The Truth About the Temptation to Sin

All of us have been tempted to sin, including Jesus himself (Matthew 4). And while temptation itself isn't a sin, it is sinful to give into the temptation. So how can we keep ourselves from giving in? And what is temptation really anyway?

Andy Stanley put it this way: Temptation is the desire to meet a legitimate need or want, in an illegitimate, improper, or irresponsible way. And I think that's a pretty good definition!

The problem is that when you give into temptation, it's always a bigger deal than just that one act. It may mean that you'll now need to lie in order to keep concealed what you did. And of course, it's not really a secret anyway since God sees everything! Which brings me to the main point...

When you give into temptation, you are essentially saying that you do not trust that God is able to supply all of your needs, so you're going to take it into your own hands to get what you need or want.

Now what would you say to someone who told you that they know better than God what they need, and that since they have the power to get what they need themselves, since God isn't providing it for them, that they don't even really need God anyway? You'd probably think that they've decided to become an atheist. And yet, that's exactly what we're saying indirectly when we give into the temptation to sin.

God is the maker of the Heavens and the Earth, the Alpha and Omega, the omnipresent, omnipotent, source of everything in existence who is the definition of power and love and all that is good. He said he will supply for all of our needs (Phil 4:19), and whatever He says is true. So why on Earth (or anywhere else) would you think that he can't or won't? Let alone the fact that it's completely ridiculous to think that you know better than God what you need.

And while it's true that God doesn't always give us what we want, it's a good thing He doesn't. Because we often want things that we don't need, and that will result in something negative happening to us or others as a result. We're just not far enough away from the canvas of our lives and the even larger masterpiece in process to see the "big picture." All we can see and are so concerned about often times are the few brushstrokes in front of us. And when we decide to start painting ourselves instead of letting the master do the work, we cause more harm than good - and He has to fix it later.

Now I know we are all human. And as such, we are not perfect. We are prone to poor judgement and weakness when it comes to issues of sin. But when you have the Holy Spirit within you, He gives you the extra strength you need to overcome those factors.You just have to be willing to let him, which means you have to be completely and utterly dependent on God. And that's a very hard thing for anyone to do. This is why it's so important to renew your faith in God and your reliance on Him every day!

But here's a tip to help you in the times when you are being tempted. As soon as you realize you're being tempted to sin, pause. Think about this concept. Remember that God is willing and able, even eager, to meet all of your needs. And if you give into the temptation, you will be hurting your relationship with God because you're telling him that you don't trust him. Also remember that giving in to the temptation may also impact your family, your friends, and who knows how many other people in a negative way. It's always bigger than just the temptation before you!

Then decide what is more important to you. Is it more important to you to have what you want right then and give into the temptation? Or is it more important to keep your relationship with God strong, to protect your family and friends, and to grow your faith and become a stronger and more capable man or woman of God? Then act on that decision with the knowledge that you consciously chose it, and all that comes with it.

Quit Being Lazy & Selfish!

That title got your attention didn't it? They're pretty harsh words, I admit. But sometimes that's what people need to hear in order to get them to pay attention.

So what am I talking about? How are you being lazy and selfish?

By not doing something on purpose, on a regular basis, to spread the Good News. That's how.

This doesn't apply to everyone of course. Non-believers would have no reason to spread the Good News. And most pastors do it regularly, thank goodness. But how about the rest of us who are Christians, but who aren't in full-time ministry jobs?

When was the last time you talked to someone about Jesus, who he is, what he did, why he did it, and how they could benefit from it? More specifically, when was the last time you talked about the Good News with a non-believer?

If the answer is "never" or "it has been a while" then I'm talking to you! That's right, I'm calling you lazy and selfish.

What other reason could you give for not sharing the greatest gift with other people who haven't received it yet? The only other explanation is that you're scared. And if that's the case,... fine. I can understand that. I am too! But so what?

