I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines . . . Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes. Judges 14:2,3
At work one day, I saw a white cardboard box that obviously came from a bakery. As I have sworn off donuts, I had no plans to eat a donut, but still, I wanted to see what I was missing.
Prior to seeing the box, I was not struggling with the thought of eating a donut. Even when I saw the box, I was not yet in trouble. Each step towards the box though, was a step closer to failure. Opening the box and looking was an absurd thing to do. Once I filled my eyes with donuts, my belly wanted in on the action.
Today’s passage reveals that this lust of the eyes is about much more than donuts. In the story, Samson looked on a beautiful Philistine woman and just had to have her. It was Samson’s God-given mission to deliver the Israelites from the Philistines, but still, he lusted after what he saw. Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes. Needless to say, the marriage was a disaster. The fact that God used that disaster to accomplish His purpose does not diminish the lesson of the story.
Samson’s lust was triggered by his poor choices which intoxicated him with temptation. If I’m struggling with donuts, it would be ridiculous for me to enter a bakery. If I’m an alcoholic, I can’t work in a bar. Pornography addiction is insidious as it can be accessed anywhere. If I am struggling with it, I will likely need to go to radical lengths to cut off that access.
We must learn to purposefully fill our eyes with that which takes us in the direction we want to go. If we want our lives to follow God, we must daily turn our eyes to Him, reading, praying, and meditating. In our daily effort to pursue Him, God fills us with Himself, transforming our desires. We may never lose our appetite for donuts, but we can learn to live a life that is not enslaved to the lust of our eyes.