Love or Lust?

Do you really want to know the difference? Will you accept Scriptural Truth if revealed to you? Are you one of the Americans that conclude sex sins are more tolerable today? The sexual freedom gained in the 60s by the pill has been lost in the 90s by AIDS. Have the Ten Commandments been changed or altered? Can the devastation upon the immoral partners be less in our sexually enlightened day?
All of us are involved in the consequences of illicit sex. In some inner-city high schools from 40 to 50 percent of teenage girls get pregnant within one year. Unless they get an abortion, most of these young mothers drop out of school, go on welfare, with most remaining in poverty for the rest of their lives. The USA has the highest teen pregnancy rate of any industrialized nation. Every year more than one million teen girls become pregnant (125,000) of them are 15 years or younger.) Who is going to pay the bill, now amounting to 16.6 million dollars? It will be federal spending for Aid to Families with Dependent Children. (The government has only our money to spend.) Can you imagine how devastating this is to unwanted children reared without a father?
An Explanation
1. Television is filled with sexual enticements. It has turned our living rooms into brothels with the majority of couples not married to each other. The soap operas are nothing by sexual fantasies. The semi-nude dancers on major stations are stimulating to youth and their parents. How Christians can endure such filth is beyond me. There are two people I know who will not be contaminated with such.
2. Hollywood movies must have cleaned up their act with so many Christians in attendance. The nudity and filthy language must be improved! No one watches them without contamination. “I made a covenant with mine eyes. Why then should I think upon a maid? Doth not he see my ways, and count all my steps.” (Job 31:1,4).
3. The beat of rock music produces rebellion. Its loud-ness is used to break down inhibitions. I heard a policeman for rock festivals answer the following question? If you had one piece of advice for parents sending their daughter to a rock concert, what would it be? “I would not allow my daughter to attend without a strong man to be her personal escort with the promise that never would he take his eye off her.”
(That does tell us something.)
4. Where are the churches, parents, and adults, who talk about sex being reserved for marriage only? Why does sex education completely by-pass moral responsibility? Why don’t we teach that sexual abstinence is worthwhile? Why cannot parents inform their children by example as well as precept? Why is the proper behavior pattern not established in our homes?
5. Many a husband and wife will answer to God for their forfeiting the leadership training of a father in their home, What kind of a marriage partner are we producing when the child has not seen genuine love and concern between their father and mother? Children usually reproduce the only home conditions they know.
6. Only a happy, fulfilled wife can prepare a daughter for marriage. Only a strong father, leading his family in Spiritual matters, will produce God-fearing children. The greatest security children will ever have is a demonstration of love between their father and mother. What can be expected of children who lived their most formative years in the midst of a frustrated marriage?
7. Most of today’s books and magazines are hostile to morality and decency. The average picture of a woman makes her an object to be exploited. The pornographic magazines in today’s book stores distorts the purpose of a woman.
8. The glamorization of the human body provides a distortion of God’s plan. Two persons are to control our body and we are not one of them. One is the Lord, Himself. “What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price; therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (I Corinthians 6:19,20). The marriage partner is the other one in control. “The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband; and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, hut the wife” (I Corinthians 7:4).
9. Few people today realize that adultery and fornication (an illicit sexual relationship among the unmarried) is absolutely contrary to God’s will. Only the marriage bed is undefiled. “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled, but fornicators and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4).
10. The silence of the church is a contributing factor to the moral decay of this generation. Are we intimidated by the many Christians involved in divorce? We must still declare a loud Scriptural “no” to sex sins, and declare the sanctity and permanence of marriage. What about the present generation of children and youth, who have not made such mistakes? Dare we fail to teach them the Scriptural position of love and marriage? As with John the Baptizer, our head can easily be served on a platter if we rebuke adultery. It is an honor to be resisted for Truth. We are in good company. “I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:14). “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you” (John
15:18).
In Love
All sexual stimulation outside of marriage is lust, not love. How dare you insult a precious God-given expres-sion of love by an illicit relationship contrary to decency and righteousness? Love does not contaminate your partner. Love has respect and regard for the object of your affections. (You should secure and read my free radio printed message, Am I In Love?) In no way does genuine love poison, ruin, and generate guilt. Sex is a one man-one woman relationship for life in marriage only. In illicit sex, you are stealing the property of another person. You have ruined one another for their life’s companion.
Lust is not caused by outward stimulation alone. It is an appetite raging out of control within you. “But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of HIS OWN LUST and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1:14,15). Delilah is in most every office, bar, social club, and in a few churches. You are to get away from her. “FLEE FORNICATION.” Every sin that a man doeth is outside the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body” (I Corinthians 6:18). Joseph’s sudden departure cost him a coat. (This was the second one he lost.) Have you read the book of proverbs lately about the strange women?
Please Help Me
I’m taking for granted you desire deliverance from a mind polluted with lust. The following are for both men and women.
1. Stop being entertained by the glamorization of the human body.
2. Lust is within your heart and mind. Do not feed it by the garbage of what you read, look at, or listen to.
3. Keep your mind filled with that which is good. “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever
things are honest, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, THINK ON THESE THINGS” (Phil. 4:8).
4. If you are in the midst of an affair, break it off immediately and cry out to God for forgiveness. He has promised it!
5. If you are allowing the advances of the opposite sex beyond decency and proper relationship, stop such action immediately. It may mean goodbye. God may have better things for you.
6. Spiritual strength comes from reading your Bible and bending your knees daily in prayer. Keep practicing Romans 12:2, “And be not conformed to this world:
but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word. Thy word have I hidden in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Psalms
119 :9, 11.
Tell me what you are looking at, reading and thinking about. I will know your destination. Many a couple have blown a lifetime of happy, fulfilled, and buoyant marriage because of allowing LUST to contaminate and ruin them. There are still a few young people who do not desire to marry public property. Are YOU one of them?
Purity is your personal responsibility. He has given you the ability with His help. “Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure”
(I Timothy 5:22).

By Dwight Porter (http://thehourofgraceandpower.org/Docs%20and%20Literature/Love%20&%20Marriage/Love%20or%20Lust.pdf)