How Can Jesus Help Me with Lust and Relationships?

Bible, Women & Bathrobes Episode 13

Sermon on the Mount, Part 7

Summary

Tamara, Bonnie and Jen Wright explore Matthew 5:27-32 starting with the complexities of adultery and lust in the Sermon on the Mount mentioning both polyamory and pornography. They emphasize recognizing the root causes of these issues in our hearts and minds, and the potential consequences of acting on them. It is important to recognize our thoughts can come from ourselves, from God and from the adversary and to cast out bad thoughts. Later, they discuss the importance of approaching marriage and relationships with compassion and forgiveness, prioritizing God in these unions, and relying on Him for guidance in navigating challenges. They also talked about how it is important to put God first in all relationships and to see people truthfully and treat them with compassion.

Takeaways

From Bonnie: "When we put God in our relationship, when we are yoked with him, right, and we make that ... marriage covenant with our spouse, and with the Lord, we don't need to look outside of our relationship. . . it always comes back to Jesus, and being filled and being edified and sanctified and magnified, and cleansed and healed and all those things by Him."

From Jen: "As we practice becoming more like [Jesus], our intent will also align with His, which is to save and redeem, and to love and protect and be creative with others."

From Tamara: "I love Bonnie what you shared about casting out, especially those emotions that are without our normal range of emotions, casting Satan out, remembering that he is the enemy, and that we can do that in the name of Jesus Christ, cast them out, cast out those emotions cast out those thoughts as they start."

Transcript

Tamara Anderson 0:00
What does Jesus mean when He invites us to uplevel from not committing adultery, to not lusting? We're going to talk about that and more from the Sermon on the Mount. So stay tuned.

Tamara Anderson 0:16
Welcome to Bible, Women and Bathrobes the podcast where faith meets comfort. Join us Tuesday and Thursday morning. As the gals from Women Warriors of Light and their guests, Don bathrobes and dive into the inspiring stories of women in the Bible, and the teachings of Jesus Christ. From Esther's bravery to the Sermon on the Mount. We explore it all with warmth, laughter, sisterhood, and maybe even a few sleepy eyed moments. Tune in live or at your leisure as we learn lessons from scripture which empower women today.

Tamara Anderson 0:57
Welcome to another episode of Bible, Women and Bathrobes. I'm your host Tamara K. Anderson. And joining me is Bonnie Randall, my co host. Hi, Bonnie.

Bonnie Randall 1:05
Hi, guys.

Tamara Anderson 1:07
And today we have another member of our Women Warriors of light advisory board. Jen Wright. Welcome, Jen. And since we haven't introduced Jen, before, I will do that right now. Jen is a member of our advisory board, and she's a therapeutic recreation specialist and an administrator for a nonprofit. Although busy pursuing her graduate work in public administration, she still finds time to mother and help the youth in her area, learn to love and understand the scriptures. So we're excited to have you on today, Jen.

Tamara Anderson 1:43
And as we dive into these verses that are a little tricky from the Sermon on the Mount. I know as I looked at these kind of coming into it, I thought, Oh, these are heavy topics. So I think I think we'll we'll be able to tackle them though. So we are in Matthew chapter five, if you want to follow along, and we're starting in verse 27. And this is where the Jesus is saying, you heard in the old times that the commandment was don't commit adultery. And then he's giving them the up level he's like, but here's the new thing I want you to aim for. "But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."

Tamara Anderson 2:34
And I thought we'd start with this because oh my goodness, this is, this is especially tricky. And I think especially with Hollywood nowadays, I mean, oh my goodness, you can find anything you want to find online, or in the movies. Pornography is all about lust. And so this is a problem that is rampant in our society. Bonnie, why don't you kick us off? Any thoughts on those verses?

Bonnie Randall 3:04
Um, I have a lot of thoughts on the verses especially when you bring in societal drama, but what's going on? You know, what actually came to my mind while I was reading these four verses, was something that's running rampant here in, in Utah, where we live, where I live in is polyamory. And I'm gonna go there, and hopefully, I don't tick off any of my friends who do it because personally, I think like, you know, you go live your life, however you want to, right? But these scriptures are pretty clear about how he views stuff like this. And like you said, pornography, right. Like, we're, it's not just about committing adultery, but going one step further. It's what's inside of our thoughts and our actions, right.

