Resisting temptation

In Matthew 26:41 Jesus commands his disciples to 'watch and pray that they enter not into temptation.' Thus it is obvious there are two tactics to beating sin and the grip of temptation...watchfulness and prayerfulness. Prayer exaplains itseslf, but what exactly does 'watchfulness' or 'keeping watch' mean?

Firstly I believe we need to keep a watch of temptation. Temptation is not a sin, thus if you feel tempted or have undergone a period of temptation in your life you may not necessarily have been in sin. Thus sin is neither good or bad. John Owen describes it as lying in the realm of 'things indifferent.' Thus if sin is indifferent it means any possession, thought, action or attitude can potentially be used in temptation and lead to sin.What can we say about temptation...be watchful in all situations, be alert, be on gaurd; something that you once used for good may indeed turn a corner and be used for great evil. Temptation test us, it will either cut the meat or the throat of man...where are you going to let the knife fall?

Secondly, temptation leads to sin...thus to fight temptation we need to know our sin. John Piper says this 'There is a great self destruction that comes from not experiencing the self devastating knowledge our sin.' How do we know our sin? Well I would like to suggest we can only realise where we fall short by knowing what we fall short of. To know our sin we need to know the Saviour. By reading the Bible and experiencing the character of God, through coming to a knowledge of his holiness, the holy spirit in operation in our lives highlights areas of sin and the need for sanctification.Ever since the beginning of time God has been looking forward a people for himself who look like himself. In beating the sin we don't just need to flee the sin, we need to flee to God. To look less like our old sinful self we need to Jesus and be tranformed into his image. 1 Peter 1:16 says 'Be holy as I am holy.'

The final aspect to be watchful I would suggest is knowing the tempter. Now it is obvious from Ephesians 6 that all people are engaged in a spiritual war, some are awake to such a war others have been lulled asleep by Satan, however it is not necessarily Satan leads us into temptation and testing. Indeed temptation is neither good nor evil. From Matthew 4:1 we read that the Spirit of God leads Jesus into the desert to be tempted by Satan, thus it is obvious that God also draws us into times of testing for the producing of steadfastness and faith. Furthermore I believe there is something in our nature, something in our flesh as Paul would describe which tends toward sin. Indeed Romans 13:14 says 'Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its sinful desire.' Our flesh is sinful, the sin belongs to ourselves. Be on gaurd therefore, be watchful, examine yourself to see which areas of the flesh tend towards disoebedience, where temptation may take its grip.

03 - Taming the tongue

I am glad when people say important things in a straight forward matter. It saves a whole host of confusion.





The same is true for the Bible. I praise God for the simplicity of the gospel and the route to a holy life revealed in his scriptures. This is why I find books like 'The Secret Message of Jesus' by Brian McClaren a worrying and disturbing thought, as if I have been missing something all these years.

When it comes to the presenting the gospel as Christians who speak and communicate, I believe we should do it in a simple and straight forward way...Christian jargon truly is a curse which alienates non - believers by a wall of Christian subculture. When it comes to people's souls we shouldn't waste ourwords nor confuse people with them.

02 - Taming the tongue

The second point that I made at the Impact training day was the fact that speech is contagious. I read this predominantly in James 3: 5 - 6:

"Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell."

The very fact that speech is contagious is an important reason we need to be careful what we say. If we criticise, we will breed more criticism. If we are cynical, we will breed more cynicism. If we are sarcastic, we will breed more sarcasm. If we are jealous, we will breed more jealousy...and so we can continue. Indeed Proverbs 16:27 says 'a scoundrel plots evil, and his speech is like a scorching fire.'

In Chapter 3:9 it says that from the same tongue come cursing and blessing, and here I believe the real application takes root. In taming the tongue we should not just omit cursing, but bring forth blessing. Do we want to become contagious 'blessers' or contagious 'cursers'? Do we want to be people who contagiously spread ecnouragement and the building of one another up, or insted bring forth discouragement and the crushing of people's spirit?

01 - Taming the tongue

Whilst away on my first Impact training block we had to present a short study based on the book of James. Our group spoke on taming the tongue which features in particular in chapter three...I was priviledged to present the talk on behalf of our group in front of the other 50 Impacters. I will share what I said over the next three posts.

Firstly, speech and what we say is significant, and therefore we must be careful with the words we use incase we get miscontrued or misinterpretted, we read about this in James 3:3 -4 ...

When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go.'

For this reason I believe we should reserve only the best words for Jesus. We often describe God as 'amazing' or 'awesome' or 'fantastic' but how often do we use these same words to describe ordinary things which in reality, and in comparison to God, are not amazing, awesome or fantastic at all? Similarly we should identify exactly what we mean when we use specific words and phrases. For example we can describe a husband cheating on his wife (or vice versa)as an affair, what we really mean to say is that he is committing adultery...simply saying 'an affair' does not capture the full sense of the meaning. Every day I go about conducting my 'affairs' but not everyday do I commit adultery. Another example is that of 'sleeping together,' the full sense of the meaning we are trying to convey would best be described by saying 'fornication' or perhaps 'promiscuity.'

This year I am going to be consumed by 'doing things' and carrying out many tasks. I pray that this year won't only be a year where I impact people with my actions but with my words also.