The Christian Worldview

David Wheaton: How to have freedom from lust. That is the topic of discussion today on The Christian Worldview Radio Program, where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm David Wheaton, the host. The Christian Worldview is a nonprofit, listener-supported radio ministry. Our website is thechristianworldview.org, and the rest of our contact information will be given throughout today's program. As always, thank you for your notes of encouragement, financial support, and lifting us up in prayer.

The world is energized by lust, which is sinful desire contrary to God's will. The Apostle John wrote in 1 John Chapter 2, "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world." All that is in the world is pretty all-encompassing, and lust is the internal motivator to get what we want in opposition to what God wills.

Lust is typically associated with the craving for sexual satisfaction outside marriage. Think about what drove the world's elite to visit Jeffrey Epstein's island with the lure of young girls: lust. Think about the secular movie and music industries and what they are promoting: lust. Think about the porn industry in the United States generating $13 billion annually and what they are stoking: lust.

But lust can also apply to an unending list of other sinful desires such as power, status, success, money, material things, standard of living, personal network, and the list goes on. The bottom line is the sinful human heart has a strong bent to please itself rather than please God. So is there any hope? The answer is a resounding yes.

Our guest this weekend, Pastor Jared Moore of Homesteads Baptist Church in Crossville, Tennessee, has written an excellent and practical devotional book titled, *33 Days to Freedom from Lust*. He presents a different approach to overcoming lust than the more common advice to set up guardrails like device filters and accountability partners, both of which are good, by the way.

Pastor Moore targets the root of lust, which is the sinful heart that needs to repent and to know and love God more deeply, so that the lusts of the flesh pale in comparison. So if you struggle with wandering eyes for others who aren't your spouse, if you are enslaved to pornography or sinful sexual thoughts, or if there is something non-sexual in this life you lust for, we hope you will listen to the wise biblical counsel of Pastor Moore on the program today. Let's get to the first segment of the interview with Pastor Jared Moore.

Jared, thank you for coming on The Christian Worldview Radio Program for the first time. Let's start out by you telling us about your background, why and how you became a follower of Christ, and what your life is like now.

Jared Moore: Thanks for having me, brother. I was raised in church, went to church every Sunday, but never really understood the gospel, wasn't living a godly life. When I was 17, I was under deep conviction for my sin and trusted in Christ alone. I understood finally that I couldn't work my way to heaven. I was trusting in my own righteousness before then and being a "pretty good person" was the mantra.

I repented of my sin and trusted in Christ, and I have been seeking to repent ever since, trusting that he takes my sin away and that Christ is my righteousness. His righteousness has been given to me through faith. I have been in pastoral ministry now for 25 years. I started when I was 19 in youth ministry in the Southern Baptist Convention and have just served churches ever since. I've been here for 10 years serving as senior pastor.

I love the church. I love God's people. I think a call to ministry is a call to bleed. There are too many primadonnas in ministry today. When I look at the New Testament, I see guys who love the Lord and love the church so much that they were willing to die to love the people and preach the gospel. Today, I think there are few pastors who are willing to do that.

We kind of look at Billy Graham and want to influence nations, when we should be just loving the Lord and loving the people and being willing to suffer. The greatest pastor who ever lived, Jesus, was murdered for loving people. If we expect that from ministry, I think we'll last. But if we think that we're going to influence nations and everybody's going to submit to us and love us, I don't think we'll last in ministry. My goal is to persevere. My goal is to love the church even if that means that I'm harmed. Jesus is worth it.

David Wheaton: He certainly is. Thank you for sharing your salvation story and your biblical perspective of how a pastor should view Christ's body, the church. Jared, let's talk about your book today, your new book, *33 Days to Freedom from Lust*. I want to start out by reading a passage from 1 John Chapter 2, starting in verse 15, where the Apostle John writes:

"Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away and also its lusts, but the one who does the will of God lives forever."

That's a very rich passage, Jared. I'd like to ask how you would define lust and why you think that word is used to describe all that is in the world several times in that passage.

Jared Moore: Lust is desiring anything contrary to God. So anything in you that's contrary to God at the root level is the beginning of lust. In Genesis 3:6, whenever Eve is looking at the forbidden tree and she starts to think in her heart that it's able to make her wise, it was to be desired to make her wise. In the Hebrew, the desire there is the word covet. It's the same word that's in the 10th Commandment: you shall not desire, you shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor. So the beginning of sin is sin. The beginning of desiring things that are contrary to God is the lust of the flesh. The flesh is producing it. So to answer your question, it's the 10th Commandment. That is the lust of the flesh.

