When you are in the moment of temptation, it’s not very effective to try to not think about what is tempting you. It’s like trying to not think of a purple elephant – you just can’t do it. You have to replace the thoughts with something godly.
There’s an old story about a man who had a friend come over and help him move all his old furniture into his garage.
“Why are you putting all this in your garage?”
“It’s time for a change. The old furniture got wet when my laundry room flooded, and it’s growing mold spores.”
So, together, they moved out all the old furniture.
A few months later, the friend was visiting the house and noticed that all the old furniture was back from the garage.
“What happened? I thought we moved all this stuff into the garage because of the mold spores.”
“Yeah, but after awhile I got tired of having nowhere to sit, so I moved it all back in.”
When we get rid of old habits and old thoughts, they create a vacuum, and as you probably learned in school: nature abhors a vacuum. We have to go back and fill that space with something good.
Remember the story that Jesus told in Matthew 12?
“When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.” (Matthew 12:43-45)
Now, Christians can’t be possessed by demons, but we can be possessed by lustful thoughts. If we get rid of a lustful thought but don’t replace it with something godly, it’s likely that the lustful thought will come back (and it may bring friends).
