|
I titled this section “Guarding our temples” because I believe scripture tells us our bodies our temples of the Holy Spirit.
Please read 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”
What do you think God means when He calls our bodies a “temple of the Holy Spirit?”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
I don’t know about you but I have not always honored God with my body. I am not just talking about dishonoring God through sexual sin. I know that the way I have dressed at times has not always glorified God. It has probably been offensive to some and a stumbling block to others in my past. If our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit, we need to learn how to guard them against sexual seduction to avoid falling into sexual sin. Since this study is primarily about guarding our sexuality, I want to talk about some ways we can guard against sexual seduction. We have discussed in the earlier chapters how ungodly thoughts can steer us down the wrong path. We have also how Satan will use “seducing spirits” to entice us into any level of sexual sin. We are now approaching the part in our study where we need to learn how to safeguard ourselves against seduction. In order to guard our temples, I believe we need to be aware of what we allow to come near them. When I think about guarding something, I think about how I safeguard my house each night before bedtime. At night, I make sure every door is locked. I turn on the alarm so that if an intruder were to approach my house and break in, it would sound off. This is what it is going to look like to safeguard our minds against seductions. Remember, sexual seduction is not just physical. It can be mental and emotional as well. Just as we protect our home by checking each door, we will need to make sure every door that could potentially be opened in our minds to sexual temptation are kept shut and locked. Next, we need to make sure our internal alarms (the Holy Spirit) are activated. We need to have someone guarding our minds that will alert us when something ungodly approaches it.
We must become keenly aware of temptations that are trying to invade us through our thoughts. One thing I like to remember that helps me keep check of what I’m taking in is I ask myself: “Does this feed the spirit or feed the flesh?” As we studied earlier, we need to consider what we choose to entertain our minds with. Is it potentially harmful to us or is it encouraging our walk with the Lord? Consider the following:
-
Consider what kind of music you are listening to. Are you listening to songs that arouse emotional feelings about someone other than your husband, remind us of old sexual memories from our pasts, or take us back to a past time we would rather forget? Or are we listening to uplifting music that encourages us spiritually? I don’t know about you, but in this battle to remain sexually pure I don’t want to listen to something that will work against me. I don’t want to allow anything into my mind that opens the door to seduction. Some music has a way of reminding me of things I would like to forget. It has a way of creeping in through a cracked door if I’m not careful. I am not saying that all secular music is harmful either. We just need to be aware of certain types of music that may trigger ungodly thoughts.
-
Are you entertaining your minds with sexually graphic material through movies, books or pornography?
-
Are you feeding your mind ungodly thoughts through romance novels? Romance novels allow you to mentally think about people having sex. It glorifies sex outside of your marriage. It arouses women sexually and then leads them to compare their sex lives to that of the characters in the book. On the flip side, are you reading a good Christian magazine or book? There are so many great Christian books that feed the spirit. I love to read books by Joyce Meyer, Jennifer Kennedy Dean and Beth Moore.
-
Are you going into chat rooms where you engage in conversations with other men? Are you getting in touch with old boyfriends via the internet that would lead to inappropriate conversations?
-
What kind of movies are you watching? Do they provoke thoughts of relationships outside of marriage? Do they allow you to make comparisons of your husband to the male hero in the movie? Do they stimulate you sexually when a steamy sex scene is on? Please understand that I am not saying you should only watch “The Ten Commandments” on the weekends!! There are plenty of movies that are not based on Christ that are perfectly healthy to watch. Just be aware of anything you may be watching that triggers your buttons in the flesh.
In Beth Moore’s When Godly People Do Ungodly Things she states, “Seduction is a form of oppression, of course, but its very sly scheme intended to catch us off guard, pitched with mind boggling velocity from a direction we were not expecting. Seduction means the demonic trickery of a professional liar. If you’ll allow me to put it this way, seduction is Satan at his best. He’s looking for the trickiest means of getting inside our walls and I doubt he considers anything a greater accomplishment than the broken wall of a devout believer.” How do we keep him from getting in our walls? The only way that we can keep him from coming in is by knowing what we allow to enter our minds and not opening the door to seduction. It also means recognizing where we have broken down walls in our lives. We need to position the Holy Spirit to be our “guard” over our minds. We need to have Him alert us when we are opening a door to seduction.