David Wheaton: Also in 1 Corinthians 7, there's a different kind of a desire here. Paul writes, "It is good for a man not to touch a woman. But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband." Skipping forward to verse 8: "But I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I." Paul was single. "But if they do not have self-control, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion."

I think the Apostle Paul there is talking about the fact that when someone's single, there's a tendency to lust after someone who's not their wife. What's the differentiation between the righteous sexual desire between a married couple for each other, like perhaps the Solomon writes about in his Song of Solomon, and the kind of lust that we associate with pornography or coveting someone else's wife or another woman who's not your wife?

Jared Moore: I would say the sexual desire for anyone who you're not married to is the beginning of lust. By sexual, I mean if you were married to that person, it would end in the marriage bed. I think that a lot of the terminology has been misapplied today. People think of sexual attraction as thinking someone is pretty or handsome, and that's just not true.

I thought my mother was a pretty lady, my sisters are pretty ladies, my daughter is pretty, but there's no sexual attraction whatsoever. I think we need to get back to where we use more biblical language, where we are supposed to have an affection for our family and that women are supposed to be under the care of men. By that, I just mean, for example, in our church, whenever ladies are needing help down the stairs, the men are always there to help them.

If there was a fistfight between two men and I came upon it, I would only intervene if someone's going to get hurt severely. But if a woman was involved, I would intervene immediately because women are, according to the created order, they are under the care of men, at least broadly. In 1 Timothy 5:2, the Apostle Paul tells Timothy that he's supposed to view older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity. Pastors are not supposed to be sexually attracted to their congregation.

They're supposed to view the older women as mothers and the younger women as sisters. So to answer your question, sexual attraction outside of marriage is the beginning of lust. So if you're single and dating, it's good to think that a woman is pretty. It's good to want to pursue her for marriage. It's good even to want to one day cut a sexual covenant with her in marriage. But to desire to consummate that covenant before it is cut is the beginning of lust.

David Wheaton: Well differentiated there. Pastor Jared Moore is our guest today here on The Christian Worldview as we talk about how to have freedom from lust. Now, this topic of lust, maybe specifically in the sexual realm, is just everywhere in our society, Jared, as you well know. One of the biggest stories over the last many years has been with Jeffrey Epstein, who owned this island in the Caribbean and took many of the world's rich and famous people out there, political leaders, out to this island. There were underage women, and it was really all about lust and power and different things like that.

Or if you watch the Super Bowl recently, watch the ads during the Super Bowl or the halftime show, there's so much emphasis on lust, coveting someone who is not your spouse. Just explain how powerful a temptation lust is. This isn't just something that's going on now; this has been the case for really all of human history.

Jared Moore: The issue is that Christians have largely justified lust in their heart. They've adopted the mantra that it's only sin if I act on it. It's not a sin to have evil impulses or to be sexually attracted to people you're not married to. They think that that is a natural thing or at least not a sinful thing. But in the book of Ephesians, Paul says that impurity, which would be anything sexual contrary to God in your heart, contrary to his design, that that should not even be named among Christians, is what the Apostle Paul says.

So that should be the goal. Jesus isn't talking about his sexual lust ever in the scriptures, because he never had any sexual lust. You just don't see the New Testament writers ever discussing that, and every example that we have in scripture is negative towards it. It is sin. Adam and Eve, God took a piece of Adam, so he's missing something. He makes Eve and now she's missing the body she was once joined to, and then the two are to come back together and become one flesh.

You're not supposed to be sexually attracted to everybody or to people you're not married to. I think our society has just adopted that; they just call it natural and assume that it's okay. The church has largely followed that by saying it's not something that you need to repent of in your heart. There's a lot of reasons why. People are postponing marriage till they're in their late 20s, whenever their hormones, their bodies, are literally telling them to get married and look for a spouse, probably when they're teenagers. So they kind of set themselves up to fail because they don't consider how God has designed them. Their most fruitful times for bearing children is when they're younger rather than when they're older.

David Wheaton: I want to follow up on that answer because you say on page 15 of your book, *33 Days to Freedom from Lust*, this devotional that you say:

"I grew up in an evangelical church that loved Jesus, his word, one another, and others. As teens, we were taught much good truth and beauty, but we were taught a few errors as well. One was the idea that for men, lust is inevitable. It's just part of who you are in this fallen world, your sinful burden in this life. They did teach us not to act on the lust, but that it would be there for our whole lives."