First of all, we shouldn't be afraid as Christians to share the the Good News of Jesus Christ with others. What's the worst that could happen if we did? The other person may reject us and tell us they aren't interested. They may be totally against the idea and tell us not to even bring it up with them ever again. They may even make fun of us for believing that there's some magical invisible guy in the sky who grants wishes to some people but lets horrible things happen to other people. (I've heard God described like that by atheists before...)

Or... they may actually listen and want to know more.

Now I'm not suggesting that you go set up a soap box on the corner with a sign around your neck and bible in your hand, shouting verses from the bible. Please don't do anything like that! It does more harm than good.

What I am suggesting is that you almost definitely know people who are not Christians. If there are any of them that you haven't shared the Good News with, then you should - soon. If they aren't receptive to hearing it, that's okay. You're still doing your part and God will bless you for it. And if they make fun of you or treat you differently afterwards, then at least you know that's probably not the best person for you to spend a lot of time with in the future. And you obviously shouldn't put any stock in their opinion of you either.

It doesn't have to be awkward either. You shouldn't just go up to someone you know and be like "hey John, do you know Jesus?" That kind of approach will just put them on the defense or something. Just pay attention to what's happening in the lives of the people you know, and how they're feeling. And pay attention to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. He will give you a little nudge when you're in a situation where God wants you to do something for someone, which could just be as simple as sharing the Good News with them.

It'll probably happen when you're already talking about something. Maybe you're talking about what happened over the weekend, and you bring up that you went to church and heard a great message and they seem interested in hearing more. Or maybe you'll be listening to your friend talk about an issue in their lives they aren't happy with or a problem they're experiencing, and you could give them some biblical advice. If they receive it well, then it would make sense to steer the conversation toward whether or not they know much about the bible or Jesus and what he did and why.

And you don't have to be a bible scholar either. Keep it simple. I have a feeling that very few people come to Christ after being lectured about the bloodline of Jesus proving that he's the Messiah, or after debating the book of Revelations. Save the deep stuff for later, and stick to the basics - the bottom line that:

• Jesus is the son of God, and He is perfect in every way.
• People messed up God's perfect plan for us by doing something against what God wanted (we call this sin), which damaged the relationship between God and man.
• But because he loves us so much, he wanted to make a way for us to get in right relationship with Him again.
• So he came down from Heaven and lived a sinless life as a man. While he was here, he helped thousands of people by healing them and teaching them about the word of God. And he ultimately was killed in a brutal and humiliating way by people who didn't believe him.
• He could have stopped them, but he willingly let it happen so that he could take the punishment that we all deserve, so that we wouldn't have to.
• He sacrificed himself to save all of us, and provide a way for us to restore our relationship with God once again. And God raised him from the dead to prove that he had conquered both sin and death, and was brought back up to Heaven to rule as the Lord over everyone and everything.
• All we have to do to be saved along with him, and restore our relationship with God is believe that He is the Son of God, that he came to earth and lived a sinless life, he died for us and was raised back to life and brought to Heaven to be ruler over everything and everyone. And if we accept him as our Lord, the ruler of our lives, then he will wipe away all of our sins forever, restore our relationship with God and save us from the punishment we deserve so that we will spend eternity in Heaven with him when our lives here on Earth are over.

That's a simple, but adequate way of sharing the Good News with someone. Simply saying something like "Jesus came to save us all from sin and death, so you should believe in him so you can be saved" isn't enough. It's true yes, but it isn't adequate. It doesn't explain who he is or why he did what he did, which are very important to understand if anyone is really going to come to Christ in a genuine way.

It's simple. You have nothing to lose except for a little bit of time (which would still be well-spent since you'd at least be planting a seed), and possibly a little blow to the ego (which most of us could use anyway and we shouldn't be afraid of). And you could be the one to help literally change someone's life for the better. And we've been told by our Lord to do it (Mark 16:15)! Plus you'll feel good about it, and you'll be pleasing God no matter how the person responds.

