As you counsel people on the topic of sexual purity,
what advice do you find yourself giving
time and time again to help believers
walk in purity?
Jesse: One of the areas I begin with
in talking about sexual purity
is in the area of understanding
the depth of the gospel
and the blood of Christ to forgive
even in the area of sexual impurity.
So often, I see so many people
who struggle in this area
and are convinced -
I cannot come back to God;
I can't come back to Christ
because I've done this this many times.
And often, I'll bring them to David's psalm of confession.
In verse 1, David says,
"Have mercy on me, O God,
according to Your steadfast love."
And I'll just sit there with people sometimes
and go over that again and again.
You have to believe that God is able to forgive,
but you have to believe that He's willing to forgive.
And we have to remember the basis
of His forgiveness.
It is not our performance.
So when a brother or a sister struggle
in the area of sexual purity,
so often I see them trying to earn their way
back into a right standing with God.
Whether it's: I've got to be more committed next time.
Or, my repentance needs to be more perfect.
And I remind them you have to understand
the basis of God's mercy is His love.
And the basis of God's love is not performance.
And I'm not saying God's indifferent
to our repentance
or continuing in sin that grace may abound.
But I see men and women
that have genuine marks of conversion
struggle in this area.
And when they do sin,
we'll spend sometimes days or weeks
laying around, if you will, in the guilt of the sin.
There needs to be an urgency
of coming back to God
believing that in Christ, if they confess their sins,
He's faithful and just to forgive them
and cleanse them from all unrighteousness.
In regards to proactively here -
I think there's a proactive and a reactive sense
of how we guard against sexual impurity.
I think of the verse "Flee youthful lust."
So, I'll say to the men sometimes,
"Hey, flee youthful lusts.
There's one way you can guard against sexual impurity.
And they'll say, "Amen. Flee youthful lust."
But I'll say, "What's the rest of the verse?"
In fact, we were in a men's meeting once
on the topic of sexual purity,
and I stood up and I said, "Flee youthful lusts."
And they all said, "Amen!"
And I say, "Men, what's the second half of the verse?"
Pursue.
In other words, there is a putting off.
There is a guarding of the heart
where we do flee.
We obey Proverbs 7.
We don't go on the corner.
We don't tempt ourselves to be tempted.
We guard those things.
We run from those things.
But there's the other side of the battle
against sexual impurity,
which is the pursuing.
It is looking. It is the putting on of Christ.
Inevitably, James, what I find
in these areas when people have given in
to sexual temptation,
is that they've stopped nurturing
and nourishing their soul;
the guarding of their heart;
the reading of the Word; the meditation of the Word.
As the old saying goes,
the Word keeps you from sin, and sin keeps you from the Word.
And the majority of time I find is
they're trying to practice
the guarding of things,
but they're not fulfilling the pursuing
of righteousness, love, and Christ.
And if your heart is not satisfied
in treasuring and savoring Jesus Christ,
it will look somewhere else to worship.
So it's not just putting off; it's putting on.
Question: When someone comes to you,
how do you discern,
is this a true Christian who's struggling
or is this someone who is lost?
Or how necessary is it to even discern that?
Jesse: I look where their struggle is
regarding their sin.
In other words, is it a godly sorrow?
Remember Paul in Corinthians speaks about
a worldly sorrow versus a godly sorrow.
The worldly sorrow -
you can take an atheist who's caught
with pornography.
There's embarrassment. There's shame.
There's guilt.
What is my wife going to say? What are my kids going to say?
What are my co-workers going to think?
Well, that's not godly sorrow.
Now the genuine Christian
will think those same thoughts,
but they will have a Godward sorrow
regarding their sin.
And so I'm looking at where is
the sorrow for sin?
Is it merely for the embarrassment
of what they've just done?
Or is it a Godward -
"Against You and You only have I sinned, O God,
and done what is evil in Your sight."
And so I think regeneration produces
a love for God, a reverence for God,
an affection for God and His glory.
And so when we sin, we are sorrowful
not only for what we have done
and how we'll look before others,
but we're sorrowful for what we've done to God;
the robbing of His glory,
and against Him have we sinned.
So that's an indicator.
Where the trajectory of their sin and their sorrow?
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