Both of today's passages come from the famous Psalm 119, which was written by King David later in his life after he had made many mistakes and learned from them. Some biblical historians believe David used the entire Psalm 119 as a way to teach his young son Solomon the alphabet since each part of the chapter is broken up into sections according to the Hebrew alphabet. With that background in mind, it makes the words of this Psalm that much more meaningful. David understood the power of staying on the path of purity and living according to God's word because of the mistakes he had made in this area. He understood the need to turn his eyes away from selfish desires and what he calls worthless things. David was a man whose life was marred by lust, its allure, and its consequences. David saw the naked Bathsheba on a rooftop while she was bathing, and instead of taking that thought captive and resisting the temptation, he dwelt and then acted on his thoughts, and allowed his feelings and desires to overcome a more wise and healthier course of action. His foolish choices eventually ended up costing him the life of his son and causing much pain and turmoil in David's life which he later regretted and repented of. Because of his past mistakes, David intentionally taught Solomon what it meant to stay on the path to purity. He taught us the importance of turning our eyes away from worthless things, choosing to keep our hearts pure and seeking the right things. We too need to understand the dangers of the thoughts we allow to linger in our mind's eye. We often think that thoughts are innocent and don't mean anything because they only take place in our minds, but we know that what is hidden in our hearts will not stay hidden. This is why David stresses the point of having the right things hidden in your heart,  because what is hidden in your heart will eventually overflow and come out in your speech as well as your actions. It may take a few months, years, or decades, but eventually what is inside your heart will come out, and there will be consequences for it.

Here is an important question for you to wrestle with this week and examine in your own life: What will be hidden in your heart? Will it be thoughts of lust, fantasies, and sexual scenarios? Or will you choose to hide the right things in your heart? Will lust consume you and fill you up, or will the things of God do that? The answer to this question is completely up to you. No one forces you to dwell on lustful thoughts. Your mind has not been taken over. You are not helpless. Even if you have made the wrong choice day after day in the past, that doesn't mean you have to continue on that path. Today, the cleansing process can start instead. You can begin to replace those worthless, selfish thoughts and desires with the right things, and begin to be purified from the inside out. This begins with a decision to take that first step, and then another after it.

Check out the article below from Fight the New Drug which discusses how pornography can become an escalating behavior.

We’ve all heard stories from smokers or former smokers that include something like, “It started with one cigarette, but eventually, I was smoking two packs a day.” It’s one of the hallmarks of substance abuse: escalation. Users need more and more of their drug of choice to “get the same high,” and their pattern of abuse is driven by their need for greater quantity. This is especially true when the abuse is spiraling into addiction. But what about porn? Can porn consumption be an escalating behavior as well? It’s easy to understand how a smoker might need several cigarettes to get the same buzz they used to get from one, but no one says, “I had to watch that scene five times to get the same feeling I used to get watching it once” about pornography. On the contrary, porn consumers get bored with scenes once they’ve seen them. (It’s called “habituation.”1) Multiple viewings generally result in less response, not more. But despite those differences, porn consumption can escalate every bit as much as substance abuse or any other addictive behavior. To understand how, let’s take a look at the brain science regarding desensitization and novelty.

Desensitization

Not to be confused with sensitization (which is also interesting, and involves becoming highly “sensitized,” or “triggered,” by certain things associated with porn consumption),2 desensitization refers to a numbed pleasure response, or inability to achieve the same “high” a consumer once did. Desensitization results from too much dopamine—the so-called “pleasure chemical.” Your brain generates different amounts of it in response to all sorts of experiences, from kissing, to looking at something beautiful, to eating a great meal.

Dopamine is your body’s way of telling you, “This is awesome. We should do this as often as possible.” Certain activities, like drug use and porn consumption, turn up your brain’s dopamine production as high as it can go.
The more time you spend at those elevated levels, the more your brain’s dopamine receptors (the parts of the brain that respond to dopamine) start to “plug their ears.” Think of them as little referees becoming more and more oblivious to complaining players and screaming fans, or the way you no longer hear your parents yelling at you to put your socks in the laundry and stop scrolling through TikTok.

