Ryan Swanson: Hello, and welcome back to the Satisfied Program here on the Thee Generation Podcast. We’re going to dive in just a moment to another episode in our series on emotional purity, but I just want to give a quick update on where we’re at with the Chord app. If you haven’t heard already, go back and listen to the previous podcast where I explained the exciting news of what God’s doing in the development of an app geared towards accountability, specifically in purity. It has been very clear in the last month here that God is in this project. He’s given several confirmations that way, and I won’t go into everything, but there’s been some funds coming in support of this, which is great. There’s still quite a ways to go. But the more we see God in it, the more we know that, or we’re just confident He’s going to provide that way. So we’re definitely not worried about that. But I’ve had so, so many people now that have reached out and just given their support verbally for what they believe God wants to do with this app. Just the excitement that is shared — it’s always a nice thing when you are undergoing a large endeavor like this, and then others confirm that. This isn’t just something I’m pumped about, but others are very excited about this as well. And we’ve seen that over and over in my home church here, and then also at Falls Baptist Church during the Victory Conference, we were able to present the app up there to quite a number of pastors and those in attendance from different churches around the country. And there’s just overall a thrill and excitement of what God wants to do through this app. So, we actually have a landing page now, not a full website. We have a landing page. If you go to your internet browser and type in the address bar, thecord.app, that’s very simply thecord.app. That is our domain name. And you can go and see our landing page there where we have several mockups of different screenshots of what we would like the app to do to it’s more functional than appearance, but you’ll get the gist of it there. And then there’s a little bit of information. Uh, we’re hoping to post the video of the presentation from Falls Baptist Church and the Victory Conference. We’re hoping to have that on there. So if you wanted to watch that, it’s about 30 minutes long to see the segment of it that is presenting this app and see a discussion along with the screenshots and everything there. So hopefully that’ll be up here before, up there before long on that page. But anyway, go ahead and go visit that just to kind of see where we’re headed. It’s exciting, even though it’s still very bare bones — thecord.app will take you there. But please keep praying for this project. We still have a long way to go and specifically pray about this coming Tuesday at 11 AM Eastern time will be a meeting with the developers. We’ve already spent quite a few hours with them, but this is a crucial meeting that is really kicking off the development process. It is getting it going with a goal time of finishing this coming fall, maybe October or November, probably an official launch to the app stores in November, so you can be praying about that. That really begins this coming Tuesday with our first payment and official commitment to this process and this project. So just pray the Lord would give us wisdom and everything would go smoothly in that as we continue to follow His will here. 

Well, we probably only have a couple more weeks in our emotional purity series. I don’t think I ever would have guessed it would go this long. It’s been almost a year and I think we’ll have about 12 episodes on it when we conclude here. The next episode will probably wrap it up. We’ll see. We may have a bonus one after that. The one today is something that I’m passionate on. I’ve just had a difficult time articulating it, and I may have the same difficulty now. I’m not sure. It is something I know is crucial, I know is important. I hope that you will be able to glean what you need from this. I have noticed, as you probably have, that we seem to, the further we go in this discussion of emotional purity, it seems like the more controversial we get, the more toes are being stepped on and the more feedback I get. So that’s fine, whatever. And obviously there are some things that we’re speaking on that you could have an opinion a different direction. That’s fine. This is where I believe the Scripture is teaching and where we have landed and where I would highly recommend based on several fronts, but, you know, the Lord may lead you to different applications of the truths that we’re teaching. I don’t want it to become, I’m giving you a model for a certain thing you have to follow in order to end up in God’s will for your life and marriage. It’s not necessarily a model to follow or steps one, two, and three. It’s not like that. And so I trust that you’ll be able to see through personal illustrations and my own applications and just be able to glean what the Lord is teaching you through this. So this one shouldn’t be too bad.

