Don’t Waste Your Temptation

Approximate Reading Time: 5 minutes

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We all find moments where we love sin more than God. Our broken world is constantly encouraging us to indulge in these desires, insisting they’re good because they make us happy. Yet as Christians, we dread moments of temptation because we more often give in than run to God. Is it possible that temptation, though never welcome, can at least serve a purpose?

Dread vs joy

Think of the sin you regularly struggle to fight. Yelling at the kids? Looking at porn? Being jealous or bitter about money and items you don’t have? Perhaps something else?

When the desire to sin arrives, we are often of two minds. We want to give in, yet we hate that we want it. God is clear that we can’t give in to it, yet He’s equally clear that temptation itself isn’t something to dread.

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4)

As God’s former enemies who were redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ, we love bringing glory and honor to God. It’s that very desire that makes us hate sin in the first place. And though it’s hard to acknowledge, one of the greatest ways we glorify God is through our temptation. We don’t need to view temptation as a requirement to sin, but our opportunity to see how much we need Christ.

Let’s discuss how.

Temptation shows our weakness

Pride is a vicious thing. It led to humanity’s fall into sin, it’s the cause of Israel’s constant turning away from God, and it is often at the root of every sin we place on Christ. The idea that we know best, that we can define what’s good for us, blinds us to God’s truth.

By elevating ourselves like that, we too quickly forget how weak we truly are. We drift further from God, making an exception here and there, not realizing how much we’re neglecting our spiritual walk. We continue each day living for ourselves more and more, and pursuing God less and less.

But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. (James 1:14)

Temptation comes and BAM! We jump into it with both feet. We give in to whatever we’re certain will make us happy. Why? Often, up to that point, we’ve been harboring something in our lives that we won’t surrender to God, holding on to it because we’re too proud to let it go. We let our pride create desires to satisfy our selves.

Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. (James 1:15)

The difficult part is that what we’re lusting after is probably not even connected to the temptation we just gave in to. We yelled at the kids because we’d been harboring bitterness about our job. We take a quick peek at an Instagram model after being too tired to read our Bible in the morning. We give in to our weaknesses in a big way because we’ve been giving in to them in small ways for quite some time, it just wasn’t noticeable until now.

And that’s what makes temptation so valuable. No one likes being tempted, and we especially don’t like the devastation left from giving in to it. Yet temptation does one very important thing: it shows just how much of our lives are centered around ourselves, and how little power we actually have over our own desires.

That moment of temptation is a mirror, not just showing our current state of pride and rebellion but tracing a line through everything we’ve been doing that brought us to that moment. Temptation isn’t a death sentence, but our final opportunity to run to the only one who can fight it. In the face of temptation, our weakness becomes all too clear.

Temptation shows our need for Christ

And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. (2 Corinthians 12:9)

We are glorified through our strength to resist temptation. Christ is glorified when we acknowledge that we can’t fight it. When we acknowledge our weakness, we aren’t just admitting that we’re weak at that moment. We have to accept that we’ve been giving in to weakness on a regular basis.

Temptation requires 100% strength to overcome. When we think we can contribute 50% of that strength, we can only take advantage of a portion of Christ. When we try to add 25%, we’re still assuming that we have any power to contribute. Yet when we face the reality of our weakness, and see that we have absolutely nothing to offer when it comes to truly fighting temptation, rather than just delaying it, we know where that 100% strength comes from.

It’s only through pure reliance on Christ that we can overcome sin. He’s the one who died for it. He’s the one who bought us the victory over it. He is the one we still need to fight, and kill, sin in our lives each day. And He loves doing it.

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15)

Christ knows our struggle. He’s not sitting there, folding His arms with a “holier than thou” look on His face as we wallow in the mud. His heart breaks for us because He knows what we’re going through, and He loves us enough to hate our desire to sin. Not just because it hurts Him, but because it hurts the one He loves: us.

Before Christ, we had no choice but to give in to our sinful lusts. Through His blood, He allows us another choice. But that choice isn’t made through our strength. It can’t be. We can’t possibly desire holiness if we’re working under the misguided idea that Christ is there to cheerlead us as we muster up the strength to overcome sin. Instead, we can choose godliness by falling at the feet of Christ, giving up our lives and letting Him fill us with a desire to pursue Him.

When temptation comes, we will waste it by giving in, regretting it, and promising we’ll do better next time. Even if we manage to prolong our sin, we still waste it by refusing to acknowledge our weakness. If we seek to glorify God through all we do, including facing temptation, then all we need to do is recognize how incapable we are, and how utterly we need Christ to sustain us through each moment of our lives.

And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6)