It Takes Two Wills To Smother Lust

The flesh never sleeps, its eternal lust
Unslaked; no matter how oft requited*,
It demands new thrills, and its owner must
Provide e'er more once the beast's excited!
It was not enough for David just to look;
He must bring her close, and then he must touch!
The plot's the same, whate'er cover's on the book;
Lust's lion must have it all, ne'er too much!
Later, the Christian knows he's much too weak,
Lust so easily overcomes his fort;
God's Spirit warns stronger will must he seek,
To hold the pirate ship of lust in port!
Two iron wills are needed to smother lust;
If the male succeeds, then the female must!

*satisfied

In the 1930's when I was a teenager, I became a Christian. We were taught that our bodies were temples of God and must be kept undefiled with premarital sex; it was understood as a given that both boys and girls were required to present their married partners virgin bodies, untouched by sexual experience. This was an unwritten law for everyone, and it was seldom violated. It is vastly different today, as few virgin boys or girls even finish high school. We preachers in the years after WW2 and before the advent of television warned our congregations not to put those immoral purveyors of sin into our homes. Now I have lived to see an entire nation lose its purity in front of Satan's most effective instrument of evil, the television set.

"One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful." (2 Samuel 11:2)

It was no sin for David to see Bathsheba in the bathtub, but it was to send for her to come to his bed. She already had a husband, and she sinned when she did not refuse him. Well, they both ate the whole enchilada, because she became pregnant, and David contrived to have her husband killed. Lust in men and women would be America's greatest sin, if it were not for the murder of unborn babies, legalized abortion. But its power is nothing new as the 3000-year-old story above testifies. As they say, it takes two to tango; it also takes two to satiate the demands of lust. Old fashioned will power that refuses to give in, no matter how much pressure our lust exerts on us, is the only way to overcome the beast.