Sunday, February 21, 2010

Love vs. Lust

Something I left out of my previous post was the study about lust. I read a Facebook Status update from Doug Stringer who quoted Edwin Louis Cole - "Love desires to give at the expense of self, while lust desires to get at the expense of others." Powerful statement, no? It got me thinking about lust.

Is lust purely sexual? I did some digging and how we define lust in our human understanding is predominantly sexual. But in the Concordance and the Biblical definition lust is anything that causes us to obsess to the point of sin.
Colossians 3:5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. As you can see in this passage, sexual immorality is seperate from lust.

That is alot of stuff covered under one word. Addictions, hobbies, sports, impure thoughts... The list can go on. What do I have in my life that causes me to obsess to the point of sin? Definitely food. Food to me is comfort, but it causes me to sin by eating things that are bad for me and to obsess about what I'm going to have at my next meal.

Doing crafts can become a sin if I don't give God all the glory and credit. If I am solely thinking about what project I want to do next, there is no room for God. I try to ask God what He would want me work on, then work on that while praying and praising. It's a slippery slope because it's easy to fall into the trap of "look at me" or "I don't have time for reading my Bible, I have too much to do."

When you think about it in these terms, lust sets up idols in our lives.
1 John 2:16
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 difference between love and lust is Spirit vs flesh, Godly vs wordly. I know I need to submit to the Lord for freedom from my lusts of this world and be solely focused on Him and His commandments.

1 comment:

  1. Oh this is so true! Defined in those terms, it really reveals what we are the most consumed by. I can easily get sidetracked by my little projects and put them before my time with God if I'm not careful and this is something He is always showing me and giving me so much grace over!

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