The Heart of Temptation

Addiction hurts. During my personal journey, I have come face to face with the consequences of my sin. I've seen pain and anger imprinted on my wife's face. I've seen sorrow in the eyes of my children. I've lost a house, a job, income, friendships, and much more due to my bad choices. But I've learned that a healthy awareness of the negative consequences is not enough to change my behaviors. If I rely on the fear of consequences as my greatest weapon against temptation, I will eventually fail again....

I need more than fear. I need love. I need the love of Christ for me to invade my heart to such an extent that my addictive affections flee. Only His love can sustain me in this daily battle with the flesh and the enemy. His love alone is my hope for true freedom....

Below you'll find a quote by Puritan Theologian John Owen. Take the time to read and ponder his insights on overcoming temptation. Our sources of temptation differ vastly from those he encountered, but God's provision for victory remains the same....

Our hearts, as our Savior speaks, are our treasury. There we lay up whatsoever we have, good or bad; and thence do we draw it for our use (Matt. 12:35). It is the heart, then, wherein provision is to be laid up against temptation. When an enemy draws nigh to a fort or castle to besiege and take it, oftentimes, if he find it well manned and furnished with provision for a siege, and so able to hold out, he withdraws and assaults it not. If Satan, the prince of this world, come and find our hearts fortified against his batteries, and provided to hold out, he not only departs, but, as James says, he flees: “He will flee from us” (4:7). For the provision to be laid up it is that which is provided in the gospel for us. Gospel provisions will do this work; that is, keep the heart full of a sense of the love of God in Christ. This is the greatest preservative against the power of temptation in the world.
Joseph had this; and therefore, on the first appearance of temptation, he cries out, “How can I do this great evil, and sin against God?”—and there is an end of the temptation as to him; it lays no hold on him, but departs. He was furnished with such a ready sense of the love of God as temptation could not stand before (Gen. 39:9). “The love of Christ constrains us,” says the apostle, “to live to him” (2 Cor. 5:14); and so, consequently, to withstand temptation. A man may, nay, he ought to lay in provisions of the law also—fear of death, hell, punishment, with the terror of the Lord in them. But these are far more easily conquered than the other; nay, they will never stand alone against a vigorous assault. They are conquered in convinced persons every day; hearts stored with them will struggle for a while, but quickly give over. But store the heart with a sense of the love of God in Christ, and his love in the shedding of it; get a relish of the privileges we have thereby—our adoption, justification, acceptance with God; fill the heart with thoughts of the beauty of his death—and you will, in an ordinary course of walking with God, have great peace and security as to the disturbance of temptations.

Seek Me (Anonymous)

When I sought friends,
The Lord said, "seek ME first."

When I sought community,
The Lord said, "seek ME first."

When I sought healing,
The Lord said, "seek ME first."

When I sought calling,
The Lord said, "seek ME first."

When I sought riches,
The Lord said, "seek ME first."

When I sought
consolation,
identity,
security,
respect,
safety,
pleasure,
purpose,
success,
affirmation,
The Lord said, "bless ME, praise ME, boast in ME, magnify ME, exalt ME . . . seek ME."

I sought the Lord, and HE answered me, and He delivered me, and He is near.

Stop Talking About Change

When change is needed in our life and God graciously steps in to facilitate it we are in danger. The danger lies in our desire to talk about what happened. We too often want talk about what God has done rather than live out what He has done. In Luke 5:14 Jesus changed a man in a dramatic and powerful way. Yet Jesus told him not to talk to others about what had happened. Instead Jesus told him to go and follow through with the normal process that was put in place by God for change. The living out of the change process was more important than talking about the change itself.

Yet we would rather talk. Talk is easier. Talk allows us to shape and spin things. Actions on the other hand are difficult and often require sacrifice. Actions cannot be manipulated, especially over the long haul.

Jesus told this man, “Your cleansed and obedient life, not your words, will bear witness to what I have done.” Luke 5:15 The Message

We want to focus on an encounter with God and tell others how cool it was. God says let your actions speak to what I have already done within you. Larry Crabb says it this way, “Any experience – no matter how stirring or apparently God-related – that fails to release us a little bit more from the bonds of self-sufficiency, fails to reach beneath our deepest and most painful wounds and expose our resolve to relieve our pain at any cost to others, and fails to supply power to please God and advance His kingdom at any cost to ourselves is counterfeit.” Conversations-Volume 6:1

In other words, you will know you are changed when you stop talking about and you start doing stuff that proves that change has happened. Let’s stop talking and start living changed lives.