A sermon on resisting temptation by actively putting sinful desires to death rather than tolerating them. The speaker warns that the enemy cultivates lust through the eye, pride, and flesh, making sin appear attractive over time. Believers must guard their hearts, pray for God's direction, and decisively reject anything contrary to God's will.
Chapters
I know that I've been doing a lot of sharing about making sure that we stay on guard, um, and that we guard our hearts and guard our minds and our thoughts, uh, as God tells us to. But one of the things I also want to share with you this morning is that every temptation that you have is not designed for you to live with. Everything is not the thorn in your flesh that God refuses to move. Okay, some temptations that you have need to die. And one of them being, if you already have a desire and you know within your heart that you've been tempted with the desire to find a way to live apart from God, what the enemy will do is use the lust of the eye, the pride of this life, he will use the lust of the flesh to make life apart from God seem healthy. Whole, as if it will sustain you, and he will tempt you every day with it until you yield. And so these are one of those temptations I'm talking about that need to die. Every temptation you have is not designed for you to live with. Everything isn't the thorn in the flesh that God won't remove. And so we really need to make sure that we're not living with things that God has said need to die. If God is placing A demand for death to a certain desire in your life, you had best to give it up to him. And it doesn't really matter what other people say. You have to seek and pray and make sure what God is saying concerning that temptation, that it happens on your own account, because all of us are responsible for working out our own soul salvation with fear and trembling. Every temptation that you have is not designed for you to live with. Everything isn't the thorn in the flesh that God won't remove. Okay, so make sure that you don't have a desire in you to already live apart from God, and that you're not yielding to that every day, little by little. Because that's the way the enemy works. He never comes in all at one time. It starts little by little with your thoughts, little by little in your mind, little by little with your desires and your temptations. And so he will make it look like It's the thing that will sustain you. But this is where spiritual warfare comes in, and you begin to resist him through your submission to the Lord. And sometimes submission really does look like putting death to every desire that is contrary to the will of God and the purpose of God and the plan of God for your life. Be encouraged.
