THE LUST OF THE EYES

1 John 2: 12 – 17
One of the worst problems we have is the lust of the eyes. Porn, prostitution, strip clubs, extra-marital affairs, and lusting after that pretty woman who just walked by, all have the capability of ruining relationships at work, at church, and at home.
16 For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does— comes not from the Father but from the world.
Every guy experiences this lust at one time or another. The anonymity of the Internet, the darkness of gentlemen's clubs lead us to feel as if we will not be caught and we can get away with it. Watching that pretty girl is such a personal thing that we can get away with it by just wearing a simple pair of sun glasses. The problem lies in that our lusting effects not only us, but those we love. It feeds desires in such a way that we can never be satisfied. Our wives can never match up to the women we have created in our minds.
Now it must be said here that the lust of the eyes goes beyond the objectification of women and sexual acts. It reaches out to the way we look at things that other people have, like cars, clothes, houses, you know really cool stuff. We want it and we have to have it. Unfortunately it never looks, feels, or sounds as cool as it did in someone else's house or in the showroom.
Piling on here, we also get ourselves in trouble by boasting about our deeds. We grow our actions in our minds until they become so large that we can't possibly live up to other's expectations of us.
These things are of the world and not of God.
15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
17 The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives for ever.
True satisfaction is found only when we give our affections to eternal things—to a right relationship with our heavenly Father and with those He has created in His image.
The insatiable appetite to indulge in pleasures that inflame the flesh but never satisfy, Wandering eyes that continually want more riches and possessions but always remain covetous, and vain mind that thirsts for man’s applause. But the glory evaporates quickly. All these things bring us down, not lift us up as we first thought they would.

Inner peace springs out of inner purity.