You have a good friend. This friend has a wonderful wife, beautiful children, steadily attends worship services and participates in the activities of the church, and by all accounts, lives an upright, faithful life. One day, in passing conversation, your friend tells you a startling secret: he dreams about another woman. What’s worse, he says he knows it’s perfectly okay to pine after this other woman, so long as he never acts on his thoughts.
We know, without a doubt, such a mindset is not “perfectly okay.” It is dead wrong. It violates the explicit teaching of Scripture, such as Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:28. Such thinking undermines the very foundation of a marriage – the commitment to love, honor, and cherish. We have no trouble identifying the hypothetical friend’s attitude and thoughts as sinful.
What if we were to back up and change the scenario slightly? Now the friend is you. You don’t daydream about someone other than your spouse. You are faithful to your spouse and your children, and active in the church. But your dreams are not of a brighter, more vibrant relationship with God; instead, you dream of the things of this world. C. S. Lewis put it like this, “If a voice said to me (and one I couldn’t disbelieve), ‘You shall never see the face of God, never help to save a neighbor’s soul, never be free from sin, but you shall live in perfect health till you are 100, very rich, and die the most famous man in the world, and pass into a twilight consciousness of a vaguely pleasant sort forever’ – how much would it worry me?”
Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). Thoughts, actions, and affections are intertwined. What we think about and what we love directly influences what we do. We know we should delight in the Lord (Psalm 37:4). Practically speaking, how do we do that? First, we must look away from sin (Hebrews 12:1). The more attention we give to sin, the more it grows. We must starve it to death. Second, we must look to Jesus (Hebrews 12:2). The more we look at what is truly beautiful, the less satisfaction we will find in counterfeit beauty. “Taste and see that the LORD is good; How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!” (Psalm 34:8).
Clay Leonard
