Last week I shared some thoughts from Oswald Chambers on dealing with temptation.
In our internet age, where pornography is so easily accessible, this is a temptation that way too many people battle so often. This is a temptation that you can defeat, but you cannot defeat it on your own!
Here are some very insightful thoughts from Ed Welch, a Christian counselor, that may help you be victorious in your battle with pornography—
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.
Temptation
The old Puritan idea that the devil tempts men had this remarkable effect, it produced the man of iron who fought; the modern idea of blaming his heredity or his circumstance produces the man who succumbs at once. …
When we say a thing is “satanic” we mean something abominable according to our standards: the Bible mean something remarkably subtle and wise. … The Holy Spirit is the only One who can detect the temptations of satan, neither our common sense nor our human wisdom can detect them as temptations. …
satan does not tempt to gross sins, the one thing he tempts to is putting myself as master instead of God. …How are we to face the tempter? By prayer? No. With the Word of God? No. Face the tempter with Jesus Christ, and He will apply the Word of God to you, and the temptation will cease. “Because He Himself suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted” (Hebrews 2:18). The moments of severest temptation are the moments of His divinest help.
From Disciples Indeed
There’s not much to add to Oswald Chambers’ words, except this: Beware of your pride which says, “I am above temptation.” The Bible says,
So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! (1 Corinthians 10:12).
And one more thought: Beware of your pride which says, “I can defeat temptation on my own!” In order to defeat temptation you need (a) God’s Word to fortify you, (b) the Holy Spirit to apply that Word; (c) Christ’s nature to stand up to the tempter; and (d) iron-sharp friends who will hold you up and hold you accountable.
I was intrigued by the title of the book: The Necessity Of An Enemy. But I was even more intrigued by what I read in Ron Carpenter’s thought-provoking book. You can read my full review by clicking here.
Here are 10 quotes that caught my eye from this book:
“You will never be an exceptional person if you only fight ordinary battles.”
“Because you have a God-given purpose, this means the devil’s painted a bull’s-eye on your back. …It’s good to have enemies and the trouble they bring—it means you’re in the game.”
“When Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians that ‘we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory’ (Ephesians 1:12), he didn’t tell them to just give God praise. He urged them to be a praise. … In New Testament terminology, glory actually means ‘likeness’ or ‘to resemble.’ In other words, for you to bring glory to God means that God is hard at work making you become something that resembles Him, something that more clearly bears His image. It comes as no surprise that this reality makes someone very upset: The devil isn’t concerned with fighting something that you’re doing; he fights who you’re becoming.”
“God’s definition of winning is fulfilled when you fight the battle and, after it’s over, you are even more established in the identity He designed for you.”
“God knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10). … So the fact that He started the area of your life where you’re now facing a challenge from an enemy is the very evidence that He’ll bring you through the battle to complete the thing.”
“A good teacher does not use a test to teach you something…a test measures what you already know.”
“Negative people, allowed to speak into your life, will become agents of destruction of your purpose. An enemy will always try to weaken your passion for your dream.”
“Sometimes it’s easier to super-spiritualize something and blame the devil than to understand a need or personal flaw and take ownership for it.”
“An enemy is someone who increases, strengthens, encourages, or enables an area of weakness in you that God wants to remove from your life.”
“In your progress toward God’s purpose for you, anything you hang onto that God wants you to drop is an enemy.”
Many times pastors point to passages of Scripture that tell us to fight the enemy. Put on the full armor of God! Take your stand! Storm the gates of Hell! You are more than a conqueror!
Those are all true, but…
There is also a time to run away from a battle.
Flee from sexual immorality … Flee from idolatry … (1 Corinthians 6:18; 10:14).
These two enemies usually form a two-headed monster. Look throughout the Bible and you will see that when the Israelites worshipped anything other than God, they did it with idols and illicit sexual practices.
The Greek word for “sexual immorality” is porneo. This is where we get our word pornography. And isn’t pornography nothing more than idolatry of the naked human body?
Porneo is defined as:
What do we do with this? FLEE!!
You cannot fight the two-headed monster of Porneo with your willpower. You must run away!
