Lust

Tellyontellyon said:

I think one of the main things that blocks me from moving forward spiritually is lust..
... Not only lust, but an unwillingness to give it up...
I lack both the ability and the inclination to give it up.

To repent means to turn from sin, but I don't want to turn from it...
... I'm unable to repent, so I'm stuck....

Q.: What can I do?

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What ever is taken away from man, he wants it all the more. This is like what happened in the garden.
If you were Christian(you have Buddhist in your avatar) I would say, Perhaps you can not repent, but you can say that you are sorry in prayer. The Lord knows how weak we(man is). He understands. The lust of the world, and the things that are in it are gratification of self. When one is truly born from above(again) The Love of God within causes us to love others and no longer focus on self. And the love of The Lord towards us becomes all that we need and more. He becomes our all in all. As David once said, "My cup overflows" And so you may know, Jesus came to break the chains. The chains that have us enslaved to sin. For when The Son sets you free, you are free indeed. The enjoyment(pleasure) of lust is temporary, but what Jesus offers is eternal. Indeed you are "stuck" but it need not be so. Be Blessed!

You don’t need to be perfect to come to Jesus. But count the cost! Have you seen the emptiness in it and living in the flesh. It stinks. When it hurts bad enough you’ll appreciate the help to turn.

Tellyontellyon said:

I think one of the main things that blocks me from moving forward spiritually is lust..
... Not only lust, but an unwillingness to give it up...
I lack both the ability and the inclination to give it up.

To repent means to turn from sin, but I don't want to turn from it...
... I'm unable to repent, so I'm stuck....

Q.: What can I do?

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Ask Jesus to help you to overcome your sin ..... daily.

Tellyontellyon said:

I'm unable to repent...

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Nonsense. You yourself have admitted that you don't want to.

I can drop two Bible passages that come to mind on this subject. Please keep in mind that lust is a sin that all healthy adults deal with.

"We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin." Romans 7:14-25

"Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion." 1 Corinthians 7:8-9

Think about the differences between lust and love. Perhaps an easy way to look at is that lust takes and love gives.
Even married people must be alert of lust as a potential sin in their lives.

If you pray for freedom from your lustful desires, God can even answer this request. As GTW27 said. You may be surprised that Jesus can change even the desires of our heart, should the Lord will it.

I will be praying for you, and take it one day at a time.

Tellyontellyon said:

I think one of the main things that blocks me from moving forward spiritually is lust..
... Not only lust, but an unwillingness to give it up...
I lack both the ability and the inclination to give it up.

To repent means to turn from sin, but I don't want to turn from it...
... I'm unable to repent, so I'm stuck....

Q.: What can I do?

Click to expand...

Repentance doesn't spring up through some kind of autogenesis from within us, it never does. Repentance is what happens when one, weighed down and beaten by sin becomes awake, we say, "I am guilty." It's crushing, it feels awful. It's a hammer that beats down upon us seeming, as though it is about to break us into pieces.

I am guilty. Gut-wrenching, the white-hot shame shooting through our bones, making us feel sick to out stomach. Guilty.

Nobody likes that. In fact, we spend most of our lives, most of our waking hours, trying to ignore that. Just as much as we devote most of our waking ours ignoring the fact that we're dying. Each and every single one of us has an expiration date. We all know it, but it's terrible. It's awful. It eats at our bones, festers in the deepest part of ourselves. Life is limited, if we wait another moment we might miss out--miss out and not enjoy ourselves through an indulgence here, or an indulgence there. Destructive that may often be. Even as we find ourselves showing enmity against our fellow human beings, exploiting them to serve our own desires. Even as find ourselves slowly becoming more and more captive to those base appetites.

I am mortal, so what if I am guilty? Allow my guilt insofar and as long as I can experience what I want to experience in this little time on earth amidst all these sorrows and all these wrongs. Eat, drink, and be merry--for tomorrow we die.

Sin and death.
Passions and mortality.
Injustice and wrongness.
Broken--it's all, we're so, broken.

Guilty.

But because we are guilty, there is Hope: ✞

-CryptoLutheran

Sounds like how I felt before I gave up drugs. Eventually the pain of going on became great enough that I became willing to stop even though I still desperately wanted to keep doing it. How much pain that took was entirely up to me, and God was eager to give me the strength I needed to follow through.

It became easier when I stopped focusing on not doing drugs and started focusing on positive spiritual goals (kind of like how when skiing in trees you hit the trees if you don't focus on the spaces in between them). One specific thing I do when I experience lustful thoughts is to immediately pray the Our Father, the Glory Be, and then a bunch of Hail Marys until it passes, focusing my attention on the Passion of our Lord. I also do everything I can to avoid being within eyeshot of this weeks object of my lust. And I make it an act of the will to do these things whether I want to do them or not, because of course when I'm experiencing lustful thoughts I'm not inclined to stop. That's the nature of concupiscence.

You might also want to find out if there are any 12-step groups in your area that focus on sexual addiction such as SLAA or SLA. I joined NA because I got beaten down by dope, but I've found that the NA program is broad enough to deal with all of my addictions. That's because addiction isn't really about the thing I'm addicted to. And yes, today I'm no longer plagued by my addictions.

So the question you need to ask yourself is "how much of my arm do I have to feed into this woodchipper before I decide to accept the help God is offering me to pull it out?" Because what you're doing is exactly like putting your arm into a woodchipper because it feels good.

Tellyontellyon said:

Surely I am doomed. The Calvinists seem to be right, I'm not chosen... Or rather, I've been designated for hell. And there is absolutely nothing that can be done for me. God is too powerful for me and he has decided.

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Calvinist theology is chock-full of lies from the pit of hell, and the demonic notion that God designates some people for Hell is among the worst of them. Satan designates people for damnation. God does not.