Desensitization also shouldn’t be confused with habituation, which basically just refers to your brain being bored with a picture or video it’s already seen. Habituation is a common response to all kinds of things we consume frequently from movies to music to food, and everything in between, and it occurs relatively quickly.4 It’s basically the brain looking at something it’s seen before and saying, “Meh. I’m getting tired of that.” Desensitization is a much more complicated, chemical process that takes place over time with repeated abuse.

It’s basically the brain looking at something, even if that something is brand new, and saying, “Meh. It takes a lot more than that to get my attention.” Multiple studies have demonstrated the existence of desensitization in porn consumers, including one study that demonstrated how the level of desensitization correlated directly with the extent of compulsive porn consumption.

In the case of smokers, it’s a simple matter of smoking more and more cigarettes. And to some extent, escalating porn consumption can also be just a simple matter of quantity, as porn consumers have more and more viewing sessions, and as those viewing sessions get longer and longer.

But look closer, and the real escalation is in what those consumers of porn are viewing.

Novelty

In a pair of interesting studies that were replicated with both men and women, college students were hooked up to instruments that measured their arousal and interest, and were then shown the same pornographic scene multiple times in a row. You can imagine what happened—arousal and interest, for both the men and women, were initially very high, but habituation quickly set in, and their interest and level of arousal waned dramatically. Then, after many viewings, right as the subjects’ boredom was reaching maximum levels, the researchers suddenly and without warning switched to a brand new pornographic film. What do you think happened? Were the subjects just so bored and “over it” that they continued in their disinterest? Nope! Bam! Arousal and interest levels immediately shot right back up to where they were before.

This phenomenon is often referred to as “The Coolidge Effect.” The Coolidge Effect has been demonstrated time and again, in all sorts of research settings. Put a male and female of just about any type of animal together and they will mate, and mate, and then get bored with each other. But replace one of them with a new partner, and even if they’re exhausted from mating with the last one, they will attempt to mate again. We are often driven toward sexual novelty. Researchers have surmised that this is because we are driven by a deep biological need to reproduce as often as possible.

What this means is that what the porn consumer really wants is not just more porn, but new porn: new people, new imaginary partners, new situations. And as luck would have it, internet pornography offers them exactly the endless variety of sexual “partners” and situations to attempt to gratify that desire.

Dr. Norman Doidge, a psychiatrist and New York Times best-selling author of The Brain That Changes Itself, explains, “Pornography satisfies every one of the prerequisites for neuroplastic change. When pornographers boast that they are pushing the envelope by introducing new, harder themes, what they don’t say is that they must, because their customers are building up a tolerance to the content.”

Consumers may also be drawn to other aspects of pornography: secrecy, shock value, taboos, shame.
All of these things offer varying ways to feed a desire for novelty and excitement. And for consumers who consistently view this type of material, it is possible to find their sexual interests eventually deviating in very unexpected directions. In one 2016 study, researchers found that 46.9% of respondents reported that, over time, they began watching pornography that had previously disinterested or even disgusted them.

These findings are consistent with other research that demonstrates that changing tastes and escalation are not uncommon experiences among consumers of porn.

None of this is to say that these results are guaranteed, or that everyone who consumes porn will find themselves viewing material they once found disgusting. (In the above study alone, if 47% reported they did have that experience, that means 53% did not.) It is only to say that, when we talk about the potential forms of escalation among porn consumers, it has the potential to be far more than a matter of time.

The good news is, change is possible! Research and the experiences of thousands of people have demonstrated that the effects of desensitization can be managed and largely reversed.1920 In fact, even in cases of serious substance and other addictions, research shows that the brain can heal over time with sustained effort. Research also indicates that, while guilt can motivate healthy change, shame actually fuels problematic porn habits. So if you’re trying to give up porn, be kind to yourself and be patient with your progress. Like anything, it takes time for the brain to recover, but daily efforts make a big difference in the long run. Think of it like a muscle that gets bigger and stronger the more you use it—the longer you stay away from porn, the easier it is to do so. All it takes is practice.