Guest Post: On Desires

Editor's Note: Today's guest post is brought to you by none other than my hubby... Loverboy! :) Normally in these intros I write about how I know the guest writer, but I think you can all guess as to how I know Brian. What I will say is that I am incredibly proud of him for openly sharing his story and being vulnerable about his struggles, lessons learned, and victories. It's been a blessing to see God work in his life these past few years and I can't wait to see how He uses our stories in the years to come! God has been gracious to us.

On Desires

Many of you on this blog know me as Loverboy. Others know me as Bri guy, Dougie, B Dougie, B man, Douglas, Brian, or even Boo. I am an engineer, and while my schooling qualifies me to talk about structural integrity or aerodynamics, I have no training that qualifies me to talk about what I am about to share. I do, however, speak from life experiences and some poor choices I have made, from choices that I simultaneously did and didn’t want to make. What many of you may not know is that for a time, beginning in college, I was looking at porn. This is becoming more and more common so you may not be that shocked by this confession, but what you might not know is that I didn’t want to to view porn… but at the same time I really wanted to view porn.

You see, that is the funny things about desires: you don’t just have one, and they are often not very clear. This was a hard time for me because I knew viewing porn was not the Lord’s best for me—I knew that viewing porn was displeasing to God, that it was addictive, that it could ultimately hurt future intimacy with the wife I hoped I would someday have, and that it would hurt me and those around me.

So I knew that it was harmful to be viewing porn and I didn’t want to displease God, but at the same time, I found pleasure in what I was looking at. I tried really hard for awhile to stop, but I was hooked. It seemed like a drug that I couldn’t get away from. It took me awhile to realize that trying harder was not the solution; that I couldn’t get free on my own. I needed divine intervention.

The thing is, divine intervention was ready and waiting for me to call on Him, but my pride was keeping me from accepting it. So finally by the grace of God, I asked for His help. It didn’t all change right away. It was a journey, and as I look back on that journey, I see what God was doing. Here are some thoughts and lessons that God has since shown me on what he was doing.

• God never commands us to change our desires. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care what we desire. It just means that he commands us to act a certain way whether we desire to or not. This is important when your desires pull you different ways. While I was viewing porn, I wanted to follow God’s commands but I also wanted to look at porn. I even wanted to want to not look at porn. This is often the first step to breaking free from the addition of porn: want to want the right thing. Now I’m not saying it is easy to act contrary to your desires, but God does call us to act contrary to our desires if our desires are not in line with His will and way.
• That doesn’t mean he doesn’t care what we desire, but that he realizes that we cannot just change what we desire. God wants us to desire what is good, pure and holy.
• God can change your desires. He has with mine! It is not a quick process and I cannot say that I never desire to view porn but I have come to realize by God’s work in my life that the pleasure of living by God’s design for my life is far better than anything I could want or desire. My desires have been changing to what God desires for me and away from the empty pleasures I used to want for myself.
• The first step is to let God work. You can’t be free from any sin or change your desires on your own. God is waiting for you to ask him to help. Not only has He been waiting, He actively has been seeking you out, giving you opportunities to let Him work. You have to humble yourself and choose to let Him work.
• All this doesn’t mean that we’re off the hook when it comes to desires. Remember a couple bullet points back when I said we can’t just change our desires? I sorta mislead you. I believe that we can change our desires but it is not nearly as simple as just changing them. You see, our choices affect our desires. It molds them. When we choose to do something that we enjoy, we enjoy it all the more! Likewise, when we choose to sin, our desires become tainted. Our sinful nature enjoys it and we desire it more. The reason I desired to view porn is at least partly because I had made choices to lust after woman that I had walked by and I took the good desire that God has placed in me for companionship and beauty, which was already tainted by a sinful nature, and I choose to act sinfully and lust.

I was recently convicted that when I desire something sinful, to confess it to God. Not because I had just acted sinfully, but because my past sinful acts made me to desire something sinful, because desiring what is sinful is not how God designed me to be. But I know that he won’t leave me with these sinful desires. He is changing me everyday. The desire won’t be gone on this side of heaven but I know one day, I will be free from them all.