This is, today’s going to be a discussion specifically on love, on what is love? Now I think we understand that we have, or the Bible has a different view on love than the world does. And so I did in this what I normally do and what you know I have done in the past. Wherever I want to find some worldly wisdom on what love is, of course, I went to marriage.com and where else do you get for that? So I went to marriage.com and I did a little reading on what they say that love is. Now I’m not saying that everything on marriage.com is heretical but it’s definitely not the place that you’re going to go for the authority. But I found there a discussion of the difference between love and lust. Now at the beginning of the discussion I was pumped because I’m thinking great, I’m glad they are recognizing that there is a dichotomy there that not all love is true love. And so they kind of broke it down though and I’ll tell you where they ended up. In describing the difference between true love and then lust, they actually only use those specific words at the very beginning, the first paragraph, they went right into actually describing it as love they called emotional love. But lust, they called physical love. 

Okay, now I’ve got a big problem with that already because it’s either love or it’s not. And if it’s lust, it certainly is not love. But if you’re not gonna just call sin, sin, you’ve gotta call it something else. And so that’s where they’ve had to realize, well, there is love that emphasizes itself emotionally and cares about people and that kind of thing. But how do you describe this quote on quote love that shows itself physically and in physical attractions and physical contact and all these things, and so to them they just called it physical love, but it’s really something totally different than that. Love and lust are completely different. And so in this podcast I want to present a little bit that dichotomy and then show you why this is so important and even give you personal application where you’re at right now no matter what that is — even if love as it were is not in your in your radar screen as far as a relationship anytime soon. What is love then? What kind of application can you glean from this? What does that mean to you? 

So first of all, I’m going to simplify, I’m probably oversimplifying, but I think it will help us to understand the difference between love and lust. Think of it this way. Love is doing what’s best for someone else. Lust is simply doing what’s best for me, or doing what feels best for me. When you think of it that way, they actually seem like opposites, not like these are two sister feelings that we have, but no, these are very, very different. And it is so important for you to understand the difference before you get in a relationship. Now, it’s not that there’s no application for you if you are in a relationship and God can still point things out to you, but I’m hoping that you’ll recognize why it’s so important, with a vast number of our listeners being teenagers that may have hopes for a relationship, but probably are not in an official relationship or at least not engaged at this point. And it’s so important for you to recognize that there is a difference between love and lust. 

Now, both of these feelings, can we say, these desires, both of them can seem natural. Now, James 1:14 he says, “But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust.” This is something that’s inside of him already. It’s something that’s very, very natural for him. It is, as we would say, this is his own selfishness. And when he is drawn away and enticed and manipulated and pulled and drawn and driven by that lust, it’s going to end up falling to temptation and sin. And if you follow the progression there, he says, “and sin, when it is finished bringeth forth death.” It all starts with something that is natural, very, very all too natural for us, and it’s called lust. Now love can be confused because at times that can seem natural as well, very natural. And keep this in mind, especially at the beginning of a relationship, as you start out and are, yes, starry-eyed, that’s okay, but that’s when caring about someone else is going to be the most natural. But it’s not just the most natural, it’s the easiest at that moment. 

This is something my wife brought out as we were talking about this. The world wants you to think that love is easy. Love is fun. Now love can be easy, and love can be fun, but it’s not always going to be that way. So first of all, we’re seeing that, okay, love cares for the needs of someone else. It believes it wants the best for someone else. And then lust wants the best for me. But now we’re seeing something even further, that love itself is not always easy. It’s not always fun. But what about lust? Lust is always easy. Lust is always fun. Lust is always doing what’s best for me, so it is not going to put itself aside in order to please itself. 

Let me put it in different terms. Love is willing to sacrifice for those who it’s trying to benefit. Love is all about self-sacrifice. Again, if we were to take the example of Jesus, well, if we were to go to Ephesians chapter 5 and actually see what’s commanded to men on how to love their wives in light of Christ’s example, it says, “husbands love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.” You know what we call that? That’s sacrifice. And of course, Jesus was the ultimate example of self-sacrifice. That’s what’s required for love. That’s not always fun. But you know what? Lust never does that. 