Bonnie Randall 4:14
And when I was talking with my husband, about these verses, and I, he brought up that and we started talking about how, no one that we know who. They start off with this idea of, hey, you know, let's have an open relationship. That sounds fun. It's going to let us explore blah, blah, blah. And it all starts out very amicably. Oddly enough, like it does it starts off with this idea and it's fine in the beginning. But we don't know a single relationship that ends up fine. There's a lot of hurt and Just so much pain that comes through these, through that lifestyle. And marriages ending that kids being swept in the sea of turmoil and the self worth and the all of the pain that I have seen come from this really interesting trend that's happening and it breaks my heart.

Bonnie Randall 5:27
And it goes back to, we take it back. Right? What is the root of that? And it's, it's this, the committing adultery in our hearts, and then we act on it. If we start in our heart, right, we've talked about in previous episodes, how our thoughts can lead to habits and actions, right? Like, if we don't watch our thoughts, then inevitably, our feet follow. Right? We spiritually create first law of creation, you spiritually create it in your head, and then it becomes fact, oftentimes. And that's why pornography is so scary, right? It's grips hold, and it can create these toxic environments and these toxic patterns and it destroys lives.

Tamara Anderson 6:19
Yeah, yeah, Jen.

Jen Wright 6:20
You know, I think it's really interesting, just looking at how he lays out the Sermon on the Mount. And I'm actually no, go back to verse 17. It's going back a little ways. But when he's talking about, you've heard it was said, and then he's always gonna follow it up with, "but I say unto you," I think it's important to remember what he's talking about is how he's fulfilling the law in us. That these commandments that are given are meant to make a change in us. And so when you read it that way, it's you've heard an old times don't commit adultery, which is a good law, how about fidelity and honor? And, and then he says, but I can fulfill that law you, right, here's how, here's how I'm going to make this law build you up, level you up for what you said, Tamara, which is that when you can control your desires, and when you can help remember that other people are not objects, right? That you're going to automatically level up. He's going to use marriage in this instance.

Jen Wright 7:23
And but lust can really be anything, where we put ourselves over another person, whatever our body wants, whatever we're lusting after, we're going to put it over the well being of someone else. And what God knows. And what I think is so loving is that anytime we do that, he knows that there's a disconnect for us that. Then our worth becomes involved, and certainly our relationship with ourselves and others. And so I look at that lust in this instance, he's using marriage to say you're going to lust after something else outside of a covenant. Right. And he knows that when we put that lust ahead of commitment, that it's always going to lead to pain.

Tamara Anderson 8:08
And, and he wants us to do better and to be better. And I think inside deep inside, all of us want to do better and be better. It's hard, right? I mean, this up leveling, I mean, I was looking at it, like this was hard for them back then. It's hard for us today, it still is hard. Controlling your thoughts. That's hard, you know,

Jen Wright 8:33
Its hard, but I think it's the meaningful work of the gospel. Like, I do think, I do think sometimes we're confronted with it over and over again. And we can call it hard. But it's where the good meat of relationship development with Christ comes, is when we say when we can come to him and say, This is really hard. This is, you know, whatever I'm feeling or whatever I'm really wanting, and not choosing, choosing you over it. Every time we do that, we just build that relationship stronger and stronger. So it can be feel big. And when we utilize the gospel, we just gained so much more confidence.

Tamara Anderson 9:14
No, I love that. I love that. And I think actually, this kind of really just flows into those next few verses where he talks about "and if they right eye thee pluck it out, and cast it from you." It can be maybe that's somebody who's trying to bring us down, you know, or somebody who's trying to lure us away. But it can also be these thoughts, you know, of, you know, impure thoughts. Dear God, I don't want to have these impure thoughts. Helped me remove them. Helped me cast them out. Because that, we need his help to do this up level. We need his help to become better. Bonnie.