I would encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit where you may be allowing unhealthy things to enter your mind through an open doorway that compromises your God-given sexuality. Ask him to show you any area where there are broken walls that need repairing by the “restorer of places long devastated” (see Isaiah 61:4). Anytime you entertain thoughts of emotional or physical encounters with a man other than your husband, you compromise your sexuality. The compromise comes when you entertain those thoughts leaving you vulnerable to seduction in real life.
1 Corinthians 10:23 says, “Everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial.”
What do you think that scripture means?_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
What are some things that you are doing now or have done in the past that were permissible but not beneficial?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Basically it is saying that God has given us free will. He has allowed us to make our own choices in life. If He is saying everything is permissible it means we can do whatever we choose. However, not everything we choose is going to be good for us.
For instance, you have the choice when you log onto the internet to visit pornographic websites. It is permissible but it is not beneficial. Everything we watch or read is permissible, but that does not mean that it is all healthy for us. If we are to honor the Lord with our bodies, we need to do everything we can to safeguard them against seduction. As we learned, the battle begins in our minds. God is faithful to give us gentle reminders when we are opening a door to sexual compromise when we ask Him to. I would like to remind you that temptations are not sin. We all face temptations. It’s what you do with the temptation that gives birth to sin. When tempting thoughts pop into your mind, you have not sinned. If you entertain those thoughts, it becomes sinful. I have found that by paying close attention to what I’m allowing into my mind, the battle becomes much easier. When I stopped watching particular movies, and listening to particular secular music, I found that compromising thoughts became less and less frequent. When we fail to cut off every tie that links us to any kind of sexual compromise, we leave a crack in the door for seduction to slip through. Those ties can be to old relationships we never cut soul ties with (I will explain soul ties later), watching unhealthy TV programs, movies, and reading material.
I want to share something with you that came to me while I was driving today. I was thinking about how the enemy uses seduction as a tool to drag you into many kinds of evil practices. He uses it to lure you into the love of money, sexual sin, witchcraft, drugs, and the like. I was telling the Lord how concerned I was that the body of Christ is not recognizing it when it comes their way. The enemy masks himself quite well, in fact, the Word says Satan masquerades as an angel of light (see 2 Corinthians 11:14). I was asking the Lord how I could convey to you what it looks like and what the enemy will say to you in his crafty attempts to take you captive. I want to share with you what came to me:
My name is Seduction, and I stand waiting at your door.
If you open it and embrace me, you will be left longing for more.
My desire is to overtake you with my sly, lustful ways,
I plan to have you fooled by my charm for many days.
I make promises to captivate you like no other has ever done,
And I tell you that if you follow me we can have lots of fun.
My words will be like music so pleasant to your ears,
They will surely leave your heart longing for more to hear.
I say I can take you places you’ve always dreamed to go,
And I will offer you the world when I put on my show.
When I have tempted you to come and leave everything behind,
It is then that I will reveal myself and have you loosing your mind.
I was really your enemy all along,
Masked as who could do no wrong.
I am leaving you now, see you later, goodbye.
Thanks for buying into my big seductive lie.
Ladies, do you think you could recognize seduction if it were knocking at your front door? He will appear as the finest of salesmen around. I can promise you that the product he wants you to buy will destroy you in the end. Let’s close today by asking God to show us when any form of seduction attempts to poison us.
Heavenly Father,
We don’t always recognize when we might be playing with fire. Help us to become aware when seduction’s flames seek to devour us in a fiery pit. Give us wisdom to know when we are about to open a door that needs to remain shut. We need your Holy Spirit now more than ever to give us eyes to see the truth. Thank you Lord. Amen.
| 