Explain more about society's assumptions, but more specifically even the church's assumptions about lust. You mentioned one there, that it's inevitable. What are some of the other ones that we often hear from the evangelical church or broader society about this sin of lust that we shouldn't accept as fact?

Jared Moore: It's kind of follow your heart is what our society pushes. Do what you want to do and with whoever you want to do it with. That's just the mentality. The church has falsely believed that lust is part of being a man or that being attracted to multiple women is inevitable. It's been surprising to see who has actually argued this publicly. There are some very conservative Christian professors that argue that being polyamorous in your heart isn't sin. I think it's very clearly sin, just with a cursory glance at scripture.

It was associated with being male and desiring women. They misuse Romans 1 where Paul says, concerning homosexuality, that women have exchanged the natural use of the man for the woman, and the man has exchanged the natural use of the woman for the man, and thus committing abominable acts and having evil passions. They take that saying, oh, it's natural. They misuse that passage because we have special revelation, the rest of scripture, that tells us that the design for our sexuality is for biblical marriage. It's not for being sexually attracted to everybody and to pursuing that. So there's that misuse and misunderstanding of scripture there.

Then another thing is that it's been popular the past 20 years, probably, to argue that you don't choose how you're broken, you don't choose what your proclivities are. Biblically, yes, you do. Today, we focus on choice: what did I choose, what did I choose? Because the secular courts, they try to prove actions; they can't prove your heart. But God is looking upon the heart. If you are tempted by something that is evil, it is your fault. It's nobody else's fault. Literally, your heart is desiring something contrary to God. Whose else's fault would it be?

The world would have you to believe that it's not your fault. There's been this coddling of Christians. I've spoken to teens on this before and I've had mothers kind of get onto me about it because the teens are so upset now that they're responsible for these. I'm like, they should be upset. You have to get upset before you will run to Jesus. You're telling me you don't want teenagers to feel bad for having lustful desires in their heart, that that's the answer? No, you repent of it and run to Jesus, and he actually forgives and takes your sin away and gives you the power by his Holy Spirit to not be lustful in your heart.

David Wheaton: What our guest Pastor Jared Moore just said is so important. Lust calls for repentance and turning to Christ in faith. God forgives and takes away your sin and gives the believer the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit to not be lustful in your heart. That doesn't mean total eradication of lust in this life, but consistent victory over it.

For a limited time, you can order *33 Days to Freedom from Lust* by Pastor Jared Moore for a donation of any amount to The Christian Worldview. Each day follows a simple pattern starting with prayer, scripture, reflection, and application, followed by a poem and a hymn to shape your affections, and then concludes with prayer. The whole point is to lock your gaze on the nature and character of the triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so that your heart desires to worship him above pleasing yourself. *33 Days to Freedom from Lust* is softcover, 246 pages, and retails for $15. To order, all of our contact information will be given during this break. More with Pastor Jared Moore on freedom from lust coming up. I'm David Wheaton, and you are listening to The Christian Worldview Radio Program.

David Wheaton: The January/February issue of The Christian Worldview Journal features two separate columns, one by Pastor Virgil Walker and one by me, on the worldview driving the fraud, lawlessness, and protest taking place in Minnesota. Managing Editor Soren Kern writes about the bad theology of the woke right with popular influencers like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.

The Christian Worldview Journal is a bimonthly print publication designed to sharpen your biblical worldview on current events and issues of the faith. It also includes a resource catalog and ministry updates. The Journal is mailed to Christian Worldview partners as a thank you for their support of this radio ministry. To become a Christian Worldview partner or order an individual issue of the Journal, go to thechristianworldview.org or call 1-888-646-2233 or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331.

We are kicking off 2026 with a New Year's sale at our website, thechristianworldview.org. For example, there's still time to order the always-popular Christian Worldview desktop calendar for 2026 with beautiful outdoor photographs from our own Rich Ganzel. Or how about the MacArthur Daily Bible, which is set up to help you read through the entire Bible in whatever timeframe you choose?

Plus, there are lots of Christmas resources at the most discounted prices of the year, including family favorite *Manger in Danger*, the 25-day Christmas devotional for families with children under 12. Just go to thechristianworldview.org to browse and order sale resources for adults and children or call us toll-free, 1-888-646-2233, that's 1-888-646-2233, or visit thechristianworldview.org.