Bonnie Randall 9:56
I really like Jennifer that you said Uh, you talked about the selfishness, right? Like, and that is the root of the lusting is is that is putting myself before another person and before God my needs right. And I love the commentary in my book here where he says if they write i and he says that symbolic of specific temptation are bad environment, friends, bad habits, specific sins etc. And then the and then offend the means put you in spiritual danger. So these things put you in spiritual danger, which, right we just said like you spiritually create it in your head first before you act out for it is probable for me that one of the members should perish and not that the whole body should be cast into hell.

Bonnie Randall 10:47
So he's saying that these things are symbolic of choices and behaviors associated with friends and family and ourselves. And all of these things, if we do them will lose salvation, we will literally be cut off, which is the next verse, verse 30, is being being cut off. And it got me thinking. So okay, the casting out, cast it from thee. That is been something that I've been talking about a lot lately with my friends and my husband. And we've been having this ongoing discussion for several months now about casting out.

Bonnie Randall 11:25
And this is something that we don't talk about a whole lot anymore as, as a Christian community. And I have a lot of friends that are of different denominations and getting their perspective on it. And it's interesting, because a lot of us don't really talk about casting out very often. But when I was early on in my healing journey, I guess I should say, I went to this hypnotherapist named Dennis Parker who's no longer with us and but I am eternally grateful for his insights he has studied the New Testament and the Old Testament like backwards and forwards, he, I swear he could just rattle off a verse like he knew it was amazing.

Bonnie Randall 12:11
And what he found was in order to turn our thoughts around, in order to turn our habits around, he worked with a lot of people with pornography addictions. And that's not why I was going to him. But he was referred to me because of some things going on in our marriage, and I went to him for help. And he said, before we can change the behavior, you need to change the thoughts. We need to start there.

Bonnie Randall 12:39
And he said, What do you need to understand about your thoughts is that you have thoughts that are coming from yourself, your thoughts that are coming from the Lord, right, the promptings, and you have thoughts that are coming from the adversary. And I'll add a fourth, we have inherited thoughts. But we'll talk about that another time. So he said, I really want you to focus on understanding where these thoughts are coming from.

Bonnie Randall 13:07
So if you have a normal human emotion, like let's say, anger, someone did something that cut you off, your kid is talking back to you, whatever, like, you're gonna react, right, you're gonna have an emotion that comes up. If it's within the normal bounds of emotion, you can pretty much guarantee that's just a normal human thing. That's you, right? But if that anger turns into hatred, or wanting to physically harm somebody, or loathing them, or holding a grudge, those things are not from you, those things are not from the Savior. These This is now the adversary, tempting you. And therefore, you can then literally cast it out to cast out that thought and say, You're not of Me, I don't want you anymore. Goodbye. Get out of here, whatever you want to do for your casting out.

Bonnie Randall 14:02
But that concept, you guys, has changed my life. Totally 100%. I feel like now when I'm faced with emotions, it's made the idea of you've probably heard of like thought turnaround and stuff like that, like Brenee Brown and Byron Katie and all these different people, right? Like, Joe Dispenza. All those people are pretty popular, and they talk about turning your thoughts around. But the key to that is understanding where your thoughts are coming from. You can't turn them around until you can spot like who's influencing you. And that really has made a huge difference in my ability to stop things dead in their tracks and then not let things spiral and get out of control has been this one concept.

Speaker 1 14:54
Well be unable to name things like that. Being able to identify, I love that He starts with the eye, right, is like, where are you looking? And to recognize offense. I like that you defined offense not just as sin. But as hurt. And it can be things that are going to hurt others or that are hurting our own selves. It can be coping mechanisms. It can be anything that's not that's going to limit our spiritual development. And I love that he starts with, as soon as you see it, pluck it out. So identify it, look at it, and start that good work. It's I wish it were as easy as throwing it away from you, right? But it's the repetitive behavior of recognizing it in the moment, being able to do what you talked about Bonnie, do that naming, and then choosing something different in the moment, over and over until we kind of build that new habit and become that new heart that Christ is wanting to have.

Tamara Anderson 15:58
Oh, that's beautiful. Ah, love this so much. Let's go on to those next two verses, and then we'll wrap it up. So this kind of just flows, we're talking about a marriage covenantal relationship said, he said, it had been said, Whosoever shall put away his life, let him give her writing of divorcement. And then he talks about it, except in cases of fornication. And this is a these are tricky verses.

