Answers to your questions: What is lust?

What is lust? Is it lustful only if you express it sexually?
The word lust is only used in the ESV translation 10 times (Psa. 68:30 ; Prov. 11:6 ; Is. 57:5 ; Jer. 2:24 ; Ezek. 16:36 ; Ezek. 23:8 ; Ezek. 23:11; Ezek. 23:17 ; 1Th. 4:5 ; 2Pet. 2:10) and is normally associated with the strong desire for sexual immorality. Indeed wayward desire is so often at the heart of our problems. 

Appropriate desire and the fulfilment of that desire is actually a wonderful thing. Desiring what benefits others and what promotes the cause of the gospel is actually a powerful work of the gospel in our lives. All of us naturally crave for and seek after the things we believe will bring us happiness, security and blessing. The strength of desire to secure these can lead us to terrible sin and violence against our neighbour. 

Lust is fundamentally self serving and ultimately idolatrous. The gospel reorientates our desires so we wish to please God and others. Indeed we actually want to be with God and be more like God the more we are shown how supreme Jesus is. So in changing what we live for, so will a change occur in what we long for and desire.

Finding someone very attractive is not lust. Nor even is finding yourself ‘aroused’. This is natural and if you never find yourself aroused (I speak especially, though not exclusively to the guys here), then maybe you need to go and see a doctor! 

Lust is desire which seeks to fantasise and act upon such attraction. It is to covet a person who is not yours in order to gratify yourself. Lust is always disappointing. It is desire seeking to find fulfilment in the wrong place and the instant gratification only adds to further frustration and ironically fuels more lust to compensate.