How to Get Free From Lust Once and For All

Do you feel guilt and shame every time you give into sexual sin? Do you feel like God is calling you to a life of holiness, but you can’t just fully step in? Maybe you have surrendered to God, but you can’t get control over this one area. Perhaps it started as loneliness and turned into sexual sin because you keep returning to a relationship (friends with benefits).  

Not only do I pastor a multi-site church, but I’m somebody who has openly shared my testimonies of being set free from sexual sin. So I’m going to give you three things to help you finally break free from sexual sin.  Then we will pray a powerful prayer together to break the chains off you.    

1. Break the Trance.  

Lust causes you to come up under a trance. It is a way of thinking where you rehearse things over and over. Human beings are wired for a state of continual thinking and meditation.  Our human brain is built for repetition.  The repetition of lustful thoughts produces a trance.

Colossians 3:5 

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.

Let’s talk about your earthly nature. You are a physical body.  The desire to have sex is not wrong. As a matter of fact, it’s not just a desire, but one of the reasons God created sex is to procreate, and he commanded that we would be fruitful and multiply.  He gave sexuality as a gift.  So the desire in and of itself is not wrong.  You may have been led to believe that it was wrong, but in and of itself, sexual desire is not wrong. 

I remember reading a story about a fox that was wounded. This wounded fox came to a home, limping and bleeding.  The house owner had so much compassion for this fox that he began to feed it. He bandaged his wounds and cared for it. Sooner or later, the fox got to the point where it was so strong and rehabilitated that it ended up viciously attacking the owner and his child and killing them. 

This story made me think about how sexual desire is like that wounded fox. It shows up as loneliness. It shows up as, “My life is so hard, I just need a moment of pleasure.”  We begin to feed it.  What we don’t realize is that we’re strengthening a killer.   That fox does not belong in your house!  In the same way, you are feeding that desire. It shows up as brokenness. It shows up as something in our life that we make an excuse for because we feel deserving of it, and then all of a sudden, we begin to strengthen it to the point where it eventually destroys us and maybe our children too. 

The thing that you let live is the thing that eventually kills you.  So if you let lust live, it will kill you, your destiny, your peace of mind, and your next level.  Colossians 3:5 says, “Put to death sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed which is idolatry.”  What does that mean?  

Stop feeding it! Break the trance!

2.   Worship Continuously.

2 Corinthians 10:5

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

David was a worshiper.  He understood how to repeat and rehearse victories. So when he stood in front of Goliath, he said, “Hey Goliath, I defeated the lion, I defeated the bear, and surely I’ll defeat you.”  What he was doing was repeating and rehearsing his victories. 

Lust and perversion make you repeat shame, guilt, and condemnation. When you go to worship God, lust says, “What are you doing? Don’t you remember what you did?” And lust repeats your failures. So you must learn how to take those thoughts captive and worship continuously.  

It’s not about a lack of discipline. You’re already disciplined into lust.  There’s not a day that you don’t lust and operate in perversion.  You have already proven you can be consistent and disciplined. You need to reallocate your discipline towards the things of God.  Reallocate your discipline from the works of darkness toward the works of righteousness.

1 Peter 5:5

“God opposes the proud

    but shows favor to the humble.”  

False humility says, “God, I just keep going back to lust; I can’t defeat this thing.” Genuine humility says, “God, I’m not praying as I should pray; I haven’t made time for your word.  God, it’s you that I’ve left out.”  God shows favor to the humble.  Worship continuously with a humble heart and see freedom from lust once and for all. 

3.  Clean House.

If you want to get free from lust once and for all, you have to get serious about applying the warning the Apostle Paul gave in Romans 12.  

Romans 12:2

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

The world is polyamorous.  The world has multiple different outlets for their sexuality.  The world says to do whatever feels good.   But Romans 12 means that sometimes we have to clean house.  Jesus said it is better to cut off your hand because you continue to sin than to lose your entire body to the flames.  

Think of it this way.  Most of us are born with two hands, and we put much of our identity into that fact.  We have learned to do everything in life with those two hands.  If we were to lose one, it would feel as if our identity had shifted. We would have to reorient how we do everything in life.  We used to write, type, drive, and eat with the hand you lost, and now we have to learn to do everything without that appendage.  Everything would have to change.  This is the same with lust.  But wouldn’t you rather have to figure out how to live without lust than lose your whole life because of lust?  

In cleaning house, you may have to delete some apps off your phone.  You may have to block numbers of friends with benefits.  You may have to remove the things that are a part of your identity. But that is the key to freedom – it’s removing a part of you that is cancerous so that you can save the rest.  

These three steps do not in and of themselves produce lasting victory over lustful thoughts.  The Bible is not an instruction manual for sexual repression; it’s so that you will be sexually satisfied and sexually fulfilled.  But lust can never be fulfilled. Lust is insatiable.  The only way anyone can attain true sexual fulfillment is through the covenant of marriage. But you cannot solve lust with marriage because lust is insatiable.  This means you can be married to the right person but wired the wrong way and never be satisfied. You will end up seeking satisfaction through cheating, and if you don’t cheat with another person, you’ll cheat through a screen or video. 

Why should you renew your mind?  So that you can prove what is good and acceptable and the perfect will of God.  Until you renew your mind, you can’t prove what the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God is. Every day you wake up, you have thousands of new brain cells through neurogenesis.  The Bible says His mercies are new every day.  That means when you wake up every single morning, you have thousands of new brain cells that were created while you slept.  

Every day you wake up, you have another opportunity to transform your brain.  You have another opportunity to renew your mind.  It can’t be fixed by deliverance. You can be delivered from a demon, but if the habitat that that demon created remains, they come back wanting to take more territory and bring their friends. If you don’t learn the convergence of discipline with deliverance, renewing your mind every day,  you will not reverse it and stay free.  

You don’t have to live in guilt, shame, or condemnation.  You don’t have to live under that mental and emotional burden.  You don’t have to live bound by demons.  There is freedom from lust, once and for all.  

 

Let’s pray right now:

Father, I take captive every single vile, demonic, lustful, perverse thought now, in the name of Jesus. Everything I have viewed through lust and pornography and things that I’ve experienced through trauma, molestation, rape, promiscuity, and perversion of all kinds, right now I take it captive in the name of Jesus.  I pull down every single stronghold that has erected itself up against your Word. 

Father, I thank you that freedom is coming now.  You are giving me righteous fulfillment of my sexual desires through my spouse. God, I thank you that you are bringing me into the covenant of marriage to fulfill my sexual desires.  I am not going to be repressed, but I am going to be completely and totally free.  

Father, I’m not going back. Father, I repent. I thank you that you are faithful and just to  forgive those who repent.  Father, I repent.  I’m not blaming it on demons, Lord.  It’s on me. I turn my heart back to you right now. God, I belong to you now. 

Every spirit of lust and perversion, I command you to go in the name of Jesus. I break your power, command you to lose me, and let me go.  Come out of my mind, come out of my appetite, in the name of Jesus.  Lust of the eyes, come out in Jesus’ name. Lust of the hands, out in Jesus’ name.   Every single curse of lust and perversion is broken in the name of Jesus.  

Amen!

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If you have been involved in the occult or witchcraft, I encourage you to check out my blog “How to Cleanse Your House from Evil Spirits.” 

My Breakthrough Community is full of people just like you who are hungry for more of God. If you are interested in learning more, consider joining the Breakthrough Community!

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