How to Resist Lust at the Beach: Pursue a Greater Pleasure

Have you ever fought to resist lust at the beach? My whole life, I’ve lived near the beach. It’s a place I visit often, and it holds many memories and ongoing pleasures: swimming, boogie boarding, body surfing, and diving for football passes into crashing waves—local pizza, Wawa hoagies, and snacks flavored with saltwater and sand. It’s a place for family and friends, for chatting, laughing, napping, chasing seagulls, and taking barefoot strolls along the shoreline—for enjoying beach sunrises and sunsets that reflect off the ocean as the tide goes in and out and the waves rise and crash.

While at the beach, though, I also remember being challenged by a pull in my heart toward lust, envy, and shame for the first time. New activities became necessary, such as alertness, self-control, and discernment, with a conscious effort to control the focus of my heart and eyes. What first felt like a disheartening battle showed itself to be an opportunity for deep worship and enjoyment of God. If you share my desire to enjoy the beach, join me in preparing your heart to resist lust and pursue the care you can find in our good God.

Heart Reflection #1: Is Your Beach Trip Rooted in Thanksgiving?

The apostle Paul offers a remedy for lust: “walk by the Spirit” (Gal. 5:16). He elsewhere gives a pertinent explanation of what such walking looks like: “addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:18b–20). Spirit-filled living is rooted in gratitude toward God that manifests in worship and praise. When your heart is set on God’s goodness, it’s easier to resist lust because the discontentment that feeds it gets crowded out. So, when preparing for a trip to the beach, how might you steep your heart in thanksgiving and display your gratitude toward God so that those around you might take notice?

Q#1 Responsive Homework:

• Prepare to resist lust at the beach by writing a description or list of the wholesome qualities you cherish about this place (Phil. 4:8), including fond memories and future anticipations. Thanking the Lord for these blessings, acknowledge his kindness in giving you opportunities to partake in these delights and ask that he might, by the Spirit, cultivate in you such satisfaction in him and in his good gifts that your content heart would have no place for lust.

Heart Reflection #2: Do You Want to Be Lusted After? Where Are You Looking for Acceptance and Affirmation?

Often, we are most prone to lust when, due to our insecurities, we desire to be lusted after by others. We seek acceptance and affirmation as we perceive it to be found in romance, in community with the “it-crowd,” or in having a certain body type, so we can be tempted to covet such things and make sacrifices in an attempt to take on those identities for ourselves. As you’re planning for the beach and cultivating anticipations and dreams for this trip, how are you envisioning your pursuit of validation and affirmation? Who are you hoping to see and impress? What longings do you wish this trip would satisfy, and how? How might you be fantasizing to take control of your life, desires, and body, seeking to claim what you’ve concluded God is unable or unwilling to provide?

Q#2 Responsive Homework:

• Read Proverbs 7 and notice how there is preparation for sexual sin.Thoughts are intentionally crafted to make it look desirable. False reasoning is used to make a way for sin. How might you be preparing for your trip to the beach in the same lustful way? As you answer this question, confess your sins to the Lord and receive his forgiveness (1 John 1:9).

• Read Galatians 6:1–10. What motivation does Paul give Christians for enduring in good works? According to Paul, how are Christians to examine themselves and move toward others? How might your lustful desires be working against Paul’s call for you to grow in love for others? Pray that the Lord, by his Spirit, might empower you to resist lust by directing your desires toward obeying him and loving others (Matt. 22:37–40).

Heart Reflection #3: Are You Apathetic About Planning to Resist Lust at the Beach?

King Solomon warns that our plotting has limitations: “The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps” (Prov. 16:9). We must anchor our preparation in trust and commitment to the Lord. He alone delivers us from temptation (1 Cor. 10:13). However, the Lord may provide ways of escape through the means of our planning (Matt. 5:29). Through devotion to the Lord, we grow in wisdom (Prov. 9:10), which empowers us to engage in fruitful planning for resisting sexual temptation (Prov. 24:2–5). You might be surprised how much of your struggle with sexual sin is fueled by false-defeatism, by which you come up with reasons to assume that plans for purity are impossible or doomed to fail. However, wisdom from the Lord challenges such dismissals and encourages you to plan to resist lust.

Q#3 Responsive Homework:

• As you’re considering your next visit to the beach, invite an accountability partner to help you plan specific ways to resist lust. Pray together, and repent of any dismissiveness or defeatism that casts doubt on what the Lord can do through the gift of his wisdom being worked out by his saints. Then write out a plan for your upcoming beach trip that your accountability partner can support you in implementing. Consider these questions while planning:

• What is the culture of the beach you’re going to? Is it known for partying, sunbathing, family-friendliness, surfing, fishing? Are there alternative beaches with cultural dynamics less advantageous toward fueling lust—places that make it easier to fight and resist lust? Also consider what times and days would be best to go. Depending on timing, the beach’s culture might look different.

• Who are you planning to go with and why (consider Heart Reflection #2 to help shape your thinking)? The best-case scenario would be having your accountability partner as part of your beach trip, but if not, how might you keep in touch if counsel is needed?

• What activities are you planning to enjoy while at the beach (consider Heart Reflection #1 to help shape your thinking)? Planning to pursue virtuous pleasures limits space for enticement toward unplanned, sinful pleasures.

Heart Reflection #4: Is Going to the Beach More Important to You than Repentance?

Habitual sexual sin develops (Rom. 1; Eph. 4; James 4), meaning it is not simply a series of disconnected actions, but interconnected behaviors and desires. When we sin, both body and soul are acting and reacting. This addictive property of sexual sin means that depending on where we are in uprooting sin from our lives, there will be a corresponding degree of sensitivity and susceptibility to temptation. Jesus calls us to acknowledge where our weaknesses lie and be quick to cut off means of temptation (Matt. 5:27–30).

For some, this may mean a hiatus from the beach. That can be a true sacrificial suffering; it is a real loss to have to give up good pleasures in order to obey God’s call to abstain from sinning. Abraham was called to an even greater sacrificial charge: giving up his only son. But his hope in this challenge is ours to share. “He considered that God was able even to raise [his son] from the dead” (Heb. 11:19). In the same manner, know that your potential sacrifice of going to the beach will be used by God in cultivating new life in you, and we can look to Christ’s example to confirm that such an exchange is worth it (Rom. 8)!

Q#4 Responsive Homework:

• Before your next trip to the beach, consider inviting a mature Christian to be part of your discernment process on whether such a trip would be wise. It might be helpful to walk this mentor through what the past year to six months of sexual sin and temptation has looked like for you. Has there been a waning of temptation and a growing resistance, or the opposite? Pray together that the Lord would give you a heart to prioritize faithfulness to him over all other motivations behind going to the beach. If it’s decided that it would currently be unwise to go to the beach, consider and pray together about finding alternative activities that you could enjoy without exposure to specific temptations toward lust.

Pursue a Greater Pleasure by Resting in Jesus

Theologian Abraham Kuyper famously stated, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” This must be the perspective that shapes our beach experience.

Even now, imagine yourself at the beach. Picture every sight your eyes might behold, consider every desire your heart might be stirred toward. Christ wants you to see his claim on all of it; none of it is yours to claim independently; it’s all his, and that is good news because of who our Savior is by nature. He is our Good Shepherd, who cares perfectly for his sheep wherever we might go (John 10:27–29; Rom. 8:15–17; Matt. 7:11; James 1:17; John 10:10; Ps. 16:11; Eph. 1:3–6; Rom. 11:36; 2 Cor. 9:8). In Christ, whose burden is easy and whose yoke is light (Matt. 11:28–30), we find an eternal rest and relaxation that transcends all earthly pleasure.