Welcome back to Aspastor John. This summer Pastor John is out of the studio preaching in Belfast in Scotland before returning to the States for a 40-day writing leave to finish up a book on Providence on the sovereignty of God a book he started last summer and hopes to finish this summer I cannot wait to see it and all of it the travel the book writing in this very podcast is all made possible by you. We are supported by the prayers and the funding of God's people.

So thank you for generously investing in this important and eternal work. So with Pastor John Busy we're diving into our archive of 1500 episodes and this summer we're pulling out some of your favorites about once every 50 episodes we release one that touches a nerve and touches the 300,000 play mark these are the elite episodes in our six and a half year history we only have about 30 of them and here's one of them.

Well winning the war against lust is by far the most common theme of all the emails we get in our inbox and today's question comes from an anonymous listener hello Pastor John thank you for taking my question I am a female college student in Maryland and I love listening to your podcast thank you for the encouragement and the truth that you put out each week.

My question is this how exactly does one transform the way they think the Bible talks about letting your mind be transformed but I feel like it's not so cut and dry as it is laid out in scripture lately I've been struggling with lustful thoughts that make me feel very insecure and guilty.

So how do I deal with this especially in a sex crazed culture I want to fight the temptations and every time a lustful thought occurs I feel like I've let God down.

How do I let my mind get transformed as the Bible says so that I can win this overwhelming and exhausting battle how exactly does one transform the way they think that's where she starts let me pick up there so many pieces to her words that I'm probably not going to touch on every one of them but let me give our college student friend in Maryland a simple two-part paradigm.

For transforming the way she we think and then try to fill it out with a few details let me use the analogy of becoming physically fit or physically transformed into fitness to illustrate how we may become spiritually or mentally transformed in fitness almost everybody would see the common sense in saying that if you want to be.

Physically fit there would be two aspects to the process of transformation let's call them resistance and reception by resistance I mean the kinds of exercises that put your muscle under great deal of unnatural strain right for example you want your biceps to be stronger so you can lift heavier packages or lift light ones more easily.

You you curl a weight up and down say 15 to 20 pounds and you do it enough times that the last one you can barely do it the resistance is so strong against your your bicep and in that process of resistance the bicep ironically becomes stronger.

It's strange that you make yourself look like an idiot trembling and pulling and unable to pull it up for the 10th or 20th time and out of that weakness a few weeks later low and behold your bicep is stronger and what I mean by reception so that was resistance what I mean by reception is that you take into your body you receive healthy foods and sufficient sleep.

It's kind of activity that is not so much pushing against something but rather welcoming right and good things into your body so there's the analogy and you can work with it and see if I've got it right physically because I'm don't know much about that but seems to work for me and now let's apply it to the spiritual mental fitness of the way the Bible says it happens.

And of course these resistance and reception are not sequential they're not sequential like some days you do resistance and some days you eat now it's it's simultaneous at the same time in the same days first there's the biblical principle of resistance so James says in James 47 resist the devil and he will flee from you and Paul says in Romans 8 13 put to death kill the deeds of the body by the

spirit so we kill specific sins by targeting them with lethal resistance James chapter 1 verse 3 the testing of your faith produces steadfastness so the testing of faith corresponds to the lifting of the barbell by your bicep some temptation or some suffering comes into your life and threatens to conquer you and ruin your

faith and your holiness and and you have to lay hold on a promise of God and push hard against the rising doubt and unbelief with all your

might as you rely upon the promise of God and so push back the encroaching darkness just like you you push on the

floor when you do push ups why because this produces steadfastness or endurance this means that those tests those those pressures of unbelief and and temptation those tests that have to be

resisted by faith result in two things they enable us to resist greater tests greater temptations greater suffering

in the future and they enable us to meet the the old test that used to make a stumble with relative ease so that we're

not thrown into crisis every time we meet some sexual temptation say now all of this applies to

lust and and sexual temptation because those are thoughts and tests that we have to resist we have to

take hold of a promise of Christ believe it and then use it to push actively push the thought out of

our minds we say no no no I mean I do this I'm I'm not kidding here I mean a thought a some lustful

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