“When it comes to lust, the greatest misconception about women is that they only deal with lust on an emotional level ... Many women struggle with lust in what you might call traditionally male ways ... Women, it doesn’t matter if your sex drive is as strong as a guy’s or how it compares to other girls you know. What matters is whether or not you’re looking to God for strength to control the desires you have.”

“If you limit your eyes to your wife only, your own tastes will adapt to what you’re viewing. Your wife’s strengths and weaknesses will become your tastes. Eventually, she’ll be beyond comparison in your eyes.”

“Sexual impurity isn’t like a tumor growing out of control inside us. We treat it that way when our prayers focus on deliverance, as we plead for someone to come remove it. Actually, sexual impurity is a series of bad decisions on our part—a result of immature character—and deliverance won’t deliver you into instant maturity. Character work needs to be done.”

“Even though you won’t find the word ‘masturbation’ in the Bible, God’s Word does address this issue and gives us everything we need to deal with it. Scripture clearly speaks of the danger of lust and shows us what it means to have an accurate view of sex.”

“Over the years, I have been reticent to take a strong stand on issues that are not clearly spelled out in Scripture. The Bible is silent about the subject of masturbation. However, it is not silent about sex. Nowhere in Scripture do we find God blessing sex done alone.”

“If we plant seeds of wanton lust, or seeds of using and abusing people, or seeds of indiscriminate sex and self‐centered pleasure, we should not be surprised by the fields of toxic weeds that cover our lives. But if we want the harvest of a loving, deep, intimate relationship, we need to understand that a loving relationship demands sexual purity.”

“Our maleness is a major root of sexual sin. So what do we do? We must choose to be more than male. We must choose manhood. … You got into this mess by being male; you’ll get out by being a man.”

“If you find someone attractive, your first line of defense is a proper mindset, which is this: ‘This attraction threatens everything I hold dear’.”

“We’ve known those who have failed in their battle for sexual purity, and we know some who have won. The difference? Those who won hated their impurity. They were going to war and were going to win—or die trying. Every resource was leveled upon the foe.”

“My bigger outbreaks of sin are usually triggered by smaller sins that I wasn’t diligent in guarding against. I’m talking about the daily, even hourly decisions of what to watch, read, listen to, and allow my mind to think about and my eyes to rest upon.”

“There’s a reason why Jesus warned, ‘I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart’ (Matthew 5:28). He knew that fantasy and lust were traps for me. When we entertain sexual thoughts about strangers in the theater of our minds, we give ourselves to those images. When we invest our sexual energy with others, we will have little or no sexual energy for our wives.”

“Until you become pure, until you think, speak, and live out God’s commands in the sexual area, you will always be consciously or unconsciously involved in false worship. Your worship will be for your desires and lust, and it will involve using people to accomplish the purpose of your worship, which is to satisfy yourself. Jesus flatly declared that no one can serve two masters (Matthew 6:24).”

“I don’t think we should make overcoming lust our primary preoccupation—we need to make the gospel and God’s glory our focus. We need to give ourselves to knowing Him, worshipping Him, and meeting with Him every day. The result will be the weakening of lust and a growing passion for godliness.”

“Sexual purity is clearly something only God can bring about in your life and mine. God’s standard of not even a hint quickly brings me to the end of my own ability and effort. It reminds me that God’s standard is so much higher than the standards I place for myself.”

“You are sexually pure when no sexual gratification comes from anyone or anything but your wife.”

“‘But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity’ (Ephesians 5:3). If there’s a single Bible verse that captures God’s standard for sexual purity, that is it.”