Tamara Anderson 16:26
And I found some additional verses that kind of helped explain this just further on in Matthew and Matthew chapter 19. And in these verses, he's talking about, you know, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife. And they're no longer Twain but one flesh, what God has joined together, let no man put asunder. And then the people ask him, they say, then why did Moses talk about the writing of divorcement? And then I love what Jesus answers. He said, He saith unto them, "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives, but from the beginning, it was not so."

Tamara Anderson 17:13
And, and so what he's saying here is we're trying to uplevel everybody. And he's saying that if both the husband and the wife are trying to put God first, they're trying to do the things that help us become more holy, then we can, if we're both trying to up level, then it can work. God can make any marriage work. Do you know what I mean? But I'm not saying that every marriage is like that. Do you know because they sure aren't? Jen?

Jen Wright 17:45
Yeah, I just when I consider this, I think I consider them in tandem. So first is going to talk about this internal method right of lust, which is just putting yourself first, right? And then in this, he's gonna ask us to consider impact of choices. And women at Christ's time, certainly at Moses' time, they're the lowest social rung, right? All of their status is built on marriage and sons.

Jen Wright 18:19
And he's using. Christ loves to use marriage as a metaphor for relationship with him. And I liked that he, I don't think it's all metaphor, I think he wants to help us in all of our most important relationships. But I do like to consider this in a way of He wants us to consider impact, that he's looking at this marriage, and you can, by the letter of the law, be totally righteous in whatever it is you're doing. And the level up is to consider the impact of what you're doing on on whomever it is. And that he asks that here: just that we can act compassionately, especially towards our loved ones, even if we're right. Right. And I think I just think that's the next level of coming to him. And that we can utilize that in any relationship, but particularly in our marriage, that as we act compassionately, and righteously with one another, assuming that we're both working and an intentional that he can bless and we can navigate those trials or that relationship with Him in it, and He will bless all things as he does.

Tamara Anderson 19:50
Bonnie.

Bonnie Randall 19:52
Last week, we talked about forgiveness and reconciliation, right and this Discussion ties right back into that discussion about how hard it can be to reconcile and to forgive, especially when it's a spouse who's betrayed your trust, right? Or someone else has, you know, hurt you really, really badly. And one thing that I going back to, I don't mean to bring him up so much. But Dennis taught me in this when I was working with him was, my spouse is not my enemy. The enemy is man. Yeah, right, Satan, Lucifer, whatever you want to call him, the adversary goes by so many different names, because he is just so deceptive. He likes to make these people, our enemies.

Bonnie Randall 20:52
And later, I met a woman who, I now work with an IFS therapist and stands when internal family systems and its parts work. And he set the foundation for me to be able to say my husband is not my enemy. I want to make my marriage work. And here's how, right like, I'm going to look at him as his true self. And that's what IFS is, is teaches you is that your true self would never harm somebody else. My husband's True Self loves me. Right? We made a covenant together, we chose to be together forever. Right? Like, wounded people wound others, right? Like, or Tamara says Hurt people hurt others, right? Like going back to that, again. There's a part of him, and there's a part of me that attack each other. Right? My true self would never hurt him either. Right? But there's parts of me that do. And there's parts of me that are not compassionate. Right.

Bonnie Randall 21:55
And so if I can separate his true self, His Divine Self, the person that He came to earth to be and to become and the person that God loves him for, right, like all of these amazing qualities when I can focus on those things, and say, I'm alright with this behavior. I'm not okay with the way I'm being treated right now. Right goes back to what Amy was saying, right under last week understanding the difference between being meek and being a doormat, right? We're not saying roll over. Don't, don't fix the bad behavior, right? We're just saying, Have Eyes of compassion and see people for who they really are. If we can see them as Jesus sees them with these eyes. He's more celestial, True. True eyes, I don't know, there's probably I'm sure a much better way to say black thing. But you don't have to say, when we can see people truthfully. Right, we can separate the bad behavior. And we can start to reconcile and we don't have to divorce we can go to that higher holier sphere.