So the bottom line is, if you have relationships with people who aren't Christians, and you haven't talked to them about who he is, what he did, why he did it, and how they can benefit from it - then you're being lazy and selfish.

Quit being lazy and selfish!

You're Choosing Sides Multiple Times A Day

You know, something has occurred to me that I already knew, but it resonated with me in a more profound way than before. And it's the realization that we all choose sides, good or evil, multiple times every day.

Now I know that all Christians, including myself, believe that they are on the side of good. I mean, we're children of God who is the ultimate good, made in his image, and have accepted him as our lord and savior of our lives. So of course we're good, right?

Well I don't think the answer is a simple yes or no...

I think that whether we are good or not depends on what we think, what we believe, and what we do - in that order from least important to most important. So we are constantly changing between good and evil. Well, evil may be too strong a word, but often times it's right on the mark too.

We all know that we're imperfect beings, who have sinned, and will almost definitely sin again. A sin is essentially doing anything that is opposed to what God's will. So since we are sinful beings, we are not good. It may seem too extreme to call us evil though if we do something that's opposed to God's will. After all, committing murder is an evil act for sure, but is it on the same level as say not taking a day of rest (the Sabbath) one week? Both are contrary to God's will since both are commandments, but are they both evil acts? I don't know... but I'd like to think not. Maybe there's some other term we can use for Christians who have been saved by grace and follow Jesus as their lord, but who still knowingly sin because of their own weaknesses. I'm going to call that irresponsible, rather than evil.

Now let me get to my main point...

We all make many, many decisions each day. Now most of them are superfluous and wouldn't be considered as being things that are necessarily in line with God's will nor opposed to it. Examples would be things like which pair of socks you put on in the morning or whether you brush your teeth or take a shower first. And some decisions can be argued as being in line with God's will or not. Examples could be whether what you choose to eat for breakfast is healthy or not, whether you obey the speed limit while driving to work or go a couple miles per hour over the limit, or watching a movie with nudity, swearing and violence in it. Those are things that you could correlate with either being aligned with God's will or not, but they aren't necessarily good or evil as much as they are responsible or irresponsible.

But many decisions you make can be considered as being things that are either aligned with God's will or opposed to it. And these decisions are then also choices you're making about which side you're on, good or evil, God's side or Satan's side. Examples of these types of decision are whether you participate in gossiping about someone behind their back with your friends, or put a stop to it or leave the group when they start the gossiping; whether you get angry with your spouse and let your emotions take over and fight with them about something, or talk to them in a calm, loving, and respectful way and forgive them and do your best to reconcile with them afterwards; or whether you lie to someone because you don't want them to be mad at you or you don't want to face the consequences of something you did, or telling the truth and facing the consequences head on. 

When you make those types of decisions, you know whether you're choosing to do good or evil. You know whether it is what God would have you do, or against what God would have you do. But rarely do we actually think about the spiritual implications of even those clearly good or evil decisions, let alone the ones that are arguable. We normally only think about what we want - not what God wants. And unfortunately, many times what we want is more aligned with what Satan wants than what God wants. So many times when we made decisions that will make us happy (which seems to be most people's main goal in life), we end up choosing the side of evil rather than the side of good.

And I'll be the first to admit that I'm guilty of this far too often. So I'm asking God to strengthen me and keep his ways in my heart and on my mind so that when I make decisions, And I'm also making sure I read the bible or do devotions and pray every day. That way, God's word will always be on my mind and in my heart and I'll remember to consider the spiritual implications of my decision rather than just my own wants and desires. I love God and I want to do his will always. I want to choose good over evil every time! 

What about you?

Hey, I'm Back!

So back in August 2012 I decided to make this a blog about my thoughts regarding the sermons preached by the senior pastor at my church. And I did a few, but then I stopped.

I stopped because I saw concentrating my efforts on writing a different blog and learning about real estate investing.

