Pastor David has been doing a great job leading us through this series on overcoming temptation and our key verse has been:
1 Corinthians 10:13. No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.
This verse tells us that temptation is common to everyone. We are all tempted to say or do things that we know we shouldn’t say or do. No one is above temptation, even Jesus was tempted. At the beginning of His ministry, Jesus was tempted openly when Satan told Him that He could choose paths that would bring Him worldly fame and fortune. Jesus didn’t give in to that temptation but relied upon the word and will of God to help Him stand firm. At the end of His ministry, in the Garden of Gethsemane, facing the agonizing pain of dying on a cross, Jesus was again tempted to find a way other than the cross to accomplish God’s will. Once again, Jesus didn’t give in but stood strong.
The Bible says Jesus was tempted in every way that we are, but was without sin. Jesus was tempted but never followed through on those thoughts and actions which tells us that Jesus was perfect, but we are not. We are not perfect because many times, too many times, we give in to temptation.
I don’t know how you have been feeling through this series but there are times I have felt kind of hopeless. Not that David’s words haven’t provided wisdom and direction on how to fight temptation, they have, but as much as I try to stand strong in the face of temptation, I find myself giving in over and over again. The words of the Apostle Paul keep coming to my mind:
I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.
So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Romans 7:18-19, 21-24
I don’t want to give in to temptation. I try to stop the cycle of thought, imagination, and justification that leads to the choice of giving in to the temptation, but I never seem to fully overcome it. I might succeed once or twice, but then I stumble and fall. I never seem to find true victory, the temptation never seems to go away. Can anyone else relate to this? Overcoming temptation in the long haul is not easy, but I believe it is possible - not because we have the power to make it happen, but because God has the power to make us new!
Last week, Pastor David did a great job talking about how our thoughts are often what first lead us into temptation. We start to think about that juicy piece of gossip, and then we imagine telling it to someone and the thrill we will get in sharing it, and then we justify doing it by saying “well, they need to know” and then the next thing we know we are on the phone engaging in gossip.
Or we think about how easy it would be to cut a few corners on our taxes. Then we imagine having that extra money and all we could do with it. Then we justify cheating by saying the government gets enough of our money anyway and they aren’t going to know, and then we do it. Our thoughts are often our first step into temptation, but fighting temptation is a lot more than just stopping ourselves from thinking about certain things. In fact, telling ourselves to stop thinking about all the things that tempt us usually just gets us thinking about those very things.
Let’s try an experiment. Close your eyes. Clear your mind. Now…. Don’t think about… dirt cake.
What are you thinking about?
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The more we try to not think about certain things, the more we seem to focus on those very things. So instead of trying to stop thinking about the wrong things, those things that tempt us that we want to avoid, let’s start thinking about the right things, the good things, the Godly things that need to be our focus.
When I first moved into the parsonage in Altoona, there was a large patch of lawn in the front yard where a tree had recently been removed. There was very little grass growing but lots of weeds. I spent that first summer trying to kill the weeds. I pulled up thistle, only to have to go back in a few weeks. I kept focusing on getting rid of the weeds but the weeds kept coming.
The next summer I decided to get a lawn service to fertilize the grass. I wanted the entire lawn to look nice so I paid for them to come and fertilize the grass on a regular basis. It didn’t take long for me to notice that the area in the front yard that had been full of weeds was no longer full of weeds. The thistle was gone. In a few more weeks the entire area was just green grass. When I started to feed the good healthy grass, it helped choke out the weeds. When we feed the spirit of God in us, it begins to choke out the desires of our flesh and the temptations we face.
Paul, who understood that focusing on the good I want to do and the evil we don’t want to do is a losing battle, went on to say this:
Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Galatians 5:16.
We know what those desires of the flesh are, it’s all those things that promise satisfaction at the cost of obedience to God. It’s lust and greed. It’s thinking we can find lasting pleasure or peace in shopping, eating, or drinking. It’s looking for recognition and reward in this world by being the first to post to social media, the first to share the latest “news”, or simply striving to be the first. All the temptations we face are focused on making us feel better and look good. They feed the desires of the flesh, and Paul says, don’t feed the flesh, feed the spirit instead. Walk by the Spirit.
What Paul says here is really profound because he doesn’t tell us to first stop feeding the desires of our flesh, he tells us to first walk by the Spirit of God. In fact, what Paul says is that if we feed the Spirit first, if we walk by the Spirit first, then we simply will not gratify the desires of the flesh. The temptation might still be a battle, but it will be a battle we can win because we aren’t fighting it on our own, we have the Holy Spirit fighting with us.
Fully understanding the Holy Spirit can be confusing. It’s easy to think about God as the Father of all things, and it’s easy to picture Jesus as the Son of God and the fullness of God who walked the earth in human form, but the Holy Spirit is hard to see and understand, and yet it is the greatest gift we have ever received. To put it simply, the Holy Spirit is the spirit of God working in our lives. It is the power and spirit of Jesus dwelling in us.
Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would bring us comfort. So in times of fear, grief, or uncertainty, when we suddenly feel a sense of peace, or know we aren’t alone, that’s the work of the Holy Spirit. When we are convicted of sin, that’s the Holy Spirit working within us. It’s the Holy Spirit that points out areas of temptation for us to consider so we can avoid them. The Holy Spirit gives us words when we don’t know what to say, it gives us strength when we are weak, it guides us into the path God has for us when we are lost, and it gives us the desire to be more like Jesus.
The Holy Spirit is the spirit of God which means it really is not an “it” but a person. We talk about God in three persons, the Trinity, because each person of the Trinity is able to develop a unique relationship with us. It’s one God, but each person, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, wants to strengthen us and shape us in different ways. But before we can walk by the Spirit, we need to invite the Holy Spirit to be part of our lives.
