I'm going to give you practical things now on how to fully overcome lust.
Underneath of this point write down a) cut off the hand.
Which in other words means: remove trigger points in your life. Cut off the hand. What I mean by
fleeing lust is this. Is that there are things in our life that are trigger points for lust,
that they need to be simply cut off. Jesus says, "If your hand causes you to sin..." What did He
say? He didn't say bring it to an altar call. He did not say have the pastor pray for your hand.
What did Jesus say? "But my hand is also used to help people.
It's only sinning on one day out of the month. The rest of the 29 days it's doing good. I
need God to change my hand." And this is the problem, is that we're not fleeing situations
where on good days are good. It's just on the weak days they're pulling us into sin. "Potiphar's wife
is not always like that. She's a nice woman. She just has those days where she acts too,
like this. I can't just run from her." And this is what I find with people. You need to identify your
hand, that causes you to sin. For some of you it's very simple, it's your instagram. But half
of the other time that you don't fall into sin, instagram is good. You fellowship with other
people. You even brought people to church because of that. And so what you're doing is saying,
"Lord sanctify my instagram because it's using good things." And God's idea
for you to flee lust is for you to remove, even if it's doing good things for you on good days.
So this is what we do, instead of cutting off the hand, which is what God says. We come up and say,
"Lord deliver me." I have people that come up all the time and say, "Pastor Vlad,
pray for me because I'm battling with lust." My response is that you shouldn't be battling,
you should be fleeing. "Okay, pray for me to help me to flee lust." Second question I ask is this.
Which hand are we cutting today? "Oh no Pastor. I want to keep all my hands, and all my feet
and all my fingers." And I said, you can't receive freedom from lust without something being removed.
What's being removed? "Well, well, well. Uh." What's being removed? "No it's just all in my
heart.' Jesus did not say cut your heart. He says cut a trigger point. There is trigger
points for lust. For some people the trigger points is simple. It's at night they relax.
I believe a single person, a person who is not married should not have free time. I believe when
you say, "Free time." Devil says, "My time." For the single unmarried people, especially young men,
free time in the evening to relax, is demonic time. You should stay as busy as you possibly can.
Did you know why Joseph didn't commit sin with Potiphar's wife? He was busy in the house. Did you
know why David fell in with sin with Bathshiba? Is because David got up in the evening on the balcony
after he slept all day. Instead of fighting he was relaxing and that's why satan got him. He
couldn't get Joseph like that. So remove free time. "So what do you want me to do? Never
have a free time?" Nope. You've been singing to Jesus you gave Him your all, your whole life.
It's not yours. So what do you do with free time? You read, you write. You stay away from free time
because that's your trigger point. What else is your trigger point? Could it be snapchat?
What else it could be? Could be internet. "But I can't believe you would say for me to
turn off my internet. Until God brings that deliverance I can't live without internet."
Well then you need to make a decision. Do you want to live in sin or do you want to live in freedom?
"But I want to live free without internet. I want to live free, I'm sorry, with the internet." Jesus
did not have internet. He survived. Asking God to deliver you if you're not obedient to His word.
Stop asking. Stop coming to the altar and saying, "Lord do this." Jesus said clearly,
if you want to be free from lust. He did not say have pastor pray for you. He did
not say have anointed man put his hand on your head and you to fall under the power of God.
Then you get up and you keep using exactly the same trigger point. If you want to flee from lust
that means you have to remove trigger points. What is your trigger point. Identify it and remove it.
The second part about fleeing lust, that's not just the trigger points. Don't eat of the
tree. Meaning there are certain things you can't remove, you just have to not look at
and discipline your eyes not to look at. For example, if you're working out and you're going to
the gym you know, you're not going to go to every single girl and say, "Hey, could you next time
wear something a little bit more baggier." You can't go to every single girl in church and say,
"Hey could you please wear a skirt a little bit longer and you know like this part, a little
bit closer. God gave you clothes to cover not to reveal. Didn't your mama tell you that you know."
And all this stuff. You can do that because that's not practical. There are things in life that will
be trigger points that you cannot remove. It's out of your control. In that case you have to
do that what God told Adam to do with the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Don't eat of it.
Meaning don't stare. If the girl is not dressed up like she's supposed to dress up, bounce your eyes.