This is a crazy idea in the culture we live in which tells people to do whatever they want! Our culture says that if a man desires to be intimate with another man, then that must be how God made them and they should do it or if a man desires to be intimate with hundreds of women, then he should do it because that is how God made him.

But the Lord says that there is a way which he has designed us to be. God didn’t design me to find pleasure in porn and lust after women, I made myself that way from a starting point of the sin nature I have from the first sin. We all have turned away from God’s good design and have been following our desires ever since. All the while, He has been patiently waiting to work in us to give us the power to choose what is right, to give us the desire to do what is right and this way, God’s way leads to life.

Lessons From Rush Hour Traffic

Yesterday I was sitting in rush hour traffic at 5pm. Radio up, windows down (just kidding! It was raining and cold and dark because we live in the great white NORTH!). Anyway... I used to get super duper annoyed during rush hour and would have a sour attitude the whole drive home. But then I decided that's a not-so-wonderful way to end my day/start my evening 3 days a week, so I decided to change my attitude about rush hour.

//via

I used to not want to let people in, especially those people who totally skip the whole forever-long line to get onto the interstate—those people that accelerate past you, only to cut in right as the entrance ramp approaches. Those people who don't use their blinker. Those people who make you miss the green light by one car. ONE CAR, people!

So I could choose to see these people as selfish jerks, OR I could choose to see them as children of God who are in a hurry to get home. I could see it as an opportunity to love and bless them because, who knows? Maybe they are even more excited to get home to their hunny than I am (doubtful), or maybe their babysitter will charge them an extra hour if they are 5 minutes late. Or maybe their commute is a lot longer than mine and they just want to get home and relax because they had a really terrible day at the office.

But whatever the reason they are in such a rush, it doesn't really matter. What does matter is my attitude toward them. I can get angry and bitter and self-righteous about my polite driving compared to theirs, or I could just have grace toward them. I could show them love and let them in and maybe make their day a little better and hopefully they'll pass that on.

And all of this makes driving home just a little bit better. It gives rush hour traffic a little more meaning in my mind, and if anything can make rush hour better, then hey, I'll take it.

So what opportunities do you have today to love and bless others when what you really want to do is get even or get mad? How can you change your attitude about a situation today? How can you show someone grace today? Even if it's as small as letting someone cut in front of you with a smile on your face—you know what they say—ya' gotta start somewhere.

Transition

I've become convinced that in the blog world time moves at a much faster rate than in the real world. It feels almost unnecessary to comment on the fact that it is somehow late May and once again the space between my last post and this one is far greater than I would have hoped, so maybe this is just my new normal. Yeah, we're gonna go with that- a new normal.

So, transition. What a crazy concept. Change, movement, different, forward. These are things that can be welcomed or very much resisted. When the transition is good, we often look forward to it with much anticipation. When it's not so good, we tend to dig in our heels and want to stay put. But no matter what, transition is hard. It takes work and is usually outside of our comfort zone. 

I'm undergoing quite a bit of transition right now. With living in a different city (living in a city, for that matter), experiencing apartment life for the first time, being done with full time ministry and moving on to 9-5 kind of work, being engaged and living in close proximity (finally!) to loverboy, and having a new sphere of people to interact with, life looks a whole lot different today than it did a couple weeks ago. 

But this transition I'm going through is thankfully the kind that I'm willing to greet with arms open wide. It's softened by loving family, friends, roommates, and a certain man who all make life a little more normal feeling amidst all the change. Plus, the whole time I have my ever-constant, never-changing, forever-faithful God by my side. He has carried me through transitions before (ones much more difficult than this one) and I have no doubt He will do it again. He remains solid when everything around me is moving, He stays the same when everything else changes. 

So even if this transition was the kind where I wanted to run away and hide under the covers, He would still be there, ever present, by my side. My job is just to trust. To choose to believe that God is constant and good even amidst transition. To trust that His grace is sufficient, that He is sufficient.

Transition pushes me to trust God more, to rely on His sufficiency. And that's always a good thing. Here's to transition!