Last week, Jeff Pilger, our youth director, shared with us that the theme of their youth retreat last week was storymaker. We make and write the story of our lives but with the help and input of God. One character in the drama they saw always came to God talking. He never stopped to listen. When he finally came asking God why he hadn’t heard God’s voice, God said it was because he had written his own story and only reached out to God for approval. God wants to work with us to write the story of our lives. He wants to be the storymaker with us. The same is true of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the power of God, but we can’t tap into that power or lean into God's Spirit and use it in our lives until we stop trying to live by our own power. As long as we try to fight temptation on our own, we will come up short, but when we start using the power of the Holy Spirit, when we realize that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in us, then we can start experiencing true strength and victory.
Next to the church, maybe the greatest organization that helps transform people's lives so they can find real freedom from temptation is Alcoholics Anonymous. AA is a 12-step program and their first three steps are what we need to learn from today.
1. Admit that we are powerless over alcohol and that our lives have become unmanageable.
2. Believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.
3. Make the decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.
This is exactly how the Holy Spirit will start working in us. We need to admit that we are powerless over temptation and sin. We need to admit that on our own, the good we want to do we won’t do and the evil we don’t want to do we will always do.
Then we need to acknowledge that the power of God, the Holy Spirit, is available to help us. It is actually dwelling in us.
Then we need to make the decision to turn our will and lives over to the Holy Spirit.
I want to invite us all to do this right now. My guess is that no matter how long we have been following Jesus, there are still areas of temptations that we give in to. So let’s take a moment and ask the Holy Spirit to give us the power we need to live a new life. Take a moment and think about this statement and fill in this blank:
I admit that I’m powerless over _______________________.
Now simply ask the Holy Spirit to work in you with these words:
Holy Spirit. Enter my life and do what I can’t do.
Heal me, strengthen me, and make me whole.
This needs to be a daily prayer for all of us. Admit that we are powerless and then ask the Holy Spirit to at work in our lives. This is what it means for us to depend upon the Spirit, this is what it means for us to lean on the power of God and begin to walk by the Spirit: admit we need God’s power and ask God’s Spirit to work in us.
But Paul doesn’t tell us to just ask the Spirit in and then sit back and do nothing - he says we need to walk with the Spirit. While walking with the Spirit is a great analogy, I think we can learn a lot more if we think of our relationship with the Holy Spirit as a dance.
Now for me, dancing means disco. Yes, I grew up in the late 70’s and 80’s with Saturday Night Fever, ABBA’s Dancing Queen and Disco Inferno by the Trammps. Dancing was more what you did on your own and not in step with someone else. So don’t think about disco, think about ballroom dancing, and not the dancing with the stars ballroom dancing, but simple ballroom dancing like a fox trot or waltz.
There are three things you need to do when you do a simple dance. You need to be close to each other.
You need to spend time with each other.
You need to follow the promptings and nudges you are given.
If we are going to dance with the Holy Spirit, we need to allow ourselves to get close to the Spirit and ask the Spirit into our lives.
Then we need to spend time feeding and nurturing this relationship and Pastor David is going to talk more about growing closer to the Spirit next week and you will want to be here for that.
So let’s look at the third thing needed for good dancing: follow the promptings and nudges you are given. In dancing, the lead will guide and direct their partner by a nudge in the back or a pull of the hand. The Holy Spirit, when we allow it to lead in our lives, will guide and direct us every day by nudges and promptings. When a worship song / hymn we sing on Sunday pops into our minds during the week, it is a prompt by the Spirit to remember a promise or a truth of God. It might be just what we need to hear at that moment. When someone comes to our mind it is prompt to pray for them or reach out to them to offer words of encouragement.
Every day, the Spirit prompts us and nudges us in many ways. Start a list on your phone, keep a pad by your table, or in your car, or at your desk and every time you think the Spirit has prompted or nudged you in some way, write it down. At the end of the day, identify all the times you sensed the Spirit prompting you and speaking to you and guiding your life. The more we can see these promptings and feel these nudges, the more receptive we will be to them, and the more we will be able to keep in step with them. And the more we walk by the Spirit - the more we will find ourselves walking further and further from temptation.
The more we walk by the Spirit, the more we will hear the voice of the Spirit and the more we hear the words of the Spirit the less we will hear the words of temptation. When we walk by the Spirit, we won’t have to tell ourselves to stop thinking about those things that lead us into temptation because we won’t be thinking about them at all. It is when we start walking by the Spirit and trusting in the power of God at work in our lives that we begin to find victory and freedom and new life.
Next Steps
A Way Out - Walking in the Spirit
It’s not enough to stop thinking about the wrong things, we need to start thinking about the right things. Read Philippians 4:8. What new things can you focus on this week?
Read Galatians 5:16-25. What does it mean for you to walk by the Spirit?
Walking by the Spirit begins by:
1. Admitting that we are powerless over temptation and sin.
● Where do you feel powerless in your life?
● Take time to admit this to God:
● I admit that I am powerless over______________.
2. Asking the Holy Spirit to enter your life with power. Pray: Holy Spirit. Enter my life and do what I can’t do.
Heal me, strengthen me, and make me whole. AMEN
When walking by the Spirit is a dance, we need to:
1. Be close to each other.
● Ask the Holy Spirit into your life.
2. Spend time with each other.
● What is one thing you can do to spend time with the Spirit? Dig deeper into this next Sunday.
3. Follow the promptings and nudges you experience.
● Identify and list all the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
● Review the list each day to begin to learn how the Spirit speaks to you and wants to guide you.
● Look for the ways the Spirit can lead you so you can follow the Spirit into freedom, strength, and new life.
