Growing up, I took part in powerful battles between the forces of good and evil. In my neighborhood:
• Cowboys fought Indians (certainly not politically correct today).
• G.I. Joe gunned down Hitler’s Nazi army.
• Spider-Man arrived at the scene of a crime … just in time.
• Batman gave the Joker, the Riddler, and Catwoman knuckle sandwiches.
• Johnny Quest foiled evil plots.
• Speed Racer destroyed the various “devils” of Daytona.
• David brought down Goliath hard.
I always chose to be the good guy when playing with my brothers and friends. I guess back then, when I was just a little squirt, my mind was free of emotional and spiritual conflicts. I simply wanted to be on the good—and winning—side, where truth and justice always prevailed. With age, however, I discovered a few things:
• The good guy doesn’t always win.
• Loyalty can be bought.
• The real world isn’t so black and white.
• Real-life heroes make bad choices (think Pete Rose).
• Temptation and conflicts of the soul are real.
• There’s a dark side to life.
The “dark side” was made famous by the Star Wars trilogies and epitomized by the infamous character Darth Vader. While he and the other Star Wars characters are thoroughly the stuff of Hollywood, the saga’s core theme reflects a biblical reality, which is this: every man has a dark side, something pulling him to do the wrong thing. This force inside him wages war against his noblest intentions.
I believe this dark side phenomenon makes every man a potential double agent—capable of doing the very worst even when he desires the very best. That’s why the Bible makes it clear that the enemy you really need to be watching out for is you.
For instance, have you ever:
• experienced the dark force making you look like a total dork?
• sensed the other you taking over your mouth and spewing criticism on those you supposedly love?
• heard the voice that says “go for it” when you know you shouldn’t go for it?
• let your body take control and lead you down the wrong path sexually?
• noticed how your dark desires know when and where to strike so as to create the most damage?
A friend expressed his situation this way: “I realize I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up.”
My friend feels controlled, manipulated, and lied to by the dark side. You can tell by his words that he feels helpless against this powerful inner enemy. Every time he wrestles, he gets pinned. His intentions are good, but his legs get cut out from underneath him whenever he tries to follow through. His dark side is so inbred, so powerful, and so deceptive that he feels like a boxer trying to escape a flurry of right hooks and left uppercuts.
You may know my friend. His name is Paul—the apostle. Nearly two thousand years ago, he put into words how everyone feels when the dark side takes over our lives and our actions.
Every man has a dark side, something pulling him to do the wrong thing.
Paul labeled this our “sin nature,” and the previous description is found in Romans 7:18-21 (MSG). It’s good to know we are in good company when it comes to this battle because we all are at war with our dark side.
The goal of God’s young man should be to get the upper hand on this powerful foe. Paul didn’t just lament his helplessness—he used the tools God gave him to free himself from living a life of contradiction. He knew that to prevail in this war, intelligence on the enemy was key.
Sharks have always fascinated me. That’s why I love it when the Discovery Channel sponsors Shark Week. I hate to admit this, but I find watching unsuspecting seals getting caught off guard by these finned eating machines thoroughly fascinating. The shark’s breathtaking acceleration as he swoops in for the kill is both morbid and beautiful at the same time. After witnessing this underwater mayhem unfold, you see with your own eyes that sharks are very good at what God created them to do.
What gets a shark going is the smell of blood. One whiff activates its predatory instincts, senses, and physical responses. We cannot deny that sharks are:
• Predatory: they hunt down other animals for the purpose of killing them.
• Persistent: they will follow the scent of blood for miles to find their prey.
• Powerful: they will leverage their physical assets of sharp teeth and muscle to overwhelm their victims.
• Precise: their calculated timing is deadly.
• Purposely deceptive: they often attack from underneath their victims to avoid detection.
In your journey with God, I know you feel the dark side lurking like a shark beneath the surface of your life. The dark side inconspicuously swims in the waters of your character, hiding in your thoughts and dropping ideas into your mind that run counter to God’s plan. The dark side contradicts what constitutes sin by muddying the waters so you cannot make out the clear instruction of God’s Word. Your dark side is patient until it’s time to strike.