Welcome back to The Christian Worldview. I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit thechristianworldview.org where you can sign up for our weekly email and The Christian Worldview Journal print publication, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Our topic today is how to have freedom from lust, and our guest is Pastor Jared Moore, author of the devotional book, *33 Days to Freedom from Lust*.

We've seen over the last—it's been going on for decades—but we've particularly seen some heartbreaking falls sexually from some very well-known Christian leaders over the last, let's just say, five years. There's almost been a scourge of it, succumbing to lust and sexual sin. Jared, why do you think that has been? Because again, these are people, especially the ones that are sound theologically and so forth, they're in the word, they're studying it, they're speaking on it, they're writing books. How does that happen?

Jared Moore: It happens because folks get away from the Lord. Eventually, studying scripture and reading scripture becomes an academic exercise rather than worship. The theologians, the pastors, and those who study scripture for a living, they should be the godliest among us. We should be the godliest because we should be worshipping God more particularly.

Reading scripture, if you're doing it right, is worship. If you're not worshipping when you read scripture, then you're just an anthropologist. You're just studying human thoughts about God, and you've reduced it to something less than it's supposed to be. I think that's what happened. It's kind of like David. When the Bible describes David's sin, it says at a time when kings are supposed to be at war, David was at the palace.

Then he takes a walk on the roof. He's supposed to be leading God's army against God's enemies; instead, he's being lazy. He's already tilted towards adultery. I think these men get tilted that way, and then the evil one and their flesh provides an opportunity, and they take the opportunity. The second thing is pride. You start thinking you're a pretty big deal.

When I go and I speak at churches, they treat me really well. I'm not saying they don't treat me well here at my own church, but when I go somewhere else, they act like I'm a big deal, and I'm not a big deal. Imagine doing that fifty times a year at different churches, and they treat you like a king or a celebrity everywhere you go. Then when you return home to your wife who truly knows you, she's not treating you like a celebrity; she's treating you like her spouse.

Then imagine some young woman is treating you like a celebrity, and she's giving you attention. It's just sin. If you will kill the sin in your heart at the root, you won't fall. But if you justify it, you've already fallen. All you need is an opportunity.

David Wheaton: Jared, there are a lot of things on this issue of lust and pornography. The incidence of pornography is so high for both men and women, by the way, even those who are professing Christians, even pastors. There's lots of different quote-unquote strategies to overcome the sin of lust: put filters on your devices, have accountability partners, or just discard devices, don't watch television. I'm not saying any of these are not worthwhile to consider and do, but what have you found doesn't tend to work for a professing Christian to overcome the sin of lust? That's something that's heavily promoted as being helpful, but really in fact they're not really getting to the root or source of what's causing them to continue to lust.

Jared Moore: The problem is not devices; the problem is you desire evil. When you get rid of things, that can be helpful, but it never deals with the root. I want pornography outlawed, but the reason why pornography exists is because there's a market for it. There are wicked people that desire it. You have to deal with the root. Your goal should be to get to the point where you are no longer tempted by pornography.

Only adulterous hearts can be tempted by pornography. That's the truth and that's what you need to hear. So to deal with that, you have to get to where you don't have an adulterous heart. Well, how do you do that? You have to lean into your relationship with God. You have to have stronger affection for him than you do for sin. Folks say, well, I don't want the pornography or I don't want this. Some of you doesn't want it, but some of you does.

If you didn't want it, it wouldn't be an issue. You have to call it what it is so that you will take responsibility to repent from it. Let me just say it bluntly. If you are looking at pornography, it is your fault and your fault alone. And if you're a Christian, you have the ability to turn from that and to not look at pornography and to not even desire it. The next time you have an impulse towards it, if you turn from that and live the opposite, do what God's word says.

Think on him, sing his truth, go be involved in the local church. If you are applying his word and you do that consistently, eventually that burning for pornography will burn itself out. Now, your flesh on this side of glory will move to something else, but you should see yourself as a Christian as a sin killer. The flesh is sin, but it does not have to move the same direction your entire life. In the power of the Holy Spirit, you can put it to death if you will, if you'll get up and live what God has called you to.

Lots of times folks will make this statement: I prayed for God to take my desire for pornography away and he hasn't done it yet. And they'll use that as an excuse for why they literally have an adulterous heart. You cannot blame God for sin in your heart. You cannot say, oh, he hasn't taken it away, whenever he's given you his Holy Spirit and he's given you the tools, he's given you a book, he's given you his word. He's shown you where pornography leads.

