I want to pause for a moment on a topic which I think we spend precious little time on, that being the dangers of entering into temptation. The reason why I am drawn to this thought is because I am currently reading a book by John Owen entitled Of Temptation: The Nature and Power of It, and hearing him talk about entering into temptation makes me think so much about my own past struggles with lust and a slew of other sexual sins. I feel like he characterizes so rightly the intensity of the issues which I dealt with on a daily basis, in trying to be freed from these desires and yet always giving into them.
The first quote I want to lay out has to do with the shear danger of temptation:
A man knows not the pride, fury, madness of a corruption until it meets with a suitable temptation.
This is so true in my life. As a teenager I knew the pull that sexual temptation had on my life, but thinking back to the first time that the actual opportunity to engage in sexual activity presented itself and the madness that ensued, I know exactly what Owen is talking about. I gave a year of my life, and countless more time in emotional damage and reconstruction, all because I entered into a temptation and it unleashed my radical corruptness.
Thinking about that in your own life, it can be so easy to feel like you have a certain problem whipped, or even that it is not a problem for you at all and you breeze right on past it. But we can never be too comfortable because it may happen that the right temptation comes along one day and all hell breaks loose. For sexual sin this can present itself in a relationship that goes too far, or on the computer when you’re just clicking around out of boredom. Particularly for men, that fury and madness of sexual desire, when unleashed in an non-biblical manner, can lead to a faster fall and a deeper addiction than anything else. Therefore, we must always be heeding Christ’s warning to his disciples in the garden, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26.41).
The second quote I want to share deals even further with this admonition to “watch and pray”:
Do not flatter yourselves that you should hold out; there are secret lusts that lie lurking in your hearts, which perhaps now stir not, which, as soon as any temptation befalls you, will rise, tumultuate, cry, disquiet, seduce, and never give over until they are either killed or satisfied. He that promises himself that the frame of his heart will be the same under a temptation as it is before will be woefully mistaken.
We must be focused on “watching and praying.” We cannot rely on our own strength, no matter how slight we think the temptation to be. There is only one strength strong enough to resist all evils, that being the strength provided by God in the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 10.13), and so we must be faithful to call upon him. My worst decisions came in light of the fact that I wrested on my own abilities to protect me from the snares of temptation and sin. We must not neglect in seeking council, in the form of God and in Godly peers, to protect us during our struggles.
I hope that the message comes across clearly enough. Sin kills. And temptation unchecked and unfortified against in the Spirit will lead directly into sin with a madness that no human will can quench. When temptation comes a-knocking, don’t just stand there looking out the peephole, but run straight to God, through prayer and meditation, the study of his Word, and the fellowship of his people. Do not be consumed, be prepared.
Posted by Todd Burus 