Porneo is not something to be tamed or controlled. It’s a monster from which you must flee!
This is not a temptation you can control. It’s one you must avoid at all costs!
Don’t resist the urge—FLEE!!
Don’t take a cold shower—RUN AWAY!!
Get out. Stay out. Get as far away as possible from this two-headed monster.
These words are usually said after we have messed up something. We look back and say, “What was I thinking?!”
The truth is: you were thinking, it was just wrong thinking.
The Apostle Paul writes this:
Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature. (Romans 13:14)
The King James Version, instead of do not think, says, “make no provision for the flesh.” In other words, the idea here is forethought.
We have a filter at the base of our brains called the reticular activating system (or R.A.S.). This is what lets in the important things, and keeps out the unimportant things. But here is the vital issue—
YOU CAN PROGRAM YOUR R.A.S.!
You tell your RAS what’s important and what’s unimportant. Paul says that if we use our forethought to consciously decide to clothe ourselves with Christ, we are programming our RAS to spot the things that glorify Him and ignore the things that gratify our fleshly desires.
A phrase that I use often (hat tip to Dr. Richard Dobbins) is: I need to think about what I’m thinking about.
By doing this, I’m able to see how I’ve programmed my RAS. It’s either programmed to look for God-honoring things or flesh-gratifying things.
Try it for yourself. Make the conscious decision to read the Bible every day. Then in your prayer time, ask the Holy Spirit to help you think about God-honoring things. If you will do this, you will notice that you are noticing more things that please God, and that you are ignoring more things that please your sinful nature.
I’ve been re-reading some of my notes that I made on a collection of essays from C.S. Lewis. He is one of my favorite authors, always helping me to see the spiritual realm in a whole new light.
These are just a few quotes that have me thinking…
“A live body is not one that never gets hurt, but one that can to some extent repair itself. In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble—because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out.”
“There are two ways in which the human machine goes wrong. One is when human individuals drift apart from one another, or else collide with one another and do one another damage. The other is when things go wrong inside the individual—when the different parts of him either drift apart or interfere with one another.”
“Those cautions which the tempter whispers in our ears are all plausible…. That is the truth in the temptation. The lie consists in the suggestion that our best protection is a prudent regard for the safety of our pocket, our habitual indulgences, and our ambitions.”
“When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. … Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.”
If you haven’t read C.S. Lewis for yourself, he writes in so many different genres that you can find something for almost any taste: science fiction, children’s fairy tales, theology, apologetics, and on and on. He was truly gifted by God to see our world in a different light, and you will be greatly enriched by reading as much as you can from this master author.
Twice in Romans 7, the Apostle Paul uses the phrase “but sin, seizing the opportunity” (vv. 8, 11).
Sin always seizes any opportunity it gets. The devil always prowls around looking for an opportunity to tempt and destroy. And my flesh is always only too eager to give in to the pull of sin and the devil (v. 25).
If we want victory over sin and the devil, we have to be AWARE and be PREPARED.
“When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left Jesus until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13).
The devil will bide his time.
“…satan has asked to sift you as wheat…” (Luke 22:31).
It’s not always the big shakings that will cause us to sin, but the little siftings can wear us down.
“Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith…” (1 Peter 5:8-9).
“Keep awake and watch and pray constantly, that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:38).
If you haven’t been tempted lately, or if you’ve recently overcome a temptation, stay humble. “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” (1 Corinthians 10:12).
And then stay ready: “Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11).
A warrior in a combat zone never has a single day he is without his armor.
There’s a time to take a stand against the devil: “So be subject to God. Resist the devil [stand firm against him], and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).
And there’s a time to run toward something else: “Shun youthful lusts and flee from them, and aim at and pursue righteousness…” (2 Timothy 2:22).
Victory is yours IF you will be aware and be prepared. You don’t have to give in to the devil’s temptation to sin! Fight victoriously today!
Have you ever thought, “Well, of course Jesus could say ‘no’ to temptation! After all, He is God.”
Yes, Jesus is fully God. But He is also fully Man. And it was as a Man that He defeated temptation.
