Understanding Sexual Temptation

What do I do with my sexual desires?” I’ve heard this question from men and women of every age, from those who have never married and from those who find themselves “single again.” I have also heard this question from married people who, for one reason or another, do not feel sexually satisfied within marriage.

If you follow Christ, you aim to steward your sexuality in a way that honors God’s design. God created sex to be an expression and celebration of the covenant promise of marriage. This means that most Christians will have sexual urges and desires that they cannot act on while honoring God at the same time. As Paul wrote, there is no temptation you experience that is unique to you. Many other men and women know the ache of denying their sexual desire for the higher purpose of honoring God.

But what do you do with that ache? And how do you make it through a lonely night when sexual temptation is all around you?

In our day, sex means nothing and everything at the same time. On the one hand, the culture presents your sexual choices to be as non-consequential as what you choose to eat. Sexuality has been gutted of spiritual and relational significance. At the same time, sex has been linked with your identity, your maturity, and your personal fulfillment as a human being. Sex has become the “catch all basket” to bear burdens it was never created to carry.

Just like that craving for chocolate or the restlessness of having to sit still for hours on end, our bodies experience genuine physically-based desires and urges. But there is a difference between a physical urge and a need. Your body does not need sex, even if those longings feel very much like a need. However, you have genuine needs that may be channeled into sexual desire.

For example, why is it that a woman might experience insatiable cravings for sex when she is single, but her desire completely disappears once she’s married? Her body hasn’t changed enough to explain her drop in desire. More likely, her longing for sex wasn’t really about sex. She used sex to meet underlying, and perhaps subconscious, needs. We usually experience sex as a need (not simply a longing) only when it is linked with greater underlying needs.
Resisting sexual temptation definitely involves elements of self control. However, a more effective strategy than continually “white knuckling it” is to reflect on the underlying source of your sexual desire.

God bless y’all
Thanks

Well said!

You have some very good points and ask some good questions.

The first issue is Truth. The world has made the context of sexual relationship and experience perverted. Pornography, lust, and perversion have made the experience unrealistic. Women and men have built a false narrative of what the sexual experience is to be, and when it doesn't live up to the expectation, it will leave you empty and wanting more, like any other addiction.

The desire to have sex was given by God for the purpose of procreating. Women have the desire mainly because of the gift of being a mother. Men have that drive early, which is to focus on the work of God, but if they are influenced by the world's false creation of the sexual experience based on pornography, they rust into having and sexual experience that leaves them unfulfilled. If marriage was solely built on having a sexual experience, that too would fade just as fast as those who are not married and fornicators.


The word of God teaches us how to fight this and win. MANY Christians are struggling because of bad discipleship and ungodly counsel. To the Born again Christian :

1. You are not to be unevenly yoked with a non-believer
2. In your youth, developing your calling, gifts, or talents before getting married
3. if you have been sexually abused, or suffer from an identity crisis or a sexual addiction, you must be set free, healed, and delivered, or your marriage is doomed before it starts
4. have a realistic understanding of what marriage will be and sex early, middle, and years into the relationship.

Separate yourself from the world's opinion about sex that is outside the word of God Gaurd your Heart!!!! Give no place to the devil.

Most young Christians that stay doing what they love for God will find that person to marry. That lie of the world is "get now, Get it fast, and get it where ever and however. "

Listen, this will leave you empty, and misery loves company. Walk, not in the counsel of the ungodly.

Perversion and sin take you down to deeper sin and perversion if left unchecked.

Men must deal with the pornography they have attached themselves to. The false narrative of what WOMEN are TO LOOK lIKE is destroying beautiful women and young girls who chase to be what is built from a false perception of sex or what men want.

Causing women to question their looks as to even think it has to do with love and acceptance. It does not.

Never give up your essence to anyone that is only to God. You can give up your substance because that can be replenished.
If you give up your essence, that will leave you bankrupted and burned out.

