Temptation
By Donald R. Counts
“Blessed
is the man that endureth temptation for when he is
tried he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them
that love Him.” (James 1:12)
Temptation isn’t an ‘if’ situation with men.
If a person can grow to know carnal reason he will also suffer the
fall of spiritual will. Temptation is the first shot of Satan over the
righteous bow of every unstained soul. Somewhere
in our lives we have all failed the great test of Adam’s nature.
This
is the common denominator of all men. This
is why we need a Savior.
Though we are all aware of sin and its temptation,
we will often act indifferently or willingly ignorant towards the struggle
to do right. We’re all tempted but
the truly wise man understands the danger and price of yielding to temptation
in an attempt to enjoy momentary pleasure.
Sin has in the past, and will in the future,
continually rob us of every lovely and good thing in our lives. The richest and most blessed state in our
lives is when God grants to us the spiritual wisdom and moral strength to
resist the darkness of sinful behavior that will damage and destroy our
spiritual futures. The man that
willfully and repeatedly engages in sin is all too often unaware of the damage
he is doing to his future in this world and the one that is to come.
God’s will for every man is a full life, a
peaceful heart, and a joyful expectation of life eternal. To every man Satan offers the illusions of
pleasure and riches that seldom are realized and never last. True blessing has to do with what a man is
becoming through God’s power and not from what he can gather for himself
through his own strength. I personally
can think of no blessing that has been greater in my own life than the presence
of God’s peace. Neither can I imagine
riches that are greater than life that never ends.
“Let
no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man.” (James 1:13-14)
But every man is tempted when he is drawn
away by his own lusts, and enticed. Temptation
is a reality.
Someone asked me recently why they seemed to
be tempted so much in a certain area. Often
this is the way temptation seems to occur.
Maybe its fornication or drunkenness - just pick one. At the time it hadn’t occurred to me that as
long as a particular temptation is met with moral failure every time, why would
Satan’s helpers change their strategy.
Maybe we’re presented with the temptation to sin in the same area
because we’ve always failed the test.
What if we would resist it a few times?
Perhaps we could move on but as long as we are broke down morally at the
intersection of will and temptation and give in, Satan is not about to leave
the area either. We sin when we want
to. We sin when sin is no big deal. We sin when our own lusts condition our
hearts to sin. We set ourselves up to
fail by dwelling on the sinful things we love.
We pursue the fantasies we’ve created in our own hearts to our own
hurt. It’s not tests from God or
temptations from Satan that lead us to sin, but ultimately our refusal to stand
up to our own selfish wants.
The truth is we only serve what we
love. For a period of time sin makes us
happy. We never change our ways until we
hate the damage sin is doing in our lives more than we love the sin we’re
involved in. Repeated sin in any area of
life programs us to rely on that behavior for satisfaction. Before long the habit becomes as fulfilling
as the action. We become recreated in
its image. We become what we do. The addiction becomes the addict’s identity.
I once heard this said about what we do in
life, “Sow a thought, reap
a deed. Sow a deed, reap a habit. Sow a
habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap your destiny.”
We are either what we have chosen to make ourselves
or we are becoming what we choose to let God make us.
Donald R. Counts is the pastor of Ashley Pentecostal
Church in Ashley, Missouri and can be reached by calling (573) 656-3234.
