Overcoming Temptation

you ought to do. Perhaps you look at your life and you see there are certain things which you have wrestled with and struggled with since you have been a Christian. I want us to understand that temptation in not what is wrong, it is the giving into the temptation that is wrong. I want us to understand that temptation is not uncommon, I believe we all face temptation. If someone were to tell me they are never tempted I would quickly wonder what they were not doing to make them not a target. As long as there is a Devil in this world we will have a target on our backs because his objective is to keep us from God. Someone once said, “I wouldn’t be tempted if temptation wasn’t so tempting.” Sam Levenson said, “Lead us not into temptation. Just tell us where it is; we’ll find it.” Flip Wilson said, “The devil made me do it the first time, but ever since then I’ve been doing it on my own.” Oscar Wilde said, “I can resist anything but temptation.” We all deal with temptation. I want us also to understand that we can overcome. We are not doomed to failure.
Today, I am sure that each and every one of us has some things in life that we would like to overcome. I am sure that if you honestly looked inwardly you may see that you have some character flaw, some habit, some trait, some sin that you want to overcome. If you are like me, perhaps you have tried over and over again with sincerity, but you cannot seem to do it. Perhaps you have prayed about it, perhaps you have worked hard, but that struggle is still an issue in your life. I wish that there was an easy 10-step guide to overcoming temptations, but there’s not, it is not always black and white. I do, however, believe that God reveals to us some things that can help us to stand strong.
I want to look at the story of a man in the Old Testament who said “no” to the temptation that he was facing to do what was wrong and hopefully we can see that we too can say “no”.

Text: James 1:13-15


I. Realize Your Weakness
After Hurricane Katrina rocked the city of New Orleans, you could hear the word “negligence” on the news quite often. People talked about the negligence of having an evacuation plan and effectively getting people out of danger zones. People talked about the negligence of the State and Federal governments to act upon a problem that they knew existed. For years the proper authorities we warned about the dangers of a big hurricane in the city of New Orleans. People knew that because of the condition of the levees and the location of the city that a major hurricane could literally wipe the city out. Neglecting a big problem led to a major catastrophe. The reality is ignoring a problem does not make it go away.
The same is true for the things that we struggle with. A lot of times we like to act like we do not have struggles, or even worse we like to think that the struggles will just go away one day. Brushing our problems under the rug will not make them go away. We need to learn to admit our weaknesses. We think that as circumstances change or we enter a new stage in life then we will not wrestle with the same things anymore. Well, ignoring a sin problem in our lives does not make it go away. We need to make sure that we realize our areas of weakness, not in order to make us feel bad or guilty, but rather so we can know where we need to improve.
Psalm