Over the last year or so, I’ve seen a large amount of “strange stuff” being preached online and all around me by my contemporaries – and even by others that I may have looked up to. Whilst I, of all people, believe that God redeems everything, and that people are allowed free speech, I also have the freedom to cut off that voice in my life.
Sometimes in a desperate aim to love and be tolerant we can allow ourselves to slip from being actual channels of peace and lighthouses of redemption because we attempt to do it all in our own strength and understanding, wanting never to speak the truth but always to appease people’s feelings, rather than fully relying on God when it comes to this matter and always speaking his truth!
Here’s some good words on the matter from an amazing teaching – they have been slightly adapted:
It’s not a secret that since the beginning of time, Satan has had one chief goal: separate men and women from the love and care of God the Father. To achieve this goal, Satan uses temptation to entice people to disobey God and fall into the bondage of sin and unbelief. This is what he did with Eve in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:1).
Satan is our enemy, and we must learn how to overcome his temptations. Although the Bible calls Satan the god of this world, God has given us authority over him (you can read about it in Luke 10:19), and we can defeat him and be victorious over him because of the authority won by Jesus’ death on the cross.
Temptation is like a fishing lure. To the fish, the lure looks like food, apparently good and desirable (a little like a McDonald’s mini cheese burger!) Satan uses the same technique on us. He uses three areas of temptation to try to lure us away from God: the “lust of the flesh,” the “lust of the eyes,” and the “pride of life.”
When the Bible talks about the “flesh,” it talks about all those desires and attitudes that oppose what God wants for us. Scripture places these in one of the following three categories:
- First are uncontrolled sexual appetites.
- Next are rebellion and false religion.
- Then follow hatred and envy.
We need to focus on developing Godly character (the Bible talks about this as developing the “fruit of the Spirit”) and we need to “put the flesh to death” by giving Jesus control of our lives. Satan also tempted Jesus in this way, but Jesus overcame him by standing firm on the Word of God – the Bible.
The lust of the eyes operates in a more subtle way and includes pleasures that gratify the sight and the mind. In the days of the apostle John, the Greeks and Romans lived for entertainment and activities that excited the eyes. Times have not changed very much! Regarding the dominance of television and social media in our society, perhaps every Christian’s prayer ought to be “Turn away my eyes from looking at vanity” (Psalm 119:37).
In one of the best known stories of the Bible, David committed adultery with Bathsheba because he gave in to the “lust of the eyes”. He saw her, and wanted her. From that point on, he slid ever deeper into the quagmire of sin and finally ended up committing murder. Remember: Sin will always take you further than you intended to go, keep you longer than you intended to stay, and cost you more than you intended to pay
Finally, pride: People have always tried to outdo others in the way they live. The boastful pride of life motivates much of what such people do. The Bible is very clear when it warns against pride: It says pride will bring you to shame, and unchecked pride will eventually destroy you. Pride is the total opposite of how Jesus was.
But here’s the good news: Jesus told us that we could pray not to be led into temptation. Every time Jesus was confronted with temptation, he quoted the Bible. You don’t have to deal with temptation alone: You can do it in the strength that God gives you, and through his Word (the Bible). In fact, in the last book of the Bible, Revelation, it says the following:
And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony” – Rev. 12:11
Temptation is a part of life that you cannot escape from. The fact that you are tempted to sin does not mean that you haven’t properly given your life to Jesus! It only means that you, like all people, still reside in a fallen world of sin and temptation. If this is something that you feel that you need help with, why don’t you click on the banner below!