http://prevailingwordministries.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/overcoming-lust-in-the-church-at-home-are-you-the-gate-keeper-of-your-heart/

You’ve repented. Asked the Lord for forgiveness. However, you find yourself doing the same thing over again. You just can’t get past remorse to really mean that you no longer have a desire to lust in your heart and to live holy before God.

You’ve find yourself opening that door to lust again, and again.

Lusting after her or him, or both.

We all go through moments of temptation but what we do in the temptation determines our victory or defeat.

James said to “Count it all joy when you fall into various trials…”

It’s not joyful when you fail.

Lately, I’ve seen some things that were definite signs of the enemy attempting to lure me back into “habits, patterns, and cycles” of lusting after the flesh. To get the victory is one thing. To maintain the victory is another.

When you are watching TV, the commercials are more provocatively explicit than at any other time in history. Cute commercials are a thing of the past. Money and sex, sex and money are forever seamlessly connected.

Actually, men no longer watch commercials for the sake of the product. It’s the “window dressing” of the commercial that gets his attention.

Car commercials are full of these things. Ask the average semi honest man and he will tell you that he is not really interested in the car. He was interested in that hot babe in or walking around the car.

This is called, “Substitute porn.”

It’s the same with the news. No man really watches the news for the content. The ladies dress like they are going to pick up a man. So the man feels right at home in his own home, being seduced by the weather lady as she seductively walks to the green screen.

Wearing a hot dress in stilettos.

Every morning, on cue, the TV comes on because he is mesmerized by her seduction.

Even in the pulpit, we know of a few well known female TV preachers that would preach in their stilettos, strutting their stuff as they preach.

But that’s not all.

One well known female preacher would sexually and provocatively bend over and fall to her knees as if to pray. Brothers in the audience weren’t caught up in the moment of the worship or prayer. The house of worship, in some places, has become a showcase for the red carpet.

Reality shows are the same thing. The story plots are not all that interesting. The female that is wearing nothing is what a man is interested. All of these things are precursors to Internet porn, chat rooms, sexting, and other forms of “acting out” sexually.

As we all know, men are “visual effects” minded.

Women, at least some of them that are sexually provocative will wear anything that will get a man’s attention. It doesn’t matter if the man is married any more. A desperate for attention woman will go for it regardless of the man’s marital status.

The house of worship is no different. To a woman desperate for a man’s attention, she really don’t care if the presence of God is in the house. The same goes for a sexually crazed man. The presence of the Lord could be thick in the house but all it takes is for one sexually immoral woman to walk by, and the deal is done.

And because there is lust in the heart of a man, she doesn’t have to wear something sexually provocative. The lust in his heart is so strong that he can’t help but sin with his heart and eyes.

Proverbs 20:27 says, “Hell and destruction are never full, so the eyes of a man are never satisfied.”

In the 21st Century, lust is everywhere. Inside the house of worship and outside the house of worship. When a man refuses to discipline his heart and mind, it is a matter of time before he will act out the lusts of his flesh and mind.

There has to be an effort to turn the eyes from these things. In more radical cases, shut off the TV or not watch TV at all because the traps of the enemy are deliberately set for every man.

Jesus said this in Matthew 5:29-30.

“If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.”

The writer of Hebrews 12:4 said…“You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin.”

What are you willing to do to cut yourself from the habits, patterns, and cycles that are intended to keep you in the bondage of lust?

I am not advocating taking a knife and going for it.

I didn’t say this.

What the Lord Jesus is demanding is…..what are we willing to do that is completely radical to avoid sin?

To what lengths are we willing to go to keep from sinning? If you find yourself falling into the trap of lust over and over again like a revolving door, then you haven’t done enough.

You didn’t take it to a level of a complete cut off.

Like on Sunday’s after service. We go home to watch the sports.

You know that they will have the cheerleaders in the background. Commercial breaks, nothing but sexually immoral women. Sunday night, you watch some R rated movie with soft porn.

According to XXXChurch, Sunday is the busiest day of the week to watch porn.

We really do not understand how we are being set up, but like sheep to the slaughter, we are suckered into these things every week and we wonder why we are spiritually dull. We also wonder why the Lord seems far from us. We vainly attempt to make up for it in emotionalism and euphoric hype.

As long as we feel good, God must be alright with me.

We go for the quick remorse kind of false repentance, hoping that the Lord would “understand.”

Far from the case.

God never endorse sin and the false way we repent. Because our hearts condemn us, we feel guilty and we want to either suppress that conviction or gloss it over with some type of appeasement so that we won’t feel as bad.

When lust is allowed to have a home in our hearts, it is an impediment to His presence.

1 John 3:20-22 says…

“For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God. And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.”

How do we know that our hearts condemn us?

Paul said in Romans 8:1….

“There is therefore now no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.”

If you are walking in the flesh, to fulfill the lusts of the flesh and the mind, your heart will condemn you. So the rest of the verse in 1 John 3 tells us….“if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God…”

How do you know that you have confidence toward God?

Paul said, “…men everywhere, lifting up hands without wrath or doubting.”

When you lift your hands in praise to God, do you doubt your right standing and right relationship with God? Is there a question about your moral walk before God? Do you have confidence that God will not tell you that you are a hypocrite?

Confidence towards God tells us that there is no question about your current relationship with the Lord. That darkness doesn’t have a foothold, nor stronghold within you.

Jesus said this in Matthew 6:22-23…..

“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness.”

Are you the gatekeeper of your heart?

Proverbs 4:23 says…

“Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.”

Your eyes is the gate but your spirit man or heart is the gatekeeper.

What you watch will get into your spirit man. Once it gets inside your spirit man, evidently, it fills your entire body. What we watch, we meditate. What we meditate on, we eventually will make, according to Romans 13:14 “…provision to fulfill its lusts.”

So we have to defend the gate.

Psalm 101:3-4 says,

“I will set nothing wicked before my eyes; I hate the work of those who fall away; It shall not cling to me. A perverse heart shall depart from me; I will not know wickedness.”

Who is the “I will?”

That’s your heart. You must take a knife, spiritually speaking, and cut off anything that will take you down the path to sin against God.

Psalm 141:4-5 says….

“Do not incline my heart to any evil thing, to practice wicked works with men who work iniquity; and do not let me eat of their delicacies. Let the righteous strike me; it shall be a kindness. And let him rebuke me; it shall be as excellent oil; let my head not refuse it. For still my prayer is against the deeds of the wicked.”

Do not bend your ear to wicked things. Commercials have certain songs that are very seductive. When that sound comes, it is an attention grabber. It serves as a signal that your favorite seducer is coming on. You have to do the right thing. Gatekeepers never let the enemy walk through the front gate.

But first, there has to be a clearing out of the heart.

The Lord has placed in His Word things that we need to apply in order for lust to never overcome us.

Psalm 119:9-11 says….

“How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word. With my whole heart I have sought You; Oh, let me not wander from Your commandments! Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You.”

Sadly, the translation from Hebrew to English gives the impression that “might not” sounds like the Word and the person that is supposed to walk int he Word might not be successful. No one is perfect, do not misunderstand me. However, when we’ve developed a strong walk in the Word of God, the “might not” has the potential to turn into a “will not.”

“Your Word have I hidden in my heart that I will not sin against you.”

How you hide the Word and what you do with that Word determines your victory.

James 1:21-25 says….

“Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.

But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.”

The Lord gave you a good head start in your initial deliverance. Now it is time to see it through by doing the Word.

It’s called.

Obedience!!!