But I'm back now! And I'm going to continue where I left off... Only a couple years later, ha ha!

Please feel free to follow and comment on anything you feel like commenting on. I like interaction and debate. And I like encouragement too!  =)

Life's Short... Stop Wasting It!

Recently my pastor has been preaching about the end times. With 12/21/12 coming up soon and all of the hype about that date being predicted to be the day that a huge catastrophe or even the end of the world will happen, he thinks it's important that we be reminded about what God says about the end times.

Now I'm not going to say that there definitely won't be any big event happening on that date. But I can say with quite a bit of certainty that it will not be the end of the world.

This subject in general did get me thinking though. And a combination of things that my pastor said about the rapture occurring (1 Cor 15:50-58, 1 Thess 4:13-18), standing before the Judgement Seat of Christ (1 Cor 3:10-15; 2 Cor 5:10) where all of the things we've done during our lives will be judged, and that we're all here to fulfill God's plan for our lives before we die got me thinking. And when he said that he believes the only reason why Jesus hasn't come back yet is because he is being patient with humanity and trying to allow us enough time for people to hear the truth and decide whether to follow Him or not.

After thinking about it for a little while, it reminds me of a concept called the tipping point that is really an economic or social economics concept that was popularized by Malcom Gladwell in his book of the same name. It can basically be described by saying that regarding a certain technology, belief, concept, invention, etc. there won't initially be very many people who subscribe to it. But as some do, more will. And then before those people did, even more will. This continues at a slowly increasing pace until at a certain point, the rate explodes so that it becomes the norm/new standard/etc. That point is the called the tipping point.

I wonder if Jesus is waiting to return until the population of the earth reaches a tipping point in the balance of good and evil in the world. It seems as if there is more and more evil in the world as the years go by, but there is still plenty of good to counteract that evil too (at least in my opinion) - even though it's not reported nearly as much in the news. But that balance still seems like it's shifting more and more toward evil.

So then if the balance is shifting towards evil more and more, and Jesus really is waiting until the world reaches a tipping point before He returns, then it really could happen fairly soon - within my lifetime. So maybe I really don't have much time because even if I think I'll live to be 90 (I'm 29 now), maybe Jesus will return before that so my life will be shorter than I think it will. Now I know there are plenty of other ways my life could be cut shorter than that too, but that's not important here...

So it all finally clicked. If I am going to do what God has planned for me to do, then I really should be doing my best to get going on it and work on it as quickly and as well as I can, as soon as I can. And every day that passes by, brings me one day closer to either the day Jesus comes back or the day I die and meet Him that way. So every day I waste not doing what God's plan for me is, is a day I've wasted in. That's a day where almost everything I did will probably be burned up when I'm in front of the Judgement Seat of Christ.

I don't want to waste my time, effort, money, and emotions on things that are just going to be burned up! How stupid would that be?!?! So I have a renewed sense of purpose and sense of urgency about how I live my life now.

I don't know where you are in your life or the path God has laid out for you to follow. But I encourage you to think about these things a little bit and maybe you'll develop a bigger and better sense of purpose and urgency like I have. The more of us who do, and then act on it, the better!!!

Mega Blessings!

How to Make Better Decisions

This article is about how to make better choices by asking yourself 3 or 4 questions before deciding which option you want to choose. The choices are based on a video series and workbook by Andy Stanley, a Pastor at North Point Community Church.

We all have to make choices in life. And sometimes we’re put into situations where knowing which choice to make is very difficult. But if you ask yourself these three questions (4 if you’re a Christian), then you will undoubtedly make better choices in those situations.

The first question you need to ask yourself is: “What is the real reason why I would want to choose each option?” We are all experts at deceiving ourselves and rationalizing our decisions to choose options that we know deep down aren’t the best ones to choose. Do you really want to eat everything on your plate even though you’re full because there are starving children in Africa so it’s not right for you to waste food? Or is it really because you like the taste of it? Do you want to tell your friend that you can’t help them move because you really have something else more important to do? Or is it because you just don’t want to do the work?

