that you need to dig out the roots, that place that Satan has had your number.

And I want you to allow the Lord to speak to you, and I want this to be a declaration, a prayer. Lord, man, take this from me. Show me this and then take it from me. So we're going to read this, we're going to pray this, and then I've got a couple more prayers, and then we'll close it out. Please close your eyes, bow your heads, and pray this with me.

Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out, doubt anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life. Lord, right now I pray for these people today. Lord, I pray that if they've had the same conviction that I've had as I heard last week's message, and I heard the week before with Pastor Leon, Lord, that this wouldn't just be a cool note card that we stick above our visor, Lord, but this would be something.

Lord, we would, we would ask you to give us the power to overcome it. Lord, let us dig deep. Let us root this out. Lord, let us walk in power. Let it, Lord, let this be not a people who are okay living medium.

But people who want to walk according to your path, and want to walk according to your purpose, and want to fulfill the mission that you have for them, Lord. Lord, I pray that if there is anybody here right now struggling with lust, Lord, that they would repent, or they would find accountability, Lord, and they would flee it as fast as they can. Lord, if they've been dealing with anger, if they've been dealing with gossip, Lord, that you would root those things out of our hearts, Lord, and purify us. So that we can be vessels worthy of you working through. And lastly, if you're here today, I know this was a harsh message.

But maybe you're here today, and you heard this, and you thought, man, now I know. I've been struggling. I'm addicted to these things. I'm addicted to porn. And that causes me to be angry, because I don't want to look at this stuff.

And man, I'm angry all the time, and my pride has the best of me, and I'm just, I'm caught up in all this. I have the answer for you. His name is Jesus Christ. It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit you can overcome these things. It is only by God walking with you, walking beside you, holding you up, that you can overcome these things.

You cannot do it on your own. And so if you're here today, and you do not know Jesus Christ, and you want to know him, you want to have that relationship with him that you've seen these other people have, you want to have that power to overcome, with all eyes closed, with all heads bowed, just raise your hand. Guys, this is a decision that won't just change this. It will change your life for eternity. If you're here and you didn't want to raise your hand because you're a little bit scared, you're going to get called out, that's okay.

Just pray this with me anyway. Lord, search my soul. Forgive me of my sins, Lord. Cleanse me and make me whole. I believe that your son Jesus Christ died on the cross.

I believe that it was his victory that brought my victory over sin and death. Lord, give me your Holy Spirit today to dwell inside of me, that I can walk in this power, that I can walk in this freedom, and that I can make Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior. Amen.