When I started my freshman year at UCLA, I met some other Christian guys at a coffeehouse on campus for Bible study. Talking about the Lord and learning more about Him got my day off to a great start. From there I usually went off to class or hustled over to Wooden Center (the gym) to play some hoops or lift weights. Life was good.
I certainly felt high on God and high on life, especially the latter after playing a couple of hours of spirited basketball. Then I would walk back to my dorm and cool down before taking a shower. Once I stepped in the shower stall, however, the dark side was waiting for me. More often than not, a good day, a good Bible study, and some good hard-nosed basketball succumbed to a good old-fashioned ambush.
Your dark side is patient until it’s time to strike.
What happened is that the dark side loved to take that feeling-good-about-myself mood and spin it into a bad thing. Whenever a lot of good energy would go out, the dark side would seize that moment and whisper, You deserve a reward, as I entered the shower stall—right when I was feeling on top of the world. That’s when the dark side would exploit that pride and get me to sin.
Go for it dude, he would continue. Help yourself to a dollop of shampoo … Fantasize about that Delta Gamma who sat next to you in class … It will feel great … No one can see you … You are safe … It will feel good … Imagine her with her top off … You worked hard today … Reward yourself with something good—now.
Somehow the dark side knew exactly when to strike, knew when I would be most open to the temptation to masturbate, knew the girls on my radar screen, and above all, knew my weakness in this area. More times than I care to admit, I was a goner.
That’s because my dark side was in control.
The first step to defeating the dark side is to acknowledge its presence. Jesus exposed it when He warned: “The spirit is willing, but the body is weak” (Mark 14:38).
Your dark side is integrated into your very being, much like a double agent trying to take you down from the inside. Your sin nature, or spiritual dark side, is constantly tempting you to do things you shouldn’t be doing as God’s young man. When you give in to its lies, the resulting lifestyle leads to pain in your relationship with God and His people.
Surveys I’ve taken with young men reveal that they sense the dark side in their practice of masturbation more than anything else. These guys feel like they are literally sleeping with the enemy and have formed an unholy partnership with the dark side. Virtually all of them say that this partnership brings nothing but grief and guilty feelings. They say that they always feel like failures afterward.
My goal is to make you a wise fish.
Why are these feelings universal? Because the dark side dominates their minds and their wills. Even though they read in the Bible about the freedom they have in Christ, they wonder why they go through life feeling like slaves.
That’s because the dark side is a strong opponent. He sends lies your way—lies that he hopes will soften your resolve. He knows how to tempt you because he is you—at least the old you. He’s got the complete toolbox of falsehoods at his disposal and knows all the lines. The irony is that he always paints your number one temptation as the number one solution!
The Bible says the dark side baits us like bigmouth bass: “Temptation comes from the lure of our own evil desires” (James 1:14, NLT). The lure sure looks like the real thing to a fish, but it’s actually a barbed steel hook that, once swallowed, ain’t coming out till the fish is flopping in the boat and gasping for air.
The difference between us and fish is that we’re supposedly smarter. We should recognize lures for what they are, and when one pops in front of our eyes, we should ignore it and swim away from the temptation. If you’re not good at spotting the lures the dark side dips in the waters of your life, you will get reeled in, gutted, and consumed. My goal is to make you a wise fish.
A friend told Josh that Austin was sleeping with Jessica. Josh immediately called Austin and asked if they could meet. Austin’s response: “I’ve got no time to meet this week.” It was obvious to Josh that the issue wasn’t about time but about priorities—and God wasn’t a priority for Austin. Neither could Josh accept Austin’s rationale for his sin, so one time when he spotted his friend on campus, Josh walked right up to him. Austin, who was clearly surprised, knew why his friend wanted to see him, so the first words out of his mouth were, “I am not like you, Josh.” This was followed by the next beauty, which was, “And you’re not my dad.”
“But God can’t go from being a big part of your life to a small part unless you’re making space for the wrong things.”
Josh just smiled and shook his head—letting Austin feel the stupidity of his little outburst.
“You’re right,” Josh replied after a long pause. “You are not me, and I am not your dad. But I am your brother—in Christ. I know you don’t want to hear that right now because you can’t be doing what you’re doing with Jessica and still be tight with me or God. I don’t care if you push me away, avoid me, or never see me again. But God can’t go from being a big part of your life to a small part unless you’re making space for the wrong things.”
“So now I am into ‘wrong things’?” Austin said defensively as he made a quoting gesture with both hands.
“Dude, you got a Bible,” Josh fired back. “You know what we covered at that summer retreat with Reggie. You remember what he said about sex. You know, dude. You know.”
Austin didn’t want to hang. Walking backward, he retreated from Josh, saying, “I’ll catch you later, man.”
How does a guy go from being committed to Jesus just three months earlier to acting like this? Simple: he believed the dark side (his sin nature) within him, a dark side that said, She likes you, man. She’ll go further if you ask. You will love it. God created men and women to do this exact thing. You don’t have to listen to Josh. You’re an adult—act like one. Life is short. You may never get this chance again.
Austin bit down hard on the big lure that his dark side floated out there. No surprise when he got reeled into sexual sin. Little did he know that his relationship with God would go sideways, as well his relationship with Josh. He had subconsciously kept them both at arm’s length to make having sex with Jessica less emotionally conflicting. Now the joy is gone from his life, and he’s stagnating in a septic tank of lies and false promises. This was the goal of the dark side all along.
The dark side loves remaining anonymous, unnamed, and hidden. The dark side even appreciates that I haven’t capitalized his name! On top of that, he doesn’t like the fact you’re even reading this! His ability to influence your life rests on one thing—staying disguised and keeping his cover.
The dark side doesn’t have to influence your actions, though. You can beat him at his own game by committing to a campaign of exposing him constantly. You do that by figuring you have two types of people living in one body, and your Spirit-filled nature has to suppress the dark side—or else.
Will you still feel the dark side’s urgings to sin? Yes.
Will you be tempted to lash out in anger when confronted by others? Absolutely.
Will you still feel the pull to give in to your sin nature? Definitely.
But now, at least mentally, you will be more aware of what is happening to you. You won’t write off your commitment to Jesus Christ so easily. That’s what happens when you know you are in a war: you become more aware of your enemy.
Now that you’re better prepared for those lures that the dark side casts your way, you’re ready for the next step: becoming vocal to defeat your adversary.
Remember those obnoxious morning announcements you heard over the classroom intercom, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance? Then there were those unexpected announcements—the ones that came in the middle of fourth period. They usually started with some kind of beep, letting everyone know that a subject of school-wide importance was about to follow.
No matter where you were or what you were doing, the world would stop for a few brief seconds, and everyone would get really quiet. The absolute worst thing that could happen for me was to hear the following words over the loudspeaker: “Will Kenny Luck please report to the office? Kenny Luck, please report to the office immediately.”
Whenever that happened to me (true confessions time), I stood up and felt like I was wearing nothing more than a jock strap and a wan smile as I trudged out of the classroom toward the school office. I mean, I felt exposed.
Fast-forward to a time when I was in my twenties. Ever heard of the Girls Gone Wild videos? I hope not. What happened is that I was lounging on the couch late one night, flipping through channels, when I came upon this infomercial about girls taking off their clothes. Girls gone wild, right? Right at that moment, the dark side popped a lure into my head that said: Can you believe that, dude? Look at her. She’s hot. Check that pair out. And guess what? Nobody’ll know that you’re here all by yourself.
For the dark side it was not business as usual anymore.
But something very different happened that evening—I didn’t bite down on the lure! I had been talking about this exact same stuff with some other guys, and we said that when something like this happened, we should get mad at the dark side. That night I blurted out loud, “That’s a lie!” Then I hit the off button on my remote, and that was it.
Game over. No more Girls Gone Wild tempting me. I’m telling you that doing that was a huge step in my journey toward becoming God’s young man.
For the dark side it was not business as usual anymore. He had been his normal lying self, but that night I exposed his lies and embarrassed him. It’s like I was just waiting to pull the trigger on his antics. That’s why I zapped the Girls Gone Wild infomercial into oblivion.
That taste of victory was sweet. Since then, I’ve learned that one of the biggest things the dark side hates is being exposed verbally. Yep—sounds silly, but you’ve got to verbally expose and confront him. You do this by calling on the carpet the tempting thoughts the dark side puts in your head.
You might be thinking: Is Kenny telling me to talk to myself when I’m tempted? You got it! That’s exactly what I’m saying. When you express a thought verbally to the dark side, it stops being a mental negotiation; you change the playing field completely. What you’re doing is confronting the dark side when you give voice to thoughts such as:
• That’s definitely not God’s plan.
• Explain this one to Jesus.
• This will not help a thing.
When your dark side wants you to bite into a big honking sin, you have to call it what is—an attempt to deceive you. The longer you linger around a lure, the more likely you’ll bite. That can be fatal to you. God’s young man operates by one rule when it comes to lures: don’t let them dangle—get out of there. “Kisses from an enemy do you in,” God says (Proverbs 27:6, MSG).
When your dark side wants you to bite into a big honking sin, you have to call it what is—an attempt to deceive you.
After you call the dark side on the carpet, you call out the Scripture to keep him away. You gotta prepare for temptation by learning to identify when it happens, quoting the Scripture that deals with it (one that you’ve committed to memory), and speak it out loud the moment your dark side tempts you. Psalm 37:30-31 says, “The mouth of the righteous man utters wisdom, and his tongue speaks what is just. The law of God is in his heart; his feet do not slip.” If we can talk ourselves into doing the wrong thing, we can certainly talk ourselves into doing the right thing! Spiritually, this means loading the magazine of your heart with God’s Word and pulling the trigger with your mouth by speaking it into your situation.
Here are some pertinent examples:
• When Jenny Zahati (a.k.a. “Jenny’s a hottie” for you slower readers) is flaunting her chest, and you want to have a mental happy meal, remind yourself that your duty is to “love God … with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).
• For you guys who struggle with masturbation, we’ve all been there, right? If you step into the shower and you sense the battle, call out a Scripture like, “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature” (Galatians 5:16).
• When your mom or dad asks for your help with something around the house, remember Jesus’s words in Matthew 20:28: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.”
After you expose the dark side by verbally calling out the sin and the Scripture, you pin down the sin by speaking to God and asking for His support and help. It’s like a cop who wants to handcuff a bad guy, and he asks his partner to come over and hold the guy down so that he can finish cuffing him.
The dark side loves it when you lose your poise, but you don’t ever have to panic if you know the Lord.
What rocks a young guy’s world is not knowing what to do when the shot clock on his temptation ticker is winding down. Panic often sets in. The dark side loves it when you lose your poise, but you don’t ever have to panic if you know the Lord. God says simply, “Talk to me.” Don’t be fancy—send up a signal flare to God:
• When you are tempted sexually, pray: Son of Man, have mercy on me.
• When you are in the middle of a heated discussion and don’t know what you’ll say next, pray in your mind: Lord Jesus, have mercy on me.
• When you’re feeling lonely and depressed, pray: Lord Jesus, come to me or Lord Jesus, help me.
The point is this: “GOD’S there, listening for all who pray, for all who pray and mean it. He does what’s best for those who fear him—hears them call out, and saves them” (Psalm 145:18-19, MSG).
God gave us our mouths to be used as weapons to defeat the dark side. When we begin to use them for this purpose, Darth Vader doesn’t stand a chance.