What advice do you have for believers
in fighting sexual sin and temptation?
Mack: I think anyone that struggles
with that area continually,
or that it's the big battle,
and they are being defeated,
or it's always the issue on the table,
ultimately, there's one thing going on -
the gate is cracked open.
What I mean is
some way, some avenue
is open for them to struggle
and they're not violently, radically,
militantly killing that thing
and conquering it.
They are somehow being passive.
In weakness, they're looking at things
in moments they shouldn't.
They're leaving the gate open.
If you don't leave the gate open,
the cows aren't going to get out.
You're not going to have a problem
with having to round them up.
And so I think the truth,
the doctrine of the mortification of sin,
the New Testament teaches -
the spirit of the New Testament on that
is a radical, militant killing of it
where it's a plucking out of an eye.
It's the cutting off of a hand.
It's fleeing youthful lusts.
It's avoiding all appearance of evil.
Having such an attitude
of: that sin is so vile
and so offensive and so demonic,
but because it's so alluring
and fleshly satisfying in the moment,
and it's so tempting,
those two things are so radically -
the delicious pleasure for the moment
of evil, vile, demonic darkness, right?
And the only reason
we would ever partake of that - (incomplete thought)
if this cup of coffee,
if I told you,
you know, there's 5% arsenic in it,
but it's mostly coffee.
Okay.
Nobody in their right mind is going to take a sip.
See, because I know the deadly thing that's in it,
and I don't have a drastic position
of no contact ever,
and I don't think people
have the radicalness
about not tolerating it in any way.
If David on his balcony
when he saw Bathsheba
had instantly said:
it's wrong for me to look on her
and fallen on his knees and cried out to God,
what would have happened?
Would the story be different?
But, he didn't.
The look lingered.
The lust started.
The mind and the will were weakened.
The choice was made.
The sin happens in the bedroom.
And you know the rest of the story.
So, at times in my life,
I've become aware.
I've had these moments where
it was like God was speaking to me
and I had to acknowledge:
I am not serious enough about that sin -
whatever it is.
Anger or lust.
What man doesn't have a lust problem?
There's always the potential to lust
toward an attractive woman.
And so the lust opportunity's always going to be there.
What is my handling of that?
How serious minded am I to say
I do not want to lust toward any woman.
And I have a prayer I pray
when I'll see...
I'll say, "Pure heart, Lord, right now."
"Pure heart."
It's made me become serious
in the moment of putting that sin to death.
I don't think there's a seriousness
about mortifying sin.
If somebody got serious enough about this -
you think about somebody gets cancer.
They'll go to the ends of the earth.
They'll spend their whole savings
to just deal with the cancer.
Well, how serious are we in our lives
about moral sin and moral purity?
If a guy gets real serious,
he'll do whatever it takes to conquer it.