four walls

Proverbs 6:25-26
Do not lust in your heart after her beauty
or let her captivate you with her eyes,
for the prostitute reduces you to a loaf of bread,
and the adulteress preys upon your very life.

There seems to be four main areas where lust can enter into your life. Each of these areas in a guy's life will be attacked by the enemy at one time or another. As we mature as men, it is important for us to guard our heart and mind from these four areas of temptation.

Lust often enters our lives through the gateway of our eyes. It then crawls its way into our minds. If left unpurified, it will stretch down from our minds and root itself deeply into our hearts. This means the first line of defense must begin with what we see. These four areas of attack are the areas where guys "see" women.

1. Every day life
We are around women every day of our lives. We see women at work, in the store, in the gym, at church and on the road. They are everywhere we are. We need to guard how we look at and think about women in our every day lives. The enemy will use friends and strangers alike. He will use people we are immediately attracted to and those we wouldn't expect. He doesn't care who the person is. He just wants that person to become a stumbling block.

2. TV
Television is full of images of women. Most images on TV are sexual in some way. The privacy and anonymity of being on the other side of the screen can be a breeding ground for lust.

3. Movies
Movies have all the same dangers as TV but intensified. Movies often have more sexual content than TV will allow. And movies can have all the same anonymity, privacy and distance from the actors that make it even easier to turn women into objects rather than humans.

4. Internet
This is the most dangerous of all media outlets. With nearly limitless access to all kinds of stuff, this ultra-private form of media is a potential incubator for sin. This is true especially of lust.

If we want to successfully navigate this over-sexed world we live in and maintain our purity, it must begin with guarding our lives in these four areas. We must be willing to submit ourselves to Christ and to real-life accountability when it comes to what we let our eyes take in.

We must ask ourselves questions like:
Do I flirt with women who aren't my wife?
What do my daydreams "dream" about?
Does my ego get fed by being around women who admire me?
What do I watch on TV and in movies?
What pages do I visit on the internet?
What do I watch if and when no one else was around?
When am I most tempted to lust after women? Why?
Am I using lust as a means to heal wounds in my life?
What emotional wounds are they? Why are they there? Where did they come from?

The four areas mentioned above are gateways into our eyes. These gateways lead into our minds and into our hearts. These are the gateways that will be attacked by the enemy. So how do our four walls look? Are these four areas of our lives submitted to Christ so that they will be stay strong when attacked? Or do we still want to look at what we want to look at, when we want to look at it?