Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen more than one reference to articles or books like this one by Jon Bloom:
It’s very important that we count the cost of sexual immorality before temptation hits. That’s the time for clear thinking. Temptation clouds our judgment. That’s why we pray “keep us from temptation.” Avoiding the fog by steering around it is much better than trying to navigate through it. Years ago, as a way to keep his head clear, Randy Alcorn created a list of ways he would bring destruction into his life and others’ lives were he to give in to sexual immorality. A few months ago he posted it on his blog. It’s worth reading and adapting and reviewing regularly.Most battles are won in the planning and preparation stages. The same is true for the fight for purity.
What might be significant to note is that Alcorn called his list (which is very much worth reading; I drew up a similar list myself many years ago), “Personalized List of Anticipated Consequences of Immorality” (my emphasis). That is, there are consequences that are reasonable to assume, but undoubtedly many more that are not foreseeable, making the potential devastation even more significant and all the more sad.
To this end, as I mentioned in another place, Al Mohler’s comments on beauty (his references go well beyond the beauty of the human body to all forms of beauty) are also helpful in this area. For example,
We delude ourselves into thinking that attractiveness means beauty. Just as nature can lie with its attractive creatures [e.g., attractive animals that are actually poisonous], so also we can lie with the attractiveness we try to portray on the newsstands, on television, in Hollywood, or in the mirror. An entire industry of billions of dollars is built upon the lie that one can buy enough or endure enough, suffer enough or apply enough, to become genuinely beautiful. The whole category of pornography is one big mutual conspiracy to deny the beautiful in favor of a perverted ideal of attractiveness. The real is denied, because given the insatiable desire of the sinner toward erotic attractiveness, the real no longer suffices. Thus the imagined and the fantasized becomes the hunger that is the appetite to be met.
Mohler has thought well on this topic. In fact, many times I have recommended his message “The Seduction of Pornography and the Integrity of Christian Marriage,” which he gave several years ago at a conference at Boyce College.
John Piper has also repeatedly written skillfully on this topic. Perhaps none have been as helpful as his article, “Faith in Future Grace vs. Lust,” in the book Future Grace (the sermon that was the basis for that chapter was entitled, “Battling the Unbelief of Lust”). He also wrote a short article entitled, “A N T H E M: Strategies for Fighting Lust,” in which he enumerated six strategies for battling lust.
Words of Grace 