Every so often in church history, there arises a moment where a single man, standing in a narrow place, refuses to join the parade of fashionable error that dominates the moment and thereby makes all the difference. 

One of the most destructive parades in modern church history began around 2013 with Sam Allberry’s book Is God Anti-Gay? While there were other voices at the time making similar arguments (Wesley Hill and Ed Shaw come to mind), it was Alberry, who claimed that God said same sex attraction was not sinful, only same sex action, that truly coalesced the cavalcade. His association with Christian publishers The Good Book and Crossway, as well as the enthusiastic support of The Gospel Coalition, positioned him as the Grand Marshall, and away the procession went.

The net effect was a generation of pastors and believers who learned to step aside, to smile politely, to stammer about “complexity” and “pastoral sensitivity” or, as in the case of J.D. Greear, to claim that “the Bible whispers” about homosexuality and other sexual sins. An entire era of churchmen were trained—by conferences, by publishers, by the cool kids on the internet—to believe that clarity on sexual sin is inherently unloving, that plain speech about lust is “fundamentalist,” and that the most Christlike thing a pastor can do is lower his voice and add three qualifying paragraphs before he dares approach Leviticus or Romans 1.

Jared Moore was the man who looked at that parade and planted his feet. His previous book, The Lust of the Flesh, singularly dismantled the chic deception Alberry and company perpetrated on the church. 

Now, he has returned to the arena to give those beguiled by the destructive trends that dominated an age of evangelicalism a way out of error and into the freedom that Christ offers.

33 Days to Freedom From Lust: A Hope-Filled Devotional is not merely a “good book.” It is a declaration of war, a war of liberation, on every lie the evangelical world has embraced about sexual desire in the last twenty years, and to free everyone taken captive by the deceitfulness of sin. It is a sustained, daily, unblinking exposure of lust as hatred, stupidity, murder, and satanic imitation.

And it is written with such calm, joyful, Scripture-saturated confidence that the reader finishes the thirty-three days convinced, not merely managing a sheltered sin, not coping, not “celibate while same-sex attracted”—but free.

Please stop reading this review right now and order ten copies. I am not exaggerating. Ten. One for yourself, one for every man in your discipleship group, one for your pastor, one for the young man in your church who is terrified to tell anyone what he battles because the last Christian book he read told him his disordered sexual desires were “a gift to steward.”

Then, when those are gone, order another ten. You’ll have to buy it from Amazon because this book will not be sold by the prominent publishers that gave us Allberry’s error. The men who run those publishers will quietly hate this book because it exposes how destructive their error was, and will pretend it does not exist. Thankfully, it does and will lead people into life in Christ.

The structure of the book is simple, readily accessible, and that is part of its genius. Thirty-three days—long enough to break a habit, short enough to finish speedily. Each day is built around a single, glorious attribute of God placed in contrast to the corresponding attribute of lust:

Day 1: God is Eternal / Lust is Temporary
Day 2: God is Holy / Lust is Sin
Day 6: God is All Wise / Lust is All Stupid
Day 9: God is Beauty / Lust is Ugly
Day 10: God is Love / Lust is Hate
Day 22: The Holy Spirit is Life / Lust is a Murderer
Day 27: God Created Us for Marriage / Lust Says We Were Created for Sex
Day 30: Christ is Our Identity / Lust is Our Enemy

This is not clever wordplay. This is holy warfare. Moore is doing what almost no one in the celebrity pastor class has the courage to do: he is letting the infinite glory of God stand up next to the grotesque reality of our indwelling lust and refusing to avert his gaze. The contrast is brutal because reality is brutal. And grace is only amazing when we finally see what we have been saved from.

Let me give you examples, because this book is full of hearty truth:

• Day 2: “God is infinitely holy; lust is infinitely sinful…When you lust, you are not merely committing a private act; you are declaring war on the holiness of God. You are siding with the serpent who said, ‘You will be like God.’ Lust is treason in the heart.”
• Day 6 (one of my favorites, because it is sure to be derided as “uncharitable” by the cult of niceness): “Lust is all stupid. It promises what it cannot deliver and delivers what it never promised. It is the idiot whispering in your ear that one more look, one more click, one more fantasy will finally satisfy the God-shaped vacuum in your soul. Lust is the village fool who has convinced half the church to follow him into the swamp while calling it ‘grace.’”
• Day 13: “Jesus is truly God and truly man. Lust images Satan. When you indulge lust, you are not imaging the incarnate Son who took on flesh to redeem flesh; you are imaging the serpent who took on flesh to destroy flesh. Every pornographic image, every covetous glance, every same-sex fantasy is a mirror in which you see—not yourself—but the ancient enemy smiling back.”
• Day 27—here is the line that will make the celebrity pastors class spew their fair-trade coffee: “God created us for marriage between one man and one woman, or for faithful singleness. Lust says we were created for sex—whenever, however, with whomever we want. The world screams that sexual fulfillment is the highest good. Lust agrees. God says the highest good is conformity to the image of His Son. Lust calls that oppression. Lust is a liar. And every Christian leader who refuses to say this plainly has blood on his hands.”
• Day 30: “Christ is our identity. Lust is our enemy. The moment you call your lust ‘my orientation,’ you have crowned the enemy as co-regent in your heart. The gospel does not negotiate with insurgents. It executes them.”

Why am I so delighted by this book? Because I once joined in on the fashionable foolishness I describe above. Thanks be to God, Jared was my friend, and he loved me enough not to let me continue marching off the cliff. We had many conversations, not a few of them harsh and confrontational, until the clarity of Scripture broke through my own trend-chasing wicked foolishness.

I suspect this book will not be gushed over on Big Eva podcasts. It will not be blurbed, cited, and pushed by the Christian cool-kid coalition. This is the book that will be whispered about in the hallway after the conference: “Have you read Moore? He’s so harsh, too radical. Desiring sin is sinful? So unkind.” And none of them will dare to be seen holding it.

Moore knows this. He has been living it for years. He has watched friends distance themselves. He has watched speaking invitations go to men who distort God’s Word in the most winsome ways. He has watched the machine label him “unpastoral” for daring to say what the Westminster Divines, what Charles Spurgeon, and what the apostle Paul said without apology: The desires of the flesh are not neutral—they are hostile to God.

And yet the tone of the book, like Moore personally, is never bitter. It is hopeful—radically, scandalously hopeful. Every one of the 33 days ends on the same drumbeat: God is greater. God is holier. God is wiser. God is more satisfying. Lust is a paper tiger roaring in the dark, and the risen Christ has already crushed its skull.

The back of the book contains two catechisms—one shorter, one longer—that are worth ten times the cover price by themselves. If you memorize nothing else in the next five years, memorize these. 

Teach them to your sons before they ever touch a smartphone. Teach them to your daughters so they know what kind of man to marry and what kind of man to flee. Put the shorter catechism on the wall of your church nursery, because the war starts earlier than any of us wants to admit. Have it on the table in your church foyer for the young lady ensnared by the web porn that is allegedly only a problem for young men. Make it close at hand for the young man who has been told to find his identity in his fallen appetites rather than Christ and His design for His image bearers.

I have read the books and posts that dominate the Christian market on this topic. I have read the ones that treat pornography as an “addiction” rather than idolatry. I have read the ones that tell single Christians struggling with same-sex attraction that the gospel offers them a lifetime of “celibate faithfulness” while keeping the attraction as a permanent cross to bear.

They are all “management strategies” dressed up as gospel. But Jared Moore offers freedom through Jesus Christ.

He does not offer a twelve-step program. He provides a thirty-three-day crucifixion. And then, on the other side, resurrection.

This is what the church has needed for two decades and has refused to produce because it is terrified of being called hateful. Jared Moore is not terrified. He is free. And because he is free, he has written the manual for the rest of us.

Again, buy this book today.

Please don’t wait for the pretty little darlings of evangelicalism to approve it for you. They never will. But buy it. Buy it in paperback so you can mark it up, dog-ear it, weep over it, pray through it.

Buy ten copies. Give one to every man in your church. Give one to your elders and ask them to preach its content from the pulpit. Give one to the twenty-something who just confessed his struggle and was told by the last book he read that his desires are “part of his story.”

Then, when those ten are gone, buy another ten. Hand it out extravagantly. People being destroyed by sin often go undetected in the early stages. Moore can lead them out of that hidden death spiral and into the liberty of God’s grace in Christ.

May the Lord have mercy on us all—and may He raise up a thousand more like this hillbilly pastor. A parade like that would be fantastic.