The Proverbs say that the adulterous woman is a serial killer. Do you view pornography as a serial killer? If you did, you would not look at it. You have to agree with God's word, quit making excuses, and get up and live his ethics from your heart. You're leaving freedom on the table.

David Wheaton: Well said, Jared Moore, with us today here on The Christian Worldview talking about how to have freedom from lust. Now, in your devotional, Jared, *33 Days to Freedom from Lust*, each day of these 33 days has a certain format. It begins with prayer, then you have a scripture and reflection in the book, and an application of that, and then some marching orders, thinking God's thoughts after him, you say. It's one sentence to shape your affections, one poem to shape your affections, one song to shape your affections, and then you end with prayer. I would say it probably takes about 10 minutes maybe to read on a given day, one devotional from your book. But why did you use this particular pattern for each day's devotional? Of course, we understand prayer and scripture, but you also included like a one-sentence and a poem and a song. Why this format?

Jared Moore: This format is what I use in pastoral counseling. If somebody comes into my office and they're wanting pastoral counseling on a particular sin, I'll follow this format. I'll have them memorize scripture that deals with their particular sin. The poetry is trying to get the truths into your bones. Often when people are ensnared in sin, it's their default.

Like when everything's falling apart, they'll run to that thing, whatever that sin is that they're ensnared in. The goal of the study is to change their default, to where instead of when they go to bed at night they're thinking about pornography, instead they're thinking on the Lord. When they get up in the morning, they're not thinking about pornography; they're thinking about the Lord.

The way you do that is through repetition: thinking God's truths, believing them, receiving them, and singing those truths. You know how songs get stuck in your head? The thought is to where that becomes your default. You become what you think on according to scripture. Philippians 4 tells you to think on the good, true, and beautiful. Psalm 115 says that idolaters become like what they think on.

The idols are worthless, so they become worthless. It's the same concept as Romans 1 but turned upside down. Romans 1 says you worship the creature and then you become worthless, like your sexuality becomes worthless and you dive into all kind of sin. But the Bible's the opposite of that. The Ten Commandments start with worship God only. The two great commands: love God with all your heart, soul, and mind is how it starts.

The Bible starts with, "In the beginning God." You become like what you're aimed at and what you think on. So the goal is to have folks thinking on scripture, singing scripture, meditating on scripture, and also I want folks to see the beauty. If you could see the beauty of God, you would think of lust as beneath you.

Folks often aren't getting rid of devices so they don't desire murder, because murder repulses them. Imagine if you viewed lust the same way you view murder, to where it repulses you, to where it's no longer tempting. How do you get to that? You have to be filled with love for God and the beauty of God. So that's the methodology behind it: shaping thoughts that shape affections and that turn hearts.

David Wheaton: Jared Moore is our guest, the author of *33 Days to Freedom from Lust*. He's also a pastor in Tennessee. We have links to him at our website, thechristianworldview.org. I just want to list how you do this in the devotional, that you have this contrast every single day as the title of the chapter.

So Day 1, which I'm going to read from in just a second, but Day 1 is titled, "God is eternal, lust is temporary." Day 2: "God is holy, lust is sin." Day 3: "God is all-powerful, lust is weak." So you set up this contrast every single day about how the beauty and glory and holiness of God is—that's where it's at, so to speak, that's where the value is in life, and pursue him rather than pursue things like lust that's temporary, sinful, and a dead end. In other words, work on increasing your love and affection for God so that everything is diminished in comparison. So let me just read from Day 1, where God is eternal, lust is temporary, in the application portion. So you begin with prayer that day, you have scripture and reflection, and then this is the application paragraph. You say:

"When you lust, you sin against the only one in all creation who has no needs. The God who had no need for creation freely chose to create all things, except sin, which the devil and man created by misusing God's creation. God calls us to worship him with our entire lives. We need him. He does not need us. Our lives and our breath and our worship of him are privileges. The privilege is all ours. Receiving and knowing God through Christ and knowing these privileges that he has given us, how can we give ourselves to that which is contrary to him? How can we give ourselves to what the devil and Adam created, to what is temporary and fleeting? The lust that is headed to hell, when God who has called us is eternal, unending, and calling us to heaven. He is worthy of our love and devotion, lust is not."

So again, in that really well-written couple paragraphs there, you set up this contrast between set your love and affections on God who is totally worthy, not on the things of this world and certainly not in sin, which is not. So I think a key question is, Jared, as we think about we always make decisions on a basis of love, what we love more. Do I love, face a temptation in this moment, am I going to love God most, or am I going to love satisfying myself in this moment? So how do we grow in a love and reverence for God? You mentioned affections here, and sometimes when people hear affections, they think emotions, like this is some sort of romantic maybe or emotional love for God, it's a feeling. Draw the distinction between that as well, what affections are.

Jared Moore: Affections are what you spend the most time doing, what you live for. It's not emotion; your emotion follows it. In other words, you live what you believe. Your affections are what you believe the most. Folks will say, "I love my wife," but I'm out here looking at pornography every day or lusting after my coworker. And we would say, are you sure you love your wife? You need to love your wife more.

You said some of it about pursuing God. We have to pursue God, make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lusts, and instead devote ourselves to the Lord. Holiness is a byproduct of love for God. I wanted to emphasize that as well in the study. This isn't ten steps to be free from lust; it's basically love God more and cultivate that love and you won't want to lust. It will be repulsive to you.

I'm trying to get folks to see that lust is absurd. It's absurd for a Christian to lust. Knowing all that we know about God, his beauty, his value, we're headed to eternity, our sins have been taken care of—my greatest problem in life is my sin and it's been taken care of forever. I'm no longer a child of the devil. God has given me so much and blessed me so much. How could I possibly return to what the devil likes, what the devil loves? How could I give my life to that which reflects the evil one rather than God? It's beneath me as a Christian.

So to summarize affections, it's what you think on the most. If you're thinking on evil the most, you have to intentionally think on the good, true, and beautiful according to scripture, so that you'll think on it more and more and more. It's kind of the opposite of what psychiatrists emphasize largely today—not everyone, but largely—where you come in and you talk about yourself. No, I'm saying the opposite of that. I'm saying you talk about God and others. Talking about yourself is why you're ensnared in lust, seeking to fulfill what you want, seeking to focus on yourself, "I deserve this," or "This isn't hurting anybody," rather than aimed at God and aimed at others. Amazingly, the more you talk about God, the more you talk about others, the holier you will be.

David Wheaton: Pastor Jared Moore is our guest today and is making the key point: as you draw near to the Lord in prayer, in his Word, in the local church, with the purpose of worshipping him and setting your affections on him, lust will seem, as he said, absurd or repulsive to you. Just like Joseph said when he was tempted by Potiphar's wife: "How could I do this great wickedness and sin against God?"

Just a reminder that you can order Jared's devotional book, *33 Days to Freedom from Lust*, for a donation of any amount to The Christian Worldview. All our contact information will be given during this break. I'm David Wheaton, and you are listening to The Christian Worldview Radio Program.

David Wheaton: The January/February issue of The Christian Worldview Journal features two separate columns, one by Pastor Virgil Walker and one by me, on the worldview driving the fraud, lawlessness, and protest taking place in Minnesota. Managing Editor Soren Kern writes about the bad theology of the woke right with popular influencers like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.

The Christian Worldview Journal is a bimonthly print publication designed to sharpen your biblical worldview on current events and issues of the faith. It also includes a resource catalog and ministry updates. The Journal is mailed to Christian Worldview partners as a thank you for their support of this radio ministry. To become a Christian Worldview partner or order an individual issue of the Journal, go to thechristianworldview.org or call 1-888-646-2233 or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331.

We are kicking off 2026 with a New Year's sale at our website, thechristianworldview.org. For example, there's still time to order the always-popular Christian Worldview desktop calendar for 2026 with beautiful outdoor photographs from our own Rich Ganzel. Or how about the MacArthur Daily Bible, which is set up to help you read through the entire Bible in whatever timeframe you choose?

Plus, there are lots of Christmas resources at the most discounted prices of the year, including family favorite *Manger in Danger*, the 25-day Christmas devotional for families with children under 12. Just go to thechristianworldview.org to browse and order sale resources for adults and children or call us toll-free, 1-888-646-2233, that's 1-888-646-2233, or visit thechristianworldview.org.

Thanks for joining us on The Christian Worldview. I'm David Wheaton. Today's program and past programs, along with transcripts and short takes, are available at thechristianworldview.org. While there, you can also sign up for our weekly email and The Christian Worldview Journal print publication, order resources, and support the ministry. Our topic today is how to have freedom from lust, and our guest is Pastor Jared Moore, author of the devotional book, *33 Days to Freedom from Lust*.

