Fighting Temptations

God had placed it on my heart earlier this week to talk about fighting temptations and I had somewhat been putting it off and God must have really wanted me to share it pronto because He hit me with this dream last night. I’m going to try to sum it up as briefly as possible so just bear with me. In this dream I had met a guy and this guy was very attractive. I mean VERY attractive! He looked the way that I wanted him to, he was built the way I wanted him to be, and he was the height that I wanted him to be. The best way to put it is he was nice on the eyes and part of the desires of my heart in what I want in a husband. So he picks me up for our first date and he has a really nice car so I’m thinking hmh okay, okay. Then he takes me somewhere; I don’t ask any questions; I don’t ask where we’re going, who is going to be there, or anything. We finally arrive at this place and I see that it’s a club. Immediately the Holy Spirit checks me; I get that gut feeling that is yelling CAUTION! RED FLAG! RUN FOR THE BORDER! I look at the guy and I make the decision to go inside with him because I figure its daylight so it’s not really the club scene right now so it should be okay. The way that the club was set up, there were these winding stairs that you had to walk up like three flights to get inside. To show you how real this dream was as I was walking up the steps the Holy Spirit was showing me my own word that I just preached two weeks ago about being spiritually faithful and claiming to be a Christian yet riding the fence. Then the lyrics of Jonathan McReynolds song No Gray started playing in my head, “it would be cool if we could love the Lord and still go do our thing. You see it doesn’t work like that, you’ve gotta be white or black.” Once again I make the decision to continue to follow this guy in spite of all of this.

 We get inside the club and we sit at a table and order food and I think see, this doesn’t seem that bad. We’re sitting there eating and talking and I’m thinking wow this is a beautiful man and he seems like a really nice guy. Remind you the topic of Jesus NEVER came up; not even once. For some reason I had to go to his car to get something and when I come back to the stairs there is now a line of people like a really long line and they’re all dressed in their club get up. I’m now looking like oh gosh this doesn’t look good so I go back to the car. I don’t know if I was thinking of leaving or what but I just sit there for a minute. For whatever reason I make the decision to go back inside to this guy. I go around the line to get back in and the girl at the door asked me if I was at least 21 and I say yeah I’m 26 (although I’m 25 so that was weird but there’s a story for that later) and she goes to put a hot pink wristband on me to show that I’m legal to drink and I start slightly panicking and thinking omg what if someone sees me and thinks that I’m drinking, this is a mess! Nonetheless, I make the decision to go back inside to the club and now the music is on very loud and people are inside dancing all on each other. I see the table where the guy is sitting and to my surprise there are four other people sitting in our booth with him now. So now I’m really confused like what is going on? I make the decision to go over to the table anyways and what do you know it’s his family…like the whole family; his mother, father, and two siblings. This is our first date remind you. The mom is asking me a ton of questions and the father is staring at me and I’m just sitting there like a deer in headlights. What really took the cake was when his mother said, “So tell me about yourself, what do you do?” I didn’t mention anything about Changed Hearts, ministering the gospel, or anything relative to my relationship with Christ and the Holy Spirit urged me to say it and I didn’t. It wasn’t just that I didn’t, but it was like I didn’t want to. We’re talking back and forth and then the mom says son I think she will make a wonderful wife and I’m sitting there thinking oh gosh how did I get here??? Then I woke up….

               Okay, so that wasn’t brief but I wanted to make sure that you understood the depth of this dream. As crazy as that dream sounded, people do very similar things every single day. The amazing thing about God is that with every temptation that the devil sends our way, God has already provided a way of escape! (1 Corinthian 10:13). The problem is we keep making exceptions to the provision that God has laid before us. In my dream I had choices; there were a number of times where the Holy Spirit was giving me an opportunity to flee from the situation I was putting myself in. I had decisions to make and the Holy Spirit was right there willing to lead and guide me through it but I chose to take matters into my own hands because initially it seemed okay. Do you know why God gives us the Holy Spirit to lead us?  It’s because in spite of our best efforts and what we may believe, we’re not capable of making the best decisions for ourselves and so we need that guidance. God sees the end result that we can’t see so He gives us those checks through the Holy Spirit to help us make the right decision but we can’t ignore that and do our own thing. 

Let’s look at what the bible tells us about fighting temptations:

1.      Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against the body (1 Corinthians 6:18). Now granted the apostle Paul is referring to sexual sin in this verse but there’s a keyword that can be applied to dealing with temptations in general and that is to FLEE! My bishop used to say “A good run can be better than a bad stand.” Look, sometimes you have to put on your jogging for Jesus shoes and run. You don’t have to play around with sin to know that the end result is death. Stop seeing just how far you can go and push the limits yet still claim to be saved. The bible says flee not play patty cake.  

2.      Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. (James 4:7). Once again we have another keyword, RESIST! We give the devil too many opportunities to wreak havoc because we don’t choose to resist the temptations that are placed before us. Just as God knows the desires of your heart, so does the devil and he will send you a Lucifer Jr. beautiful man or Delilah woman who looks, talks, dresses, walks, and smells exactly the way that you want as a distraction. You’ll be so focused on the exterior that you fail to see their heart which is wicked and leading you astray.

About 2 years ago I was at a revival or conference and the speaker asked me how old I was and I said 23 his response was didn’t God tell you 25? Just be patient. I got really excited because I wanted to be married by the time I was 25 so I was thinking yes!!!! God’s going to send me my husband in the next two years party over here! So every guy I made eye contact I thought that might be my husband. Insert cup of water for my thirst. The person never said it was a husband that God would give me by the age of 25 but the bigger picture is that God had never told me that I would be married at 25 it was just the age that I had chosen for myself! God had to help me to become content that even if I wasn’t married by the age of 25 that it was okay otherwise I would end up settling for everything but a man of God because I wanted it to happen so badly! Trust me when I say the devil knows the desires of your heart as well and he will definitely use them to tempt you to create idols out of them. 

3.      Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit is indeed willing but the flesh is weak. (Matthew 26:41). Remind you this is Jesus speaking. He told the disciples to stay up and pray because He knew the time was at hand that He would be betrayed. His spirit was willing to be crucified but His flesh was weak. Guess what? Our spiritual man wants to do what God wants us to do but our flesh does not; it is weak and wants to do what the world deems as fun. You need to be prayed up no if, ands, or buts about it. Prayer connects you to God and when you remove that communication you leave yourself open for your flesh to rise up and take over. Your strength in fighting temptations comes through your prayer life. Most people give in to temptations because they didn't prepare on how to deal with them before the temptation arrived. Prayer is your prep.

This obviously is a pretty short list to keep this blog from being too lengthy but I will do a VLOG as well talking about other things regarding fighting temptations. Hope this blessed you!