Temptation Part #5

TEMPTATION Part 5

Watch and pray lest you enter into temptation.

I will wrap up the study on temptation. I am not trying to beat a dead horse, so to speak. But the reality is that the last couple of days I have heard and witnessed numerous horror stories of men and women who have watched and PLAYED with temptation, and now are facing the horrific consequences of bad choices.

Here are some insights from the book TEMPTATION on the subject of HELP IN WATICH AGAINST TEMPTATION:

1. Beware of relying on your OWN counsel, understanding, and reason. Though they seem very plausible in your defense, they will leave and betray you. When the temptation come to ANY height, they will turn on you and take the side of your enemy. They will please as much in support of temptation, whatever it is, as they did against it before.

2. Beware of relying even on your most strenuous efforts in such methods as prayer and fasting against a particular lust or temptation. These will not help you if, in the meantime, you are negligent in other areas. A man may wrestle, cry, and struggle over a particular temptation, and then immediately give way to worldly ways, worldly conformity, looseness and neglect in other things. It would only be right if the Lord Jesus Christ were to leave such a person in the hour of temptation.

3. Remember that you are always under the eye of Christ, the great captain of our salvation, who has told us to watch and pray that we enter not into temptation.

4. Consider that if you neglect this duty, and so fall into temptation, which you assuredly will, when you are entangled in it, God may bring with it some heavy affliction or judgment on you which, because of your entanglement, you will be forced to look on as evidence of his anger and hatred of sin.

Let us strive to keep our spirit unentangled. Let us avoid all appearance of evil and all the ways leading to it. Let us particularly beware of all the courses of life, business, society, and employment that we have already found to our disadvantage." Adapted from TEMPTATION - Resisted and Pulsed.

I am pleading with you, men: Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. I encourage you to order this book from the KESWICK Book and Gift Shop (732-350-1187 ext. 31)

Great quote: Many times I like to think of God's Word as God's pocket for His work. God put all His work into His Word. If God were standing among us today, and He wanted to show us His Son's work and the proof of this work, how could He do it? He put the work of His Son's cross in his Word. He also put the proof of His Son's resurrection in His Word. Today God communicates all these things to us through His Word. When we receive His Word, we receive the proof of His work. Behind the Word are the facts. If there were no facts behind the words, the words would be empty. Behind the words there surely are the facts. God has placed the work of His Son in the Word and has communicated this Word to us. When we believe in His Word, we are believing in Him. Watchman Nee