Lust is conniving. Lust makes you believe you have powers you don’t have so that you can have your way with lustful thoughts. There is a lie lust breathes into your life that allows you to incubate the seed. That’s the lie of, “As long as I don’t ______ ” Then lust lets you fill in the blank. This lie makes you believe that, “As long as I don’t ________”: look at women at church; look at real women, just pictures; don’t participate in sex acts with them; don’t touch them; don’t get caught, or; don’t pay for it, it’s okay. This list can be endless. You believe that as long as you don’t cross some self-created line, you are okay. In my experience, at some point, those who buy this lie of having a line move it, or allow it to become blurry because it has become too tangled.

When you accept the truth that you are not allowed to lust, you can’t be deceived by this. If you believe you can lust, you will be brought to the line. When you don’t cross that line, you may feel good because you didn’t do “X” behavior. Know now that if you are contemplating the lie, “As long as I don’t ______ ,” you are believing a lie that will destroy your life. You have created a deception—or several deceptions—giving yourself permission to lust. Remember the core of lust is to think differently than God. To think like God is to believe that no lust is the line.