Heavenly Father, I come to you in the name of Jesus and ask you to protect our young daughters and young men. Lord, forgive us for not teaching our young people and protecting them in a time when sin, seems to be out of control. Heal, set free, and deliver those who have a sexual addiction, hurts, and abuses that have caused them pain. Lord, hold accountable those leaders who teach these things and use children for sexual perversion. Pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

There is a difference between being a victim of sin (product of abuse) verses a person commiting a sin (porn addiction for example). A person can overcome sin. However, God doesn't always heal people of physical ailments in this life, and I don't think He always heals people from all mental illness either including mental illness resulting from trauma in the way people want. I think it is better if a spouse accepts a person as is with to products of abuse, rather than expecting a clean/almost clean slate. A product of sex abuse may never love sex, for example. It doesn't have to be sexual abuse, could be emotional abuse. However, this is hard work and requires patience. It is much easier to deal with someone without baggage.

I disagree with your opinion. Everyone is a victim of sin from the time man fell. The earth, men, and women who entered into the world were born in sin and shaped in iniquity. Psalm 51:5-10 KJV.

No one can overcome sin without Christ. For Christ is the one who overcame death, hell, and the grave.
Mental illness is caused today by many reasons, which can be self-induced from additions, abuse, and taught.
Those with cognitive disabilities do and can know right from wrong; not all people who are disabled do sexual abuse, and no more than all sexual abuse is because of mental illness. You suggest accepting a person who has been abused over dealing with the issue before getting into a relationship with one of the opposite sex?

Interesting, because it is well-known those who have come out of an abusive relationship will enter another one because they are drawn to those same types of people. Until one is set free and comes into an encounter with the Lord Jesus, one will never have peace. All sexual abuse starts from an emotionally controlling position and then turns physical. Many men who have had a homosexual experience were and are addicted to Porn before they had their first homosexual experience. FYI, sin is the baggage, and Jesus is the cure. The reason why many don't see victory over sexual sin is that they love it. Sexual idolatry is a stronghold that produces unstable emotions and mental illness. In addition, the world is marketing sexual sin and promoting sexualizing of children at a very young age. That is not a mental illness that is Demonic and sin.

I think it's very difficult for people to resist sexual temptation unless they come to terms with sexuality's destructive potential if given free reign. It can ruin your life if left unchecked and that's nothing to take lightly, unless you enjoy having your life ruined. Just look around; a very large number of the problems people have are the result--one way or another--of unchecked sexual desire.

I do believe they should pray, go to therapy, etc. But this may not stop before marriage. Based on their level of trauma they may need to do this their whole lifetime, so I think it is unreasonable to expect a person to have everything resolved (if that is what you mean by "deal" with it) before marriage if the process takes a longer time. If they say everything is resolved they may be lying. People should enter marriage knowing the effects of trauma especially major trauma lasts a long time perhaps a lifetime. For example, a divorce impacts an adult child's life.

Marriage should not be something anyone should rush into. One should know a good amount about the person they are going to marry. Everything resolved is with the individual person before marriage in a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. it is not saying it is resolved it is showing it is resolved. Yes, my parent's divorce did affect me, yet my marriage is going on 31 years to one woman, and I am not held to what my parents did when I surrender to God and forgave my parents. I can testify the divorce of my parents has not impacted me for life where the word of God is to no effect. I am not a victim. God is for my marriage not against it.

I believe it was made possible for us, but not for as people do.

Love, Walter

Procreation between a man and his wife as well as two becoming one an expression of intimacy and love

alike everything we pervert the good things of God into lust and pleasure seeking after pleasing our flesh rather than the spirit of god within us

put your sexual desires to rest lest you sin. easier said than done! we all know that. for 100's of millions of people, it's the hardest thing to do. but there's a way to get it accomplished. think of this: all women who waited until marriage attain an delisting joy , glow & delight for the rest of your life. i trained myself to quit fornicating but by course, with Jesus help. invent a few "rhyme" lessons so when the temptation arises, repeat those lines to yourself with a smile which will put you in a cheerful mood. totally know that the devil is always willing & able to tempt you but you can cast him out in the name of Jesus. keep smiling after you cast him. it's a victory for you!!!! yeah!!! i disagree with you when you say we don't ned sex. then why did God create it? married couple don't need sex? do we need food when we're hungry? cravings, sex, when single but disappears? yikes!! something wrong there. in that area, don't let the devil in, be totally giving in romance, ask Jesus for the right attitude in romance & read Proverbs 31 verses 10 -31.

Sexuality is a fact of life, and is primarily for procreation. Therefore Christian young people should focus on finding a suitable mate and getting married as soon as possible, establishing a home, and having children. At the same time Christian young people should be willing to accept the counsel of their elders when it comes to choosing a mate.