Thursday, September 25, 2014

Would you rather die than deny your lusts?

'From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?'

Lusts vary within us, and the lusts do war in us.

Psa_78:18  And they tempted God in their heart by asking meat for their lust.

Talking about the Israelites who were led out of Egypt and slavery into the wilderness. The Israelites were not satisfied to have been freed from slavery, they wanted their old lives back in many ways and one of those ways was food.  Food lust. Do you know what food lust is? Most of us do. Most of us have obsessed over food in some manner.  We like our bellies to be full. We like our appetites to be sated. We love when our cravings are well met.  What we don't like is being denied food we desire. We do not like to only get a single bite of something we want especially when there is more to be add.

The lust we have for food isn't much talked about in the way it probably should be.

There really is a sin in food lust.

Wikipedia says-

'Lust is an emotion or feeling of intense desire in the body. The lust can take any form such as the lust for knowledge, the lust for sex or the lust for power. It can take such mundane forms as the lust for food as distinct from the need for food. Lust is a powerful psychological force producing intense wanting for an object, or circumstance fulfilling the emotion'

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Lust.

Dictionary Definition-

noun
1.intense sexual desire or appetite.
2.uncontrolled or illicit sexual desire or appetite; lecherousness.
3.a passionate or overmastering desire or craving (usually followed byfor):a lust for power.
4.ardent enthusiasm; zest; relish:an enviable lust for life.
5.Obsolete.
1. pleasure or delight.
2. desire; inclination; wish.
verb (used without object)
6.to have intense sexual desire.
7.to have a yearning or desire; have a strong or excessive craving(often followed by for or after).

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The lusts of our flesh are LETTING the desires we have rise up and rule over us.

Is sex wrong? No, not in and of itself, but is a lust to the exclusion of all else for sex, wrong? Yes!  And it's this way with most lusts.

Food is something we are meant to enjoy, meant to desire. We are made to have to eat. We are given taste buds so that the pleasure centers of our brain connected with food are trigger when we enjoy what we are eating, and vice versa. A lot of things that are bad for us taste bad for us.

The children of Israel were slaves and yet even as slaves they were fed consistently. They had meat to eat and maybe they weren't overfed, maybe they even went hungry a lot, but they knew they'd be getting a little meat all the time. They never envisioned a time when they wouldn't have food available to keep them alive.  When they went into the wilderness that all changed. For the first time they had to worry about a lot of things they never had to worry about before. They were given food to eat to sustain them, but they were not given food that they were used to and desired.

Psa_78:18  And they tempted God in their heart by asking meat for their lust.

They lusted after meat, enough so that they put it before God, they put it before their deliverance. Some even said this--

Exo 16:2  And the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness:
Exo 16:3  And the children of Israel said unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.

 They would rather have DIED than lived without their lust satisfied. We can't say they'd rather have died than slowly starved because they were NOT starving! God was not letting them starve! They were being fed but NOT with what they lusted for.  And they'd rather die than not satisfy their lusts, their desires!

We are filled with lusts that consume us.

'From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?'

Lusts do war in our members.
We are consumed in our lusts, we live inwardly toward selfish fulfillment so much more than outwardly, selflessly.

More tomorrow by the grace of our God, by the will of our God.

Lord please help us to learn to recognize our lusts that would consume us. Let us NOT make excuses for them. Let us NOT hide them but seek forgiveness and seek to give our lives to You so You can be our all in all. Help us LORD, keep us from all EVIL.

In YOUR love, all in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ, our Lord!

Amen.

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