by: John Mitchell
The way to overcome temptation is easy to say, but sometimes hard to do. James 4:7 & 8 tells us; “Therefore submit to God. Resist the Devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to You. Cleans your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” # 1, God’s inspired word tells us that to overcome the temptations of the Devil, we must first submit to God. # 2 Resist the Devil’s temptations. Do not give in to, whatever the devil is offering to us, to tempt us, to sin. # 3 “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” You can draw near to God by magnifying the Lord. Psalm 69:30 tells us, “I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify Him with thanksgiving.” God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. No one can make God any bigger or smaller, than He is. For example, you can open your bible, and hold a five-power magnifying glass over it. To you, the printed words of scripture look five times larger than they are. The printed words of scripture are the same size on the page, no bigger, and no smaller. That is how to literally magnify the word of God. The following is how to magnify God in your life. The more we read and study God’s inspired word, the more we understand, and know God, and the more we love God. Then, when we will understand how much better it is for God’s will to be done in our life, than for our own will to be done in our life. We will want God to be more and more, day after day, a bigger and bigger part of our life. We don’t make God any bigger or smaller. We submit more and more of our life to God, for His will to be done in our life. So to us, God is magnified in our life, because He is becoming a bigger part of our life, day after day. John 3:30, tells us, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” # 4 “Cleanse your hands, you sinners.” Don’t have any unforgiven Sin in your life. # 5 “Purify your hearts, you double-minded.” Have a heart of faith in God, and faith in your heart, that all the words of the gospel of God, of His scriptures, are all the inspired truth of God. “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6) And in James 1:6-8, “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”(2 Corinthians 5:7), “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” The more you love someone, the more you just naturally want to please that person. The more you love someone, the more you care about the other person’s life being the best it can be. The more you love someone, the more you start to care about the other person’s needs above your own needs. “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:3-4) When we love a person so much that it gladdens our heart to personally sacrifice for the good of the other person, is when our loving someone has grown and matured into being “In Love” with that other person. When you are truly “in love” with someone, it is not a matter of enduring a sacrifice for the good of the other person. NO! It is a matter of willingly, welcoming the opportunity to be able to sacrifice for the other person’s good, because you are in love with that person. If you are a person who puts God first in your life, and you are a faithful and obedient servant of God, the other person will be drawn to love you, and drawn to love God through your good example. You may be thinking, “Where is John going with all this love talk? He is way out there somewhere, out of focus from the title of this article. Love has nothing to do with temptation!” LOVE HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH BEING ABLE TO OVERCOME TEMPTATIONS!!! The more we are in love with God, the less we would want to let any temptation lead us into sinning against God, because we don’t anything to separate us from God’s love for us, or from our love for God. When a person is in love with God, and resists a temptation that his, “Old Man” would have liked, he does not mourn the loss of the remembered pleasure of being involved in a sin of his past. No. The “New Man”, of his life, that he now is, rejoices that he pleased God, by resisting the temptation. When we are in love with God, the more we reject the ways of the world, and accept the ways of God for us, the happier we are. “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) “I say then, walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.” (Galatians 5:17) Walking in loving God, helps us to obey God, and strengthens us against the temptations of Satan that come against us. 1 Corinthians chapter 13 tells us that if we don’t have love, we are nothing. Love does not seek its own. “Love never fails.” “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” “We love Him because He first loved us. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:19,10) Our love for God is a reciprocated love, because God loved us first. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) God’s love for us, shown to us through His gospel to us, draws us to love God, because of His great love for us, and because of His great sacrifice for us, of His Son Jesus. It just works out this way. The more we read and study God’s scriptures, the more we love God. And the more we love God, the more the love of God fills our heart, and the love of God overflows out of our heart to others, to show them that God loves them and wants them to become members of the body of Christ. “Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us; we implore you, on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.” (2 Corinthians 5:20)