Baz Gascoyne talks honestly on dealing with lust

Baz Gascoyne

"When I was a child I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child."

It was so easy when I was a child to lose myself in a world of fantasy and this I would do daily as I played football or ran up and down the cobbled back ally of my home imagining that I was running out on the pitch of Wembley in my England kit or running to the finish line in the 100 metres final of the Olympic Games.

When I was a teenager at school I still had those fantasies but they were often pushed to the back of my mind by bigger things such as the breasts of my English teacher Mrs Oats (I kid you not that was her name.) I would often go into my own little world wondering what it would be like to see them in the flesh and touch them.

"When I became a Man I put childish ways behind me". Am I the only man who still behaves in childish ways and every time I read that think 'man I am so sick', thanks Paul for making me feel worse than I did.

Why is it when the weather improves and the skirts get shorter and t-shirts tighter that the childish ways manifest themselves in me? Is it because men think of sex every 7 seconds or is it because we like to enter a world of fantasy and escape from the reality going on around us and in us?

Reality is what we live in day in day out and is different for each one of us. For some this can be an enormous thing to get through daily because of the tears, pain and hurt we feel due to loss, anger, fears. For others it can just be the sense of the mundane of their lives that causes frustration and them asking "is this as good as it gets?"

So to try and run and hide from these or other feelings we try and hide away. We try to not live life but enter a world of escapism.

The dictionary informs us that fantasy is: The realm of vivid imagination; make believe; a mental image, especially a disordered and weird image.

So fantasy can be anything that takes us away from the realities and responsibilities that we have in our everyday life.

So whether you are single or married we have to make daily choices about what we are going to let our mind do. Are we going to be ruled by our mind or are we going to take control of it? Ask God to help us be the men he wants us to be and believes we can be.

For us to do this we need to be honest with our struggles and get some friends to stand alongside us as we make ourselves vulnerable and accountable to them asking for their support and help. Whatever you turn to to avoid reality ask yourself "what are the needs you are trying to meet?"

Now I know for most guys we find it hard to talk about our feelings unless we are talking about sport, cars, money or work and then we can talk for England. However, we need to begin to open up and not allow fear to rob us of the freedom we can and will receive from God once we begin this process.

Let's be honest here, all guys in the Church, single or married struggle with lustful thoughts. Well men generally, whether part of the Church or not, all lust.

I have sometimes struggled with the fact I am just about to be introduced to speak at a church whilst five minutes earlier I have been admiring some ladies breasts at the same time trying to worship God. It is true men can not multi task!