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Why did God plant natural lustful feelings and desires within every person, and then ask all of us to go against them and try to overcome them until marriage? Also, it is very common for teenagers to have these feelings and desires, and it is very difficult for most to overcome them. Is it a sin to have these feelings because, after all, they are natural? How should the youth deal with this issue?

Before I answer your question let us look into the definition of the word 'lust'. Lust by definition means a very strong desire to have something. Also, to lust means to want something very much. When God created man, He created him in his image. "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him" (Gen 1:27). He has given Adam the five senses to use and not for the senses to use Adam. In other words, if we human beings allow any of the senses to control us, then we become victims of our own senses and enslaved by them. Take for example the desire to eat. God has put in our bodies the need for food to survive and not just to satisfy and overindulge in this desire until we cause harm to that body that God has given us for Him to dwell in. Nowadays we hear America as being the number one country suffering from obesity and the diseases connected to it. The same thing applies to all the other senses. Take sex for example, God has put that desire in man as a means of expressing optimum love and unity between a husband and a wife. That expression of love would then be crowned with the perpetuation of the human race. In the process of taking part in creation, man would be glorifying his own creator. When this sense of sexual desire is abused and led in the wrong direction, it becomes a sin and displeases God bringing about all kinds of trouble and punishment. The summary of all this boils down to the importance of self-control with regard to all the senses. If we do not exercise self control, then we become lustful and obsessed by certain habits. Both conditions, if not taken care of, at the right time, might become psychological problems and not just sins thus hindering our spiritual growth and stopping the process of us being Christ like. God wants us whole in all areas: physically, psychologically and spiritually. I would like to quote St. Athanasius "God created man for incorruption and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death entered into the world. Indeed, they had in their sinning surpassed all limits; for, having invented wickedness in the beginning and so involved themselves in death and corruption, they had gone on gradually from bad to worse, not stopping at any one kind of evil, but continually, as with insatiable appetite, devising new kinds of sins" Is there hope for us? Yes, of course, through baptism, we die with the Lord and are born again of the Spirit. "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:5-6).

Thus with this new birth we can live the life of purity and control the fleshly desires by the help of the Holy Spirit Who dwells in us.

When we fight our senses by ourselves, we will find it difficult. However, when we develop a strong relationship with the Lord, the Lord will fight on our behalf.