Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary

by J.D. Greear

When you have seen the beauty of God and felt the weightiness of God’s majesty in your soul, sin’s power over you will be broken. I often tell college-aged guys at our church that they can turn their sexual drives on and off like a light switch. They never believe me. I tell them, “I’ll prove it to you . . . Imagine that you are alone with your girlfriend, sitting with her on the couch at her house. Your sexual desires begin to take over and you feel like there is no way you can turn them off. At that moment, you feel totally out of control, like there is no way to say ‘no’ to the power of temptation.” They say, “Exactly.” I tell them, “At just that moment, her Army Ranger father walks in. . . . See? Sexual desire, off like a light switch!” Where did it go? It is not that they suddenly lost libido, it was just that in that moment their fear of her Ranger father was weightier to them than the sexual lust. Desire for her was surpassed by a desire to avoid death. The reason many of us feel like we “can’t say no” to temptations is that God does not have that kind of weight in our hearts. God’s authority must be greater than our desires; His beauty should be more attractive than any lust of the flesh. In other words, the reason we can’t say no to temptation is not that our desires for those things is too large; it’s because our desire for God is too small.