Here’s one way that you can distinguish between lust and love, is that lust will never self-sacrifice. Do you struggle to put yourself aside with those that you’re trying to love in your life right now? Do you struggle to put your own needs and your own desires and set those aside because then you have an issue where lust is combating love? Remember, they are always mutually exclusive. Love will be fought by lust, by selfishness. Why is it that it seems like the people that we would think we would love the most eventually are the ones that we argue with the most or disagree with the most? Why is that? Well, it’s because lust, when there’s selfishness inside of you, it’s going to attack love. It will always attack your deepest love relationships. You cannot prioritize someone else’s needs and your own at the same time. So love is self-sacrificing. Lust though, is never going to sacrifice itself in order to please itself. It wouldn’t work. So no, lust is always going to take the easy route, the convenient route, the feel-good route, the fun route. 

Okay, so now let’s apply this and drive this home on the Satisfied Podcast and where our discussions are at. With someone, let’s say a young man who has had a history in pornography. Okay, question, is that love or lust? Well, that’s an easy one. Where there is not anyone else, there is really no other part to that relationship with a man and his pornography. It’s just himself. So it can only be all about himself. It is intrinsically selfish. So when a young man has grown up and has struggled with pornography, that is a struggle with his own selfishness — that’s lust. When he has struggled with self-gratification, again, he’s the only one involved — that is lust. He’s struggling with his thoughts — that is lust. Get this, everything in the bachelorhood of this young man that has anything to do with sexuality, for him, has been lust. Because there has been no proper outflow sexually for any love — it has only been lust. If he has partaken in any or indulged at all in that area of sexuality, then it has only been lust. It only can be that because he is not in a marriage where he can have a proper outflow of love in that area. So it’s all about himself. 

Now this is what worries me. This is the danger. If we come and start, then this young man starts a relationship with a young lady and immediately does what the world says is totally fine and what many of our churches say is totally fine and maybe what his family and friends are telling him is totally fine and he begins this relationship with communicating physically, as well as emotionally and verbally, but he’s including physical communication. He’s including a hug here and there, a kiss. He’s including trying to communicate physically, trying to love physically, something that is incredibly gratifying, even just a hug or a kiss for any young man out there, and he’s trying to love that way when everything that has been physically gratifying up to that point has been selfish. Everything. How is he going to separate that? How is he going to know going into this relationship if he is really loving? If it is really about the other person when it is doing so much for him as well? The truth is he doesn’t know. He doesn’t, and it may not cause a problem until part way into the marriage when things start to go downhill and and some circumstance comes up in the marriage that exacerbates that issue of selfishness and then it comes out and turns out that everything physically in marriage has been selfish as well. That all this time it’s just been lust. It always was lust going up all the way through teenage years and then he starts a relationship and now that physical communication going into marriage. It’s just what it always was. It is gratifying him physically. 

Do you know what there needs to be young people? Guys and girls, do you know what there needs to be, especially if the physical realm has been an area where you have struggled at all, in the sensual and the sexual realm, if that is something you’ve struggled with, before you go and dive in trying to physically communicate love in a relationship, you know what you need to do? You need to have a buffer period. You need to have a time as you begin a relationship where you focus on loving them in every other way, in the difficult ways, when it comes to just sitting down in the deep conversations, hours spent working things through and listening to each other, and loving them in ways that is a sacrifice, that takes time, that takes effort, that takes being purposeful in your love. Loving them in ways that it’s all about them and their needs. 

So quick overview. Love wants what’s best for someone else, for the other person. Lust wants what’s best for me. Love is willing to do the difficult. It’s willing to do things that aren’t fun in order to meet those needs, in order to accomplish that purpose. It’s willing to self sacrifice, but lust doesn’t do that. It’s all about me. It’s about my desires. It’s about accomplishing what feels good to me. Now we applied that in one way by showing the importance of separating those two categories before you enter into a serious relationship. 

But I just want you to ask a question whether you’re in a relationship or hope to be. Why do you need them? Why is this relationship so important to you? Why do you struggle with spending so much time thinking and pondering and fantasizing about this relationship? Why is it important to you? Or if you’re in the relationship, why is it so important that it doesn’t stop? Why is it so important that you don’t break up? Answer that question truthfully. Because you may find yourself saying things like, well, because I’m just so lonely without another person. Well, because my life is just a mess and I really need someone to clean up my life. I need a person in my life so I can just dump on them and I know they’ll listen. What are all those things? You are prioritizing the relationship because of what it can do for you. 