You say in page 15, Jared, in this life there must be sin in Christians because our flesh is full of sin. That's Paul's, the pull he feels in Romans Chapter 7. But our flesh does not have to desire the same particular sins continually. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we can put to death particular lusts of our flesh.

But how? We must develop holy habits, and that's what your devotional aims to do, by thinking God's thoughts after him and having greater affection for God than we do for lust. By the Holy Spirit's power, we create new habits by starving the lust in our hearts when it moves, one day at a time, until it's starved to death and a new holy habit is formed. So talk more about these holy habits. I know you've been touching on this already, but how are these holy habits formed? And then part two of that question is, and so what is someone's action plan? Because as you mentioned, there's still going to be in this life, in our flesh, the possibility, although it should be lessening, the possibility of lust coming back in or another temptation coming back in. What do you do in the moment lust enters the mind to defeat that from going any further?

Jared Moore: Whenever lust enters the mind, you turn from it and seek to think on something that glorifies God, whether it's Christ, the redemption he's provided, the wonderful creation he's given you, the wonderful spouse or the wonderful singleness that he has given you. Thinking God for what he has given you, because lust is inherently unthankful to God.

The reason why you lust is because you're not thankful for the singleness God has given you or you're not thankful for the spouse God has given you. And if you're thankful for those two things, you won't lust. I mean, that's explicitly what Paul says. I believe it's in Ephesians where he says, let not sexual immorality, impurity, be named among you, and then he goes down a few verses and says, "but rather thankfulness."

If you're thankful for God and his provisions, you're not going to be pursuing sin. So you turn from it and you get up and you put your mind on something that glorifies the Lord. This is why I emphasize singing hymns because I think those in my head and heart, like I'm singing those constantly, to where that shapes my affections. I've got truth and scripture in my head and that's what I'm seeking to think on and focus on.

That's what I encourage folks to do. And that's how you develop new habits. It's just repetition. A habit's just doing something more than once. And it's the same way you form addictions. People often try to say, well, people are addicted genetically, and that's just not true. Because you have to go and physically pick up whatever the substance you're addicted to.

You have to do that over and over again, and it shapes a particular affection for it. If it was genetics, you could never do otherwise. But that's not the case. I just want to encourage folks that freedom is possible if you'll take responsibility to repent and to develop holy habits, to be disciplined in your relationship with the Lord, to quit asking what you want and what you feel and just get up and do what the Word says.

Now, your heart should be for the Lord—like you should love him so much that you're not pursuing lust or any of these sins. But if your heart is not there, as a Christian you have responsibility to cultivate that, to develop those habits until your heart follows those habits, because they will. Your heart will follow what you think on, what you intentionally think on. Even in secular studies, there have been studies about depression, that a person can drive him or herself into depression by thinking poorly.

They've done studies about people who have cancer and how they often fare better if they are thinking that they're going to fight it and win. So what you think on, it affects your entire body, your entire life. So think God's thoughts after him and labor to do that. Christians often they kind of want this romantic view of the Lord, very Western view, rather than a biblical view that love is something that happens to you, getting shot by Cupid's arrow.

So they're kind of waiting for this love for God to spring up in their heart to where they'll stop looking at these things or stop doing these things, when if they're a Christian, they've been given the Holy Spirit, they've been given his Word. God has told you what to do and you have a responsibility to get up and do it. Now, we're saved by grace through faith in Christ, and we're also sanctified the same way. But if you've been changed by him, you need to live for him from your heart.

David Wheaton: Great word. Thank you, Jared. Jared Moore is our guest today. You look at scripture and some of the examples of some of the great men of scripture, let's say Samson and King David and King Solomon had a real problem with lust. They succumbed to it on different occasions. Then you have someone like Joseph who was tempted in this regard and overcame.

In your book, you say, "When you lust, you silently say in your heart that God is not beautiful. Neither is his design. Lust turns beauty upside down. Instead of seeing God and his design as beautiful, your heart seeks to take his place saying, 'I'm beautiful, my desire is beautiful,' and the object of my desire is beautiful, even though you're using yourself and others contrary to God and his design."

In light of what you just wrote there, how do you explain the different response to lust in scripture between some of the great stalwarts, notable characters I should say, of Samson, David, and Solomon, versus someone like Joseph, who overcame the temptation to sin?