Tamara Anderson 23:14
Yeah, I love that. I was just thinking, continuing in a marriage is always a matter of choice. You know, and, and, and it's always a matter of choosing them every day. And I remember, there's been many times when I'm just like, Okay, I choose this, I choose this. And I pray and ask God and say, Heavenly Father, help me. Help me to be able to, it's like, once you're married, you should put some little blinders on and say, this is this is my choice. And help me to remember that and to pray for that help. And so I've been really, really blessed that, that that has been the case in my marriage. I'm married to a very good man. And, and so but we we both have our challenges, right? Neither of us are perfect. And so we just keep choosing each other. It really is a matter of that, but with God's help, because if not, you can't get over those hurts, that naturally come in any relationship. And so I think that's the key is inviting God to be a part of your relationship so that it can be successful. And to keep choosing them.

Jen Wright 24:35
So that you can navigate those waters with someone, right, who has that view of both of you. I totally agree. Yeah.

Tamara Anderson 24:47
All right. Well, let's wrap it up. Bonnie, you you want to say something? So say what you want to say and then tell us your takeaway for today.

Bonnie Randall 24:54
Well, it actually goes back to my takeaway. It goes back to what I was about to say is when we put God On in our relationship when we are yoked with him, right, and we make that covenant, that marriage covenant with our spouse, and with the Lord, right? We don't need to look outside of our relationship. Right, it goes back to the first thing I said, which I realized is kind of shocking, right? We don't need to lust after, after other people, we don't need another relationship to bring us fulfillment, which is what polyamory is about, right? It's, you're not getting something from your current relationship. So let's look out outside of it: pornography, I'm not getting something, I need something else, right. Like, so many of our sins are about fulfilling a need some sort of a need.

Bonnie Randall 25:43
But when we put God into those relationships, and we make him a part of it's, Whoa, I was about to say a threesome. Oh, my gosh. That would have been weird and awkward. Yeah. But you know what I mean, when He comes into the relationship, and he's yoked with us, and we can have those eyes of compassion, and we can see our spouse and our other relationships through His eyes. We don't need to look outside of that. We find fulfillment within and we find it within our own walls. Right? And we are filled. It goes, it always comes back to Jesus, and being filled and being edified and sanctified and magnified, and cleansed and healed and all those things by Him. It always comes back to that every single episode of of our podcast.

Tamara Anderson 26:47
Yeah, Jen, what's one of your takeaways?

Speaker 1 26:50
Well, I really like that just because I do think he fulfills the law, which is just his purpose, right? The Redemption of us all. And that he fulfills that for us, when we invite him into the way that we conduct our lives, when we remember that the things we choose, have intent behind them. And as we practice becoming more like him, our intent will also align with his, which is to save and redeem, and to love and protect and be creative with others.

Tamara Anderson 27:24
I love Bonnie what you shared about casting out, especially those emotions that are without our normal range of emotions, casting Satan out, remembering that he is the enemy, and that we can do that in the name of Jesus Christ, cast them out, cast out those emotions cast out those thoughts as they start. Nope, I don't want to go down that path. And casting this out. Dear God helped me do that. You know, so much of who we are, is right there, in between our two in between our two ears, and we can influence how we think and eventually how we act if we can control our thoughts. But we can only do that with God's help. So it is doable. It is achievable.

Tamara Anderson 28:12
And the good news is is we can navigate any relationship be at marriage or other, with God's help, and he'll help us know what is the right next step for each relationship, we're in. So turn to Him. Rely on him and He'll guide you in your life.

Tamara Anderson 28:32
All right, guys. Well, thanks for joining us today on today's Bible. Women and Bathrobes and have a blessed day.

Tamara Anderson 28:42
Thanks for tuning in to Bible, Women and Bathrobes hosted by Women Warriors of light. We've loved exploring the stories of remarkable women are the teachings of the Savior today with you. If today's episode brought someone special to mind, be sure to spread the word. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a moment of inspiration and sisterhood. Just a friendly reminder, all opinions we share are entirely personal as we are trying to decipher and apply Bible teachings just like you are. Until next time, stay faithful. And may Your journey be blessed and illuminated by God's love.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai