John Owen on Conquering Lust through Meditating on God.

John Owen comments in his essay, Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers, about how although we do not have the capacity to fully understand His Word, we can compensate for this inability by meditating on God's greatness, limitless power, and holiness.

We are dull and slow of heart to receive the things that are in the word revealed; God, by our infirmity and weakness, keeping us in continual dependence on him for teachings and revelations of himself out of his word, never in this world bringing any soul to the utmost of what is from the word to be made out and discovered--so that although the way of revelation in the gospel be clear and evident, yet we know little of the things themselves that are revealed. Let us, then, revive the use and intention of this consideration: will not a due apprehension of this inconceivable greatness of God, and that infinite distance wherein we stand from him, fill the soul with a holy and awful fear of him, so as to keep it in a frame unsuited to the thriving of flourishing of any lust whatsoever Let the soul be continually wonted to reverential thoughts of God's greatness and omnipresence, and it will be much upon its watch as to any undue deportments. Consider him with whom you have to do--even "our God is a consuming fire" [Heb. 12:29]--and in your greatest abashments at his presence and eye, know that your very nature is too narrow to bear apprehensiins suitable to his essential glory.(pp. 117-118, Overcoming Sin & Temptation)

I have two thoughts about this paragraph. First, God's Word is a wonderful resource. We as evangelicals tend to read books about biblical themes (i.e. biblical counseling, daily living, the spiritual disciplines, etc.) without doing the hard work of studying and meditating on God's Word itself. Although, we have over two thousand years of Church scholarship and books being written every day on the Word, we have not even scratch the surface of understanding God's Word. We need to long for the pure spiritual milk of the Word at a very personal level. Second, our default position in our decision-making process for our day-to-day walk needs to be not "What Would Jesus Do?", but an informed decision about "Does this glorify Christ?"