Overcoming lust and building mature relationships in teenage years.

[Itachi]

I'm 17 and I still have cravings when it comes to women, every time I see a pretty girl it arouses such a lust in me or I don't know what to call it. I just want to find the kind of half who is a child of God and loves him and acts according to his will and is loyal. I just want love.I don't know how I can overcome lust and what I mentioned. Could you give me some advice about this and relationships at my age and how I should approach and act? Thank you , have a nice day

 

[for_his_glory]

First thing I will say is that you need to be Spiritually born again and indwelled with the Holy Spirit, John 3:5-7, developing your personal relationship with Christ who will help you with this lust problem and when the time is right when you get older Jesus will place the right woman in your life. If you read the book of John and Acts this will teach you about Jesus and the relationship you need with Him and Acts will teach you about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

You are very young and no doubt not sure of what true love is all about yet. Don't let your hormones lead you where you need not to be. If you are looking please make sure you are evenly yoked to who you find for as a child of God what does light have to do with darkness. 2Corinthians 6:14-18

 

[WalterandDebbie]

I'm 17 and I still have cravings when it comes to women, every time I see a pretty girl it arouses such a lust in me or I don't know what to call it. I just want to find the kind of half who is a child of God and loves him and acts according to his will and is loyal. I just want love.I don't know how I can overcome lust and what I mentioned. Could you give me some advice about this and relationships at my age and how I should approach and act? Thank you , have a nice day

Greetings Itachi, We will be praying for you, okay? I understand what you are saying, but you must not let these things take control, you have that kind of power with the Holy Spirit, without it is impossible, we must not yield to temptation, if you do you will suffer.

1 John 2:15-17 KJV

Love, Walter And Debbie

 

[Tenchi]

I'm 17 and I still have cravings when it comes to women, every time I see a pretty girl it arouses such a lust in me or I don't know what to call it.

Sounds like you're a normal, healthy, adolescent male. Remember, God made you to be sexually-aroused by an attractive woman. It's okay to have such a response. It isn't okay, though, for that response not to be under the control of the Holy Spirit. God made you to be a creature over whom He has constant control. When you're living always under the Spirit's control, he shapes, directs and orders your sexual impulse, keeping it within proper bounds, guiding it into God-honoring ends. But if you aren't yielding yourself to the Holy Spirit's authority and control throughout each day, you must necessarily be in rebellion to God and in this condition the lusts of your flesh will grow out of all proportion so that they begin to destroy your life. Just look at what happens to the addict to food, or drugs, or porn, or gambling, or gaming. These are all people who are not (and likely have never been) under the Spirit's control.

I just want to find the kind of half who is a child of God and loves him and acts according to his will and is loyal. I just want love.I don't know how I can overcome lust and what I mentioned.

Well, you can't overcome your natural and strong sexual impulse in the way, and to the ends, God intends that you should.

Romans 7:15-24
15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.
17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.
20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

Romans 8:5-8
5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.
8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Galatians 5:17
17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

God didn't make you to be controlled by yourself but by Himself. He has more than enough power to control even your strong sexual interest. But, He only exerts His power upon you under certain circumstances. He's not going to ever make a puppet out of you, making you do what He wants you to do against your choice. No, He'll only go to work on you, changing you, as you agree to His doing so. God's a gentleman and will not force you to His will and way. He will wait for you to agree to His changing you, which you do by submitting to His will and way, to Him, throughout every day. Only when you have agreed to His acting to alter you, will He do so. The moment you start moving in your own way, against the will of God, He stops working in you 'til you consciously, explicitly return to submission to Him.

Romans 6:12-14
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.
13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.
14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

Romans 6:19
19 ....For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

Romans 8:14
14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

Romans 12:1
1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

James 4:6-7
6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God...

James 4:10
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

You and I are in a relationship with God. Not a super-powered human. Not a near-equal. God is the Almighty Maker of Heaven and Earth, the Creator and Sustainer of All Things, or Master, Lord and King. Or He should be. Certainly, He won't deal with us as anything other than who and what He is, which means He will only be God in our lives, nothing less. If we won't have Him as our God, our Ruler and Master, we can't know and walk with Him and be strengthened and changed by Him.

Continued below.

 

[Tenchi]

But God being God in our lives means He calls the shots about, well, everything. His will governs our time, our energy and our money. How do we know His will? It's all laid out for us in His word, the Bible (2 Timothy 3:16-17). In it, He tells us what things ought to occupy our time, and into what we ought to invest our energy, and how we should spend our material resources. He also instructs us in His word about our thought-life, about right and wrong attitudes and feelings, about how to walk well with Him. (2 Corinthians 6:14-18; Ephesians 5:1-13; Philippians 3:7-14; Philippians 4:8; Psalms 1; Psalms 119; James 4:4, etc.)

What happens, though, to folks who get into God's word and see that God wants them to inwardly separate themselves more and more from the World, the flesh and the devil is that their desires for these things is stronger than they can control, pressing them away from God into what God has said to forsake. They want money, and fame, and sex, and stimulation; they love more clothes, and bigger houses, and faster cars; they hunger for fun, for entertainment and exciting distraction, for thrilling sensations; they crave food, and drink and to be merry. And they know they want these things more than they want God and His way.

How does a person like this, knowing they can't control these strong desires for things other than God and that are actually against Him, change what they want? Well, as I said at the start of this post, they can't. Only God can change their wrong desires, their sinful, self-destructive "wanter." And so, when a person submits to God, He goes to work on their wants, their desires, first of all, cooling overly inflamed but natural desires, dissolving evil desires and instilling new godly desires in them. God doesn't do this in a single instant, mind you, but progressively, bit by bit, as the person learns to live habitually in a place of conscious submission to Himself.

What actually happens as the Christian person forms a reflex of submission to God is that they become more and more like Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29; 2 Corinthians 4:7-11; Galatians 5:22-23; 2 Corinthians 3:18), reflecting him rather than themselves to all around them. This happens so naturally, so subtly and powerfully, that the submitted Christian typically doesn't see that they are doing so. Like a branch growing out from a tree trunk, there is no single instant of growth an observer of the branch could perceive, but it is growing, nonetheless. If the observer returns to the branch in, say, three months, they can see it is larger, perhaps leafy and even producing fruit. It's in this subtle, imperceptible way that God makes submitted Christians healthy, "fruitful" branches in the Vine who is Jesus Christ (John 15:4-5).

I hope you understand in all this that God takes responsibility for changing you; He doesn't want you to try to change for Him.

1 Corinthians 1:7-9
7 ...our Lord Jesus Christ,
8 who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Philippians 1:6
6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Philippians 2:13
13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Philippians 4:13
13 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

Ephesians 3:16
16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,

Ephesians 6:10
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.

Jude 1:24-25
24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy,
25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

But, again, God waits on you to agree to His changing you before He will. And this agreement is made by your submission to His will and way throughout each day.

Conduits, not Copyists.

Isaiah 64:8

jonathanhay.substack.com

Harold and the Old Lady.

He'd prayed the same thing for days now, and had determined that this would be the very last time he would ever pray this prayer.

jonathanhay.substack.com

 

[Malkie]

Romans 7:15-24

Hi
Paul had given an answer to the war that was going on inside. Romans 7:25
Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

 

[Tenchi]

Hi
Paul had given an answer to the war that was going on inside. Romans 7:25
Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

Actually, he gives a thorough explanation of what he meant in the verse you quoted in the next chapter. How is one delivered through Jesus Christ? See Romans 8:9-14.

 

[Hopeful 2]

I'm 17 and I still have cravings when it comes to women, every time I see a pretty girl it arouses such a lust in me or I don't know what to call it. I just want to find the kind of half who is a child of God and loves him and acts according to his will and is loyal. I just want love.I don't know how I can overcome lust and what I mentioned. Could you give me some advice about this and relationships at my age and how I should approach and act? Thank you , have a nice day

Hi, Itachi, and welcome to the site.
You have to remember that lusts are time limiting.
By that I mean that the next lust will eclipse the present one and the one after that will eclipse that lust. ect. ect. ect.
Life is a continuous train of devilish efforts to get you to ignore God and His ways.
Peter writes..."... Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
6 Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations:
7 That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:" (1 Peter 15-7)
Your struggles now will result in a glorious day of judgement ! If you remain faithful until the end.

James writes..."My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;
3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
4 But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing." (James 1:2-4)
There is much reward for resistance to temptation, both in this world and the next !
James' next verse gives us recourse for the alleviation of lusts..." If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." (James 1:5)