Restraining Yourself with the Mental Reins of Control

Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy.
Romans 13:13 (NKJV)

Today is Valentine’s Day. I am quite sure that if you have a Valentine, he or she will not want you to forget to think about them today. I will be going with my wife somewhere special for lunch today and I also plan to buy her flowers. (I don’t usually buy flowers and so this will be a special surprise for her.)

Valentine’s Day is a day in which we focus on the other person. We can do something as simple as writing a card, or something extravagant as going on a trip. But the focus of our attention is on the other person. This is the point of Valentine’s Day. We focus on the other person and we show that we really love them.

However, many people don’t know how to love someone else in a good way. Here is where the Bible can help. The Bible teaches us how to control ourselves and at the same time give proper and positive attention to the other person whom we want to love.

Continuing the series on self-control, we learn the second pair of reins that God wants to use to teach us self-control. These two mental reins help us to think better about other people. These two mental restraints teach us to control “lewdness” and “lust.”

The first mental rein I want to look at today – because it is Valentine’s Day – is how to control lust. The mental rein that we use to control lust has to do with how we love other people.

When I desire someone else and I focus my attention on this person and I think only about what I can get out of the relationship – that is lust. Lust is selfish, whereas love is selfless. Love focuses on the other person. Lust focuses on me. Love focuses on the wants and desires of the other person. Lust focuses on what I want to get. Love looks to do what helps the other person. Lust can lead to trouble in our relationship.

Lust can damage my relationship with the one I love. When I lust, I am so focused on what I lust that I can forget whom I should be loving. Lust turns the object of attention back at me. In essence, lust is desiring myself. Instead of focusing on the person whom I should be loving, I lust after someone or something so much that I don’t think of the other person whom I should be loving. That can be very dangerous in a relationship.

In essence, I stop asking: “Will you be my Valentine?” and I start saying: “I am my own Valentine.” The Bible teaches me that I should stop giving myself Valentines and instead start to give Valentines to the one I love.

The second word is “lewdness”. Lewdness comes from the word bed, and it literally means to sleep or lie with someone. If you have ever wondered where in the Bible it forbids two people from sleeping together when you are not married, this is the verse. Of course, it is much more than this. God designed that a man and woman come together and marry. Once they marry, then they will have the opportunity to stay intimate. This intimacy is represented by the bed. So if I really do love my “Valentine”, then I will honor and love my “Valentine” by waiting until marriage to be intimate with her. Anytime I am being intimate outside of marriage, with someone who is not my spouse, that is called “lewd”. It is inappropriate. It is wrong and it is sinful behavior not because I love the other person. It is wrong and sinful because I am not expressing that love in its appropriate time and place. The bed as a place of intimacy is reserved for marriage.

Photo by Mikail Duran on Unsplash