Do you know one great litmus test of whether you’re going into a relationship or desiring a relationship out of love or lust is why it’s important to you? You should be going into a relationship because God has called you to do something for that person. God has called you to improve their life, to complete their life. God has called you to strengthen them, to lead them, to build them, to encourage them, to listen to them, to love them. But if you are going to love them, you have to put your own needs, your own desires, last, self-sacrifice, and truly, exclusively want what is best for them. 

Now one last thing as we conclude, and this is something my wife brought out that I thought was very helpful. Guys who are hoping to be in a relationship with a young lady or maybe you are in a relationship with a young lady, and you say you know I think I am, I think I’m there or I’m almost there where I’m just concerned about her needs and her benefit and I just I can’t wait to get in her life so I can improve that and help her in these areas. Well, okay, quick question, quick question. Who is the one who can best meet her needs? Now, ultimately we would have to say that it’s the Lord, it’s Jesus, who can best meet her needs. So then as much as God may have it in His plan to use you to help and meet needs and encourage and strengthen, and all these things in the future, you know what needs to be the focus? What needs to be the focus is what Jesus can do for her, what Jesus has to do for her. And here’s my point. You need to pray for her. And you need to pray for her — P-R-A-Y — as we talked about a couple months ago on the podcast on praying versus preying, P-R-E-Y-I-N-G. You need to pray for her, for her benefit. And that’s something you can do whether you are in a relationship or not. I wonder if so much of your prayer time in regards to her is just, Lord make this happen and have her to notice me, and have the family to like me and just work out the circumstances so we can get together and then I can love and encourage and strengthen and everything that Jesus can do anyway, whether or not you’re in the relationship.

Instead, what if you focused your prayer time on Lord? There’s this nice young lady that needs help. She needs someone to encourage you right now. Would you encourage her? I’m not in a position where I can do that. Would you encourage her? There’s this young lady, Lord, that that could use growth in this area. As much as I want to help and I want to be there, I can’t do that right now. Jesus, would you be there for her? Lord, there’s this young lady who I feel like doesn’t have anyone to listen to her needs right now and she’s struggling, she just needs someone to talk to and I can’t be that one for her right now. So would you be there for her? Question, love or lust? Self-sacrificing, I have nothing to gain. I’m saying, Jesus, it’s all you. She needs you. I care so much about her needs that I’m asking you to meet them. You can do a better job than I can. Would you get in and meet those needs right now when I can’t? You don’t have to be married to her to pray for her. So don’t make that your focus. If you truly love someone, your focus is going to be to pray for them, for their benefit, for their needs from the beginning. That’s going to be your focus. 

Guys, let me just simply say that there are so many girls out there, Christian girls, who are in need, who are struggling, who are in despair, discouraged, who need someone to listen to, who need someone to strengthen them, who need someone there by their side. I’m talking about girls that are in agony of soul, and what they don’t need is for their future man to be in his room gratifying himself over thoughts of them. To be laying in his bed fantasizing about the wonderful relationship that they’ll have someday in the future — you’re doing nothing for her nothing. You are full of lust and it would be better that you never married her because that same lust is going to destroy her. You’re not going to be any help. Do you know what she needs? She needs you to get on your knees and start interceding for her, for her benefit, for her needs. Start loving her now, and let God do the rest. 

Friends, this issue is huge. And though I’ve probably didn’t articulate it in the best way, would you allow the Lord to examine your heart right now? To examine your deepest motives, areas that have maybe been off limits and see if perhaps where you thought you had loved, truly there is lust, and lust will always combat true love. Put yourself last and start sacrificing for the needs of others. 

This episode flows directly into where our next episode is going to be next month, and will likely conclude our discussion. It’s probably going to be an episode that surprises you, because a quick listen through this series on emotional purity may sound like I’m just against relationships or against marriage happening. But in this last episode, we’re going to see how the decline in our society correlates with the decline in God’s plan for marriage. It is a fascinating study, but it’s a study we are going to have last and an emphasis we are saving for last because you cannot prioritize marriage before you have prioritized love. 

Friends, take these next weeks and allow the Lord to do a deep work in your heart to change your thinking on love so you ultimately can be less gratified and more satisfied with Jesus Christ.