A pastor friend of mine gave one of my favorite sermons. He entitled it, “There’s No Such Thing as a Secret.” Unfortunately, this friend was living a double life. The same week he gave that sermon, he got caught acting out sexually with others and ended up losing his church.
Lust will really try to assure you that no one will ever know. Your lust is conniving and tells you that it is impossible for anyone to find out. Lust even says you have covered your tracks. I’ve counseled with men for more than 20 years, and there is one thing I know for sure: There is no such thing as a secret.
Here are a few facts. First, God is omnipresent and He sees you lusting. Second, He can see your heart and thoughts. Third, His Holy Spirit is in you, so there is no place to keep a secret. Fourth, the angels can see what you are doing. Fifth, as Hebrew 12:1 says: “Therefore, since we are encompassed with such a great cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” Sixth, your computer keeps a history of where you have been.
I live in Colorado, and while we have a very dry climate most of the year, we do have occasional flash floods. Wise home and business owners prepare in the beginning of summer by making sure to have sandbags on hand to minimize the damage these flash floods can cause.
Our culture is getting more perverse by the decade. We could easily say we live in a lust-storm culture. Think about what we visually ingest on a daily basis. We have television, commercials and the internet at home, at work, and in our pocket. There are pop culture magazines, billboards, and I’m not even talking about the lack of discretion many women have when it comes to dressing appropriately.
What are you doing to block the lust storm in your world? It’s amazing to me how many guys who admit to struggling with lust still don’t have porn blockers or accountability software on their computers, phones and tablets. This one step is the easiest to take, and yet so many men fail to take it. Make a decision today to stop having a secret life and begin to fight the battle of lust with this simple but highly effective tool.
Make yourself accountable to your pastor, wife, father-in-law or friend. They will get a report that shows everywhere you go on the internet. By doing this, you are destroying the grip lust has over your life and eliminating the secret life that has been holding you captive.
Lust is conniving in trying to keep you stuck in this secret lifestyle. Lust makes you believe you have powers you don’t have so that you can have your way with lustful thoughts. There is a lie lust breathes into your life that allows you to incubate the seed. That’s the lie of; “As long as I don’t ______ ” then lust lets you fill in the blank. This lie makes you believe that, “As long as I don’t ________”: look at women at church; look at real women, just pictures; don’t participate in sex acts with them; don’t touch them; don’t get caught or don’t pay for it, it’s OK. This list can be endless. You believe that as long as you don’t cross some self-created line, you are OK and your “secret” is safe. In my experience, at some point, those who buy this lie of having a line end up moving it or allow it to become blurry because it has become too tangled.
Remember, Jesus said our secrets will be shouted from the rooftops (see Luke 12:3). If you still believe in secrets, you will get caught and humiliated. Many men who had faith in their secrets rather than faith in God ended up getting caught. Don’t believe the lie of a secret. A secret is the perfect growing material for the seed of lust. Remember, you create the seed of lust. You give it the shade of false secrecy, and you can choose to live lust-free instead.
Doug Weiss, Ph.D., is a nationally known author, speaker and licensed psychologist. He is the executive director of Heart to Heart Counseling Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the author of several books, including Lust Free Living. You may contact Dr. Weiss via his website, drdougweiss.com or on his Facebook, by phone at 719-278-3708 or through email at [email protected].