When you are faced with a decision to make, ask yourself what the real reason for your choice would be. I’m not saying that this will guarantee that you’ll definitely choose the best option if you ask yourself this question – but at least you won’t be lying to yourself about it anymore which is a good start.

The next questions to ask is: “What is the story I want to be able to tell?” When you have a decision to make – especially a big one – think about what the probable result will be months and years down the road. How do you want to be able to tell that story?

As time passes in our lives, all events no matter how big and important they seemed while they were happening, get boiled down to a few sentences in the story of our lives. If you’ve made poor choices in the past, if you were to tell your story to someone you’d probably gloss over those pretty quickly, leave out the details about the poor choices you made, or be somewhat ashamed, embarrassed or regretful about them. Those aren’t fun stories to tell…

When we tell our stories, we want to be able to tell good stories. We want to tell stories that make us look like good people, where we had adversities but overcame them because of the good choices we made. So think about what your story will be like depending on the option you choose before you make your decisions and choose the one that will result in a story you will want to tell.

The third question you need to ask yourself when faced with a decision to make is: “Is there a tension that needs my attention?” Many times when we are about to make a decision to choose one option rather than the other(s), we’ll feel a little uncomfortable about it for some reason. Maybe your conscience is nagging you about it for some reason, or you don’t feel quite right about one little aspect of that option, or it just doesn’t feel quite right.  Pay attention to that tension you’re experiencing – it may be because that’s not the best option for you to choose.

When you feel a tension about a particular option, pay attention to it! Don’t just dismiss it and move on. Stop and dwell on it for a second and let it get as big as it can get. If after you dwell on it for a little while, you don’t feel right about it then that should give you an idea of whether or not that’s the right option for you to choose. Or maybe after you dwell on it for a bit, you realize it’s really no big deal or you just need a little more information to ease that tension. Either way, in order to make the best choice you can, you must pay attention to any tension you feel before you make your choice.

Lastly, if you are a Christian, there is another question you should ask yourself. This one can be a little dangerous though because it may cause you to do things that you would otherwise not have done, and that may seem strange to non-Christians. This question is: “What would be most honoring to God?”

When you ask this question, you are really getting to the heart of being able to make the best decision possible. Our lives as Christians are dedicated to being as much like Christ as possible, more and more each day. We are to be obedient to God in all our thoughts and actions. Obviously, we fail at that pretty often since we’re not perfect. But our goal is to strive for perfection nonetheless. So when you ask this question, you may find that it would be most honoring to God to do something that you would not have done otherwise. Maybe if your decision is about where to go on vacation, when you ask this question, the thought about the single mother you met in church the other day. The one who just lost her job because her car broke down and she didn’t have the money to get it fixed so she couldn’t get to work and you overheard praying for help from God to help her with her finances so she could get food and clothes for her kids, get a new job, and fix her car. Maybe you’d realize that it would be most honoring to God to give her an anonymous gift of the money you were going to go on vacation with and skip your fancy getaway vacation this year and just spend some more time with your family and friends during your vacation instead.

Most non-Christians would think that was crazy – nice, but crazy! Even many Christians would likely be surprised. But God would be proud and would undoubtedly bless you in ways you couldn’t imagine. You’d have a good story to tell, and the single mother would have an even better one, and both stories would bring glory to God as they should. You would feel good about yourself and have no tension in the decision you made, and you would have no problem admitting to yourself what the real reason you made that choice was.

So the next time you have a decision to make – especially a big one – stop and ask yourself these questions first. They will help guide you towards making more good decisions, and your life and the lives of others will be better because of them. 

Free Will

I just wrote a post on another blog I write in regarding free will, and my justification for why I believe we have free will includes references to God. So if you're interested, check it out!  =)

http://vance-iwonder.blogspot.com/2012/08/free-will.html