Jared Moore: Joseph ran away from lust, and the other three that you mentioned ran towards it and pursued it. They gave their members to it and Joseph didn't. It was out of love for the Lord. He had a very close relationship with the Lord. The other men—well, David did especially, but he had gotten away from the Lord and gotten away from leading God's people.

I think David started thinking he was a big deal, and that's why he didn't go lead God's army against God's enemies, and thus he just spiraled. And that's what happened with Solomon as well. He had this great wisdom. I actually think the book of Ecclesiastes is a repentance of Solomon before he died, which is a beautiful book that keeping God's commandments at the end of the book, he says, keeping God's commandments is man's all.

That's why you exist is to glorify the Lord, to honor him. What's fascinating, if your relationship with the Lord is not where it should be, you're already tilted toward lust. Listener, what would you do if you could concerning sin? What would you do? What would you do if it was lawful? Whatever you would do, that reveals your heart. That reveals what your sins are in your heart, what you need to be repenting from.

And the opposite of that, what God's Word says, is what you need to be pursuing. The goal should be not to have an adulterous heart. I think Christians have—they've gotten to where there's been a big emphasis on basically managing sin. And that's not what the Bible teaches about sin for Christians. We're not supposed to manage sin; we're supposed to kill it.

You are not a sin manager; you are a sin killer. And that's what the Bible teaches. And so that's what I would ask listeners: are you trying to manage your sin, trying to cope with your sin? No wonder it comes out and bites you here and there because you haven't killed it. That's part of snake handling that all evangelicals believe in, having the snake in your heart and thinking it's not going to bite you rather than killing that snake, putting it to death in the power of the Holy Spirit.

I hope that this encourages Christians to pursue their spouses, to embrace the singleness that God has given them until the Lord provides them a spouse, and to do it all for the glory of the Lord because he's worth it. My greatest privilege in life is to get to worship God by the Spirit through the Son to the Father. No one has loved me like him.

No one values me like he does. I would be such a fool to give my affections to that which was produced by the evil one, which the end of it is in the Lake of Fire. My end is in heaven. Why would I not live for where I'm going? It's just utterly foolish to pursue sin and I hope to show Christians that through this book. The examples you point out, we see what happened with David and Solomon and Samson, and the devil whispers in your ear and says, "You'll be the exception, you'll be different." Christian, no you won't. It'll kill you too.

David Wheaton: So well said, Jared. I just want to thank you for coming on The Christian Worldview Radio Program today and writing this very scripture-filled, wise book about a topic that is so pervasive today: lust, and how believers can have freedom from this sin. So thank you for coming on The Christian Worldview. We wish all of God's best and grace to you and your family and church. Thank you again.

Jared Moore: Thank you, David. I really appreciate you.

David Wheaton: We hope you were edified by the conversation with Pastor Jared Moore today. We have links to him at our website, thechristianworldview.org. As a supplement to the Word of God, which is primary, we hope Jared's book, *33 Days to Freedom from Lust*, can help you master lust. For a limited time, you can order a copy for a donation of any amount to The Christian Worldview. All our contact information will be given in just a moment. So let's pray to close today.

Oh Father, you say in your Word, "Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from you, Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away and also its lusts, but the one who does the will of God lives forever."

Lord, through the believer's identification with your Son in his death to sin and his resurrection victory over it, let us consider ourselves to be dead to sin but alive to you in Christ Jesus, and not to let sin reign in our mortal bodies so that we would obey its lusts, and to not go on presenting the members of our body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but let us present ourselves to you as those alive from the dead and our members as instruments of righteousness to you, Lord.

We ask and trust that many listening today would be given victory in the war against the sin of lust. We pray this in the name above all names, Jesus Christ your Son. Amen.

Thank you for joining us today on The Christian Worldview and for sustaining this listener-supported radio ministry. Until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm.

The mission of The Christian Worldview is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We hope today's broadcast encouraged you toward that end. To hear a replay of today's program, order a transcript, or find out "What must I do to be saved?" go to thechristianworldview.org or call toll-free 1-888-646-2233. The Christian Worldview is a listener-supported nonprofit radio ministry furnished by the Overcomer Foundation. To make a donation, order resources, become a Christian Worldview partner, sign up for our weekly email or The Christian Worldview Journal print publication, or to contact us, go to thechristianworldview.org, call 1-888-646-2233, or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian Worldview.