If you are in the gym and somebody's right in front of you and they really are showing,
you know, other parts of their body that are been working on forever. Just bounce your eyes. God
says simply that don't look at it. If you're like Samson, you're not going to control your
eyes. You're going to lose them. Now for the ladies and so, but what I would encourage you
ladies is this, is also is for you lust is something different. It could be maybe in the
form of lusting to have somebody else's body, to be like somebody else. I remember I met a pastor,
a good friend of mine, a good teacher. And I asked him something about social media and he says,
"You know Vlad. Me and my wife, we walked away completely from instagram." And I said,
"You know why did your wife left instagram?" "She said it brought so much depression and anxiety to
her, trying to compare her real life to everybody else's fake life. She said though she's beautiful,
she just couldn't live with that. And she's just trying to live up to everybody's
beautiful, cool looking, you know with filters, family. And she decided to completely walk away
from that saying you know what. That's the tree that our generation has, the tree of knowledge of
good and evil. The tree of instagram. And I'm not eating of that. That's not gonna be a part of my
life." And maybe that's the truth. That's the thing that you have to take where you have to
run from things that bring you this, this food of the devil. And you can't remove the tree.
You just have to remove yourself from digesting it. There are so many trigger points all around
in our generation today. They will be begging for your attention. And some things you cannot remove.
They're going to be there no matter what. You have to discipline your eyes, that you move your eyes.
That you, you move your heart from it. Another part about how to walk from that,
is not only we cut off the hand, not only we don't eat from the tree. And we're bringing this to
the close. Is that if you don't want to fall into sexual sin, stop flirting with that sin. And stop
flirting meaning is this, is that we stop asking a question "How close can I get to the cliff without
falling into it?" And honestly I just shared with you my story that happened to me a few years ago.
And my excuse was this, is how close can I get to looking at stuff without falling into
looking at pornography? And that's a problem is that when you start flirting, you will fall.
I love the fact that Joseph did not ask, "You know what, sleeping with Potiphar's wife is a really
bad idea but flirting with her, chatting with her, direct messaging her, sending her emojis,
is not a bad idea." A lot of us, the problem why we fall into sexual sin
is because we don't flee. Instead of fleeing sexual sin, we flirt. Meaning we flirt with
situations, we flirt with people, knowing we're not called to be in that relationship.
You have no business as a young man messaging a young lady in your church in a casual way.
Would you still do that if you would have a wife? No. That means that has to stop today.
Oh, you're snapchatting and sending snaps to that person. Would you do that if you
would have a wife today? No. Did you know that the Bible says, "Blessed is the man who finds
a wife." It doesn't say blessed is a man who finds a girlfriend. Meaning she's been acting
like a wife before she became a wife. Act like a husband, act like a wife before you become
one. Stay away from flirting with people, flirting with situations and pushing your
limits as close to the cliff as you can without committing the sin that will condemn you to hell.
And that's called fleeing. I love Joseph. And Joseph drives me like crazy because I look at
this guy and I'm like my God. He got rejected, he got bullied, he got abused. This guy has a death
certificate laying at home. He is dead to his family. He has no church. He has no accountability
partner. He has no pastor. He has no Bible. He has no church services. Yet when sexual temptation
presents to a man who had the same biological body that you and I have. He doesn't flirt, he flees.
We have a church, we have accountability, we have teachings on purity, we have parents. We
have everything and we flirt with sin. And why is that? And I find two things that are
different between Joseph and my generation. One is Joseph told the Potiphar's wife this. He says,
"I cannot do this great wickedness before God." We call sexual sin great weakness.
I have a weakness brother. Joseph didn't see sexual sin as weakness. He saw it as wickedness.
We call it defeat. Joseph called it disobedience.
That means sexual sin has to be redefined in your mind. It's not a
weakness. Weaknesses is if you can't lift 300 pounds. That's a weakness.
Weakness is something physical. Weakness is not consuming pornography. That's not a weakness,
that's wickedness. And Joseph didn't see sleeping with somebody's wife as a weakness.
He saw it as a wickedness. If you want to overcome sexual sin, you have to stop
redefining sin as the world sees it. And you have to say it ,it's not a mistake. Mistake is if you
forgot my number. That's a mistake. Mistake is not if you're staring at somebody's butt.
That's a sin. That's willful, deliberate choiceful sin. And when you start seeing
it like that, then you approach it with repentance instead of "I'm working on it."
I can't lift two plates in the gym; I'm working on it. That's my weakness but that is the gym.
The purity is not like that. If you I'm not walking in purity, God doesn't see it like I
can't lift two plates. God says you are a wicked sinner. And the response to that is Lord I repent.
But if you see your sexual sin as a weakness, guess what you're gonna do with it. You're gonna
work on it, instead of repent. Another thing that I see in Joseph that's different than us,
is that Joseph he fled, because he had a fear of God. We flirt because we know the grace of God.
Joseph fled because he had a fear of God. We flirt because we know the grace of God. The
grace is with God loves you no matter what and that's the problem. How come he had no anointing
and he ran from sexual sin, and we have a generation today trapped in sexual sin, because
we're loaded with the grace of God and this little of the fear of God.