3. And the devil will flee

We’re winners! By ignoring Satanic lies and letting Christ do all the hard work, we have the firepower to put the devil on the defensive. With Jesus in us, we make demons quake. But it is important not to misunderstand the implications. Temptation will not vanish after one token resistance. Look at Jesus’ battle in the wilderness. He held out against temptation #1. So what did Satan do? Hurl temptation #2. And after that, temptation #3. And that was nothing like the end. Satan skulked away, only to seek a time when Jesus was more vulnerable (Luke 4:13). We don’t know how many times the devil renewed the attack. We know Jesus had to tell Peter ‘Get behind me Satan.’ We know the enemy entered into Jesus’ dear friend, Judas, to destroy the Son of God. We know Christ had a bloodcurdling battle in Gethsemane. And we know Jesus won every time.

And through him, you, too, can win every time. That’s God’s promise. It’s in black and white. (Scriptures) There’s not the vaguest hint that you won’t feel like giving up. Nor the slightest suggestion that you won’t feel as helpless in the teeth of temptation as a mouse trapped in a lion’s cage. But there’s a divine guarantee that no matter how weak you feel, no matter how horrific your past failures, no matter how impossible it seems, you can beat every temptation that comes your way. If you ever meet a temptation too strong for you, the God who raises the sun each day has suddenly become unreliable, the God who didn’t spare his darling Son for you has suddenly lost interest in you, and the moral integrity of Holy One has collapsed.

The Devil is the Deceiver

Satan is a con artist. He wants to rip you off, cheating you out of everything that is rightfully yours. He’s the enemy of everything good, hating you with all his filthy fury. He offers the soft, warm bomb that will explode your life into a million pieces. He generously gives momentary relief and fun that leads to deeper bondage and torment; the short cut to heaven’s ecstasy that ends in hell.

With Christ having rendered all of Satan’s weapons inoperative against Christians, the Enemy has nothing left but psychological warfare – illusions, false accusations, attempted brainwashing.

Suppose you were a soldier at war, and an evil enemy had the opportunity to attempt brainwashing you. The enemy would try to wear you down by repeatedly putting thoughts into your mind that the side you serve:

• is wrong, or not worth serving

• will lose the war, or is not strong enough to protect you

• has rejected or abandoned you, or does not care about you.

The enemy would also try to:

• isolate you

• make you feel useless

• destroy all hope.

That’s the diabolical enemy you face everyday. He’s the master of the half truth. Yes, sin is delicious – like candy laced with poison. It’s true that sin is exhilarating – as exciting as skydiving without a parachute. And he’s right when he hisses that God’s ways can feel annoyingly restrictive – as confining as a parachute harness when you are plummeting to earth.

The author of pain and despair and death maliciously paints God as a killjoy. The Almighty has your highest good in focus, not some short term fizz that ultimately leaves you cold, empty and without a future. God’s way is the way of eternal joy; of love, triumph, self-respect. He’s the sole source of beauty and of everything that lasts. He empowers you to make this world a better place. He offers you protection, security, purity and wisdom. Don’t slip out of his divine embrace into the devil’s quicksand.

The Seducer makes giving up seem the easy option, but the real cost is enormous. Any area of defeat is an ugly blemish. The Lord wants to beautify your whole life but he dare not bring other things to your attention while this one is such a burden to you. So other shameful blotches, probably obvious to those who see you, remain untouched.

No matter how horrific the pain of resisting, it always ends up the genuinely easy option.

Sin is never the easy way out; the attractive alternative. Take the bait and you’ll feel the hook. Swallow the lie and you’ll writhe in regret.

The best defense against cunning lies is to fill your mind with truth. Immerse yourself in God’s Word.

Strategies

Feel defeated? Chances are that you could be weaker than you are, and still have total victory over the temptations that presently defeat you. How? By taking temptations more seriously, and drawing the line against them much earlier.

If we could only grasp the enormity of the dangers, our drive to beat temptation would skyrocket. We would sooner tap-dance on a minefield than toy with sin. And Satan would get such a scare at our new determination that we might not see him for days at a time.

Knowing how critical this is, I believe the Deceiver expends much effort trying to keep us in a fog, only vaguely of what is really at stake. I have prepared a tiny eye-opener. For a new glimpse of the seriousness of sin, click here.

Over and over and over, Scripture insists that, like nothing else, sin has the power to destroy you. (Scriptures) Sin is the most fearsome thing on this planet, worse than a ferocious wolf lusting after your blood. Better to lose a limb or an eye or to drown, than let it get you, warned Jesus. (Scriptures) When a blood-crazed beast is on the prowl, the only sensible thing is to put as big a distance as possible between it and yourself. That’s how we should treat sin. Yet instead of seeing sin as a ravenous wolf with deadly fangs, we often treat it like a smelly stray pup – rather disgusting, basically harmless, at times almost cute. The thought of dabbling with sin should terrify us. If it doesn’t, we are toying with disaster. We need to flee from sin, warns many a verse of God’s Word. (Scriptures)

Here are ways to increase the distance between you and sin:

Disclaimer

I dare not try to set rules for you. My longing is that you listen intently to the Spirit of God for his direction. He alone has mapped your personal escape route. My hope is merely to offer a few suggestions for you to talk over with your Lord, and to see where he leads from there.

At all costs, avoid the horror of following a set of rules, rather than a living Savior. This double tragedy ends both in arrogance and deserting Christ. Ugly pride, even bigotry, festers when you discover you draw your line further from sin than someone else. And you are in danger of abandoning your Savior when you begin to trust your homemade rules for salvation (your holiness and protection from temptation) rather than seeding your entire faith in your crucified Lord.

Burn your bridges

What would you think if a husband told his wife he wants to be faithful to her, but explained that just in case temptation gets too strong, he will keep his former girlfriend’s phone number programmed into his phone? Well what does your Lord think if you deliberately make it easy to access drugs, or some other thing you are trying to give up? Don’t you think God sees right through a person who asks for forgiveness for substance abuse, or porn, or whatever, and keeps a tiny supply ‘just in case’? Divine forgiveness is not available to the person who is not willing to be finished with sin. (Explanation) ‘Make no provision for the flesh,’ says Romans 13:14. In other words, store up nothing, make no allowances, for sin.

When Jesus spoke of hacking off a hand or foot, or gouging out an eye, he was not speaking literally, (proof) but he was describing the need for radical, painful and costly sacrifices in order to make it harder to sin. Cancer is so deadly that people are willing to lose parts of their body in order to halt its spread. If people go to such extremes to fight something that can only affect earthly life, what sacrifices should any sane person make to fight something that can afflict someone forever?

Your collection of things that help you sin might have cost you a lot of money. If you don’t destroy it, however, you’ll find it will cost you a lot more still! (Scriptures)

Here are some ways of attacking sin that you should seriously discuss with God.