“As a Man, without using any of His divine powers, Jesus defeated temptation in the same areas where Eve failed and where we fail. … By this He condemned sin in sinful man, that is, He showed we sin, not because we have to sin, but because we choose to sin and because we ignore the help available through the Word and the Spirit.” —Stanley Horton
We don’t have to sin, but we choose to sin.
Ouch!
“In His temptation, Jesus did not use His divine power to defeat the devil. Still identifying Himself with us as Spirit-filled human, He defeated satan by the same means that are available to us — the Word, anointed by the Spirit. Eve, tempted in exactly the same areas—the lust of the flesh (appetite), the lust of the eyes (desire), and the pride of life—failed (Genesis 3:6; 1 John 2:16). In these areas, which John says together comprise the things of the world or worldliness (1 John 2:15). Jesus won a complete victory for us. He has truly overcome the world (John 16:33). We can do the same by our faith (1 John 5:4).” —Stanley Horton
We can do the same thing. Instead of saying, “I gave in to temptation,” we can say, “I gave in to the Holy Spirit, Who helped me defeat temptation!”
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In probably the best-known prayer, the one Jesus taught us to pray, there is a line I have breezed past way too many times without thinking more about it. It says, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:13).
This prayer is addressed to our Heavenly Father, the One Who is all-loving and all-powerful. God loves us and He gives us His power. Even power to defeat temptation.
Sometimes we have to battle the same temptation again and again and again. Perhaps we have seen that we are overcoming that temptation more times than we’re being overcome by it; perhaps not. Sometimes it’s a totally new temptation that sneaks up on us each time. In either case, God knows what temptation we are going to face.
This line of the prayer is really saying, “God, please don’t bring me into battle with a temptation I’m not ready to face. Help me to be ready to overcome that temptation when it comes” (see 1 Corinthians 10:13; James 1:13-17).
NEWS FLASH—Instead of waiting to pray for help until I’m facing a temptation (a reactive prayer), I can pray for God’s help before I even face the temptation (a proactive prayer).
In my mind, proactive is way better than reactive!
Check out what John Bunyan learned about this—
“…I did not, when I was delivered from the temptation that went before, still pray to God to keep me from the temptations that were to come; for though, as I can say in truth, my soul was much in prayer before this trial seized me, yet then I prayed only, or at the most principally, for the removal of present troubles, and for fresh discoveries of His love in Christ, which I saw afterwards was not enough to do; I also should have prayed that the great God would keep me from the evil that was to come. … This I had not done, and therefore was thus suffered to sin and fall, according to what is written, Pray that ye enter not into temptation. And truly this very thing is to this day of such weight and awe upon me, that I dare not, when I come before the Lord, go off my knees, until I entreat Him for help and mercy against the temptations that are to come; and I do beseech thee, reader, that thou learn to beware of my negligence, by the afflictions, that for this thing I did for days, and months, and years, with sorrow undergo.”
What would happen if the next time you are facing a temptation you could say, “Hello, temptation! I’ve already prayed about you, and my Heavenly Father has already given me strength to defeat you”? Don’t you think you would be much more successful? I do!
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In order to grow muscle, it has to be stretched beyond what we usually use. Muscles don’t grow unless they are worked out.
The same is true for us spiritually, emotionally, and mentally. If we only do easy things—if everything is rosy all the time—we’ll never grow. In fact it’s worse than that: if we’re not challenged, we will actually atrophy and shrink back.
So with that in mind, here are some encouraging words for your spiritual work out.
“By affliction God teaches us many precious lessons, which without it we should never learn. By affliction He shows us our emptiness and weakness, draws us to the throne of grace, purifies our affections, weans us from the world and makes us long for heaven.” —J.C. Ryle
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. …Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him. —Apostle James
“God does not give us overcoming life—He gives us life as we overcome. The strain of life is what builds our strength. If there is no strain, there will be no strength. Are you asking God to give you life, liberty, and joy? He cannot, unless you are willing to accept the strain. And once you face the strain, you will immediately get the strength.” —Oswald Chambers
We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because He has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His love. —Apostle Paul
I pray that you will gain strength in your spiritual work out today.
