Overcoming Temptation 2
“How the Holy Spirit Helps us Overcome”
by Pastor Donny Granberry
Last Sunday night we studied:
• How to cope with temptation
• That Victory over temptation is possible
• The sources of temptation
o Our own carnal nature
o The world
o Evil Spirits
• The Battlefield of temptation
o The Mental Battle
o The Spiritual Battle
We ran out of time before we covered: “Never say “I can’t Resist”
4 Things a Christian can never say when he is tempted:
1. “I am being tempted by God”
James 1:13
“For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone.”
2. I am the only one who has ever been tempted like this.
1 Corinthians 10:13
“… no temptation has seized you except what is common to man.”
3. This temptation is too strong for me to resist.
1 John 4:4
“The one who is in you is greater than the one that is in the world.”
4. There is no way out of this temptation but to yield to it.
1 Corinthians 10:13
“But when you are tempted, God will provide a way out so that you can stand up underneath it.
Tonight we will look at “How the Holy Spirit helps us triumph over Temptation.”
1 Corinthians 10:13 NIV
No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
Tonight I want to give you some practical steps you can take to win the battle over temptation.
1. Be Filled With The Spirit
If we as Christian’s desire help to be an over-comer, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
I am not just speaking of the Spirit of Christ that comes in at conversion; I am speaking of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.
The Holy Spirit will empower you to have victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil.
If we desire to have a spirit filled life, we need the experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit will literally change your life.
Acts 4:8-15
8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: "Rulers and elders of the people! 9 If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, 10 then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. 11 He is "`the stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone.’ 12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." 13 When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. 14 But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say.
The Holy Spirit will be a helpmate to us to enable us to overcome temptation and sin.
o Live by the spirit, and you will not fulfill the desires of the sinful nature. (Gal. 5:16)
o Since we live by the spirit, let us keep in step with the spirit.
(Gal. 5:25)
To overcome temptation, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit, we also need to …
2. Avoid Temptation
A very simple way to overcome temptation is to avoid those things that tempt us to sin.
Matthew 6:13 (The Lord’s Prayer)
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
We can ask God to deliver us from temptation, but then we must seek to avoid the same.
Romans 13:13-14
Make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lust.
MeMe & PaPaw – The Bloody Bucket. Roy I can’t go there.
That is like giving a recovering drug addict a job in a Meth Lab.
We don’t just need to avoid places of temptation; we need to flee from them.
(Joseph fled from Potiphar’s wife)
To overcome temptation, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit, we also need to avoid temptation, and we need to …
3. Clothe Yourself in Christ
Romans 13:14
Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful man.
How can you clothe yourself in Christ?
Putting on the FULL “armor of God.”
The armor of the spirit includes, “truth, righteousness, salvation. preparedness, faith, the Word of God, and Prayer in the Holy Spirit.”
When we wear the FULL armor of God, the Bible tells us we are able to stand against any temptation.
To overcome temptation, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit, we also need to avoid temptation, and you need to clothe yourself in Christ, and we need to …
4. Learn the Secret of Resisting and Yielding.
When we face temptation, we all must yield, but the difference in the life of the believer is that we yield to the Holy Spirit.
If you yield to temptation, you commit sin, but if you yield to the spirit, you overcome temptation.
As a Christian, to yield to temptation you will have to make two bad choices.
1. You will have to yield to the temptation
2. You will have to resist the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
Because the Holy Spirit dwells in us, we will always have to resist the Holy Spirit before we can sin.
You will have to push your way through conviction to yield to sin.
Your spirit man will resist sin while your carnal man will resist the spirit, and the strongest one will win.
Which is the strongest, the one that gets the most exercise.
RESIST & YIELD
o RESISTING
To overcome the sin, we must resist the temptation.
We all understand what resisting is.
Resisting - is a conscious freewill choice that we make not to do something.
Galatians 5:22-23
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control.
But Pastor, you just don’t understand, I can’t resist.
Can’t or wont? Self control is a fruit of the spirit.
o YIELDING
The most powerful tactic to overcoming temptation is yielding, to the Holy Spirit.
You must yield yourself to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
Someone once asked the question, “How come opportunity only comes knocking, but temptation will beat your door down?”
We spoke this morning of the voice that count’s, with Elijah on Mt. Horeb.
The still small voice was the voice of God.
James 4:7-8
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you.
When we yield to God, “the law of the spirit of life” (Romans 8:2) takes over in our will and in our life.
When we are filled with the spirit, we learn to walk in the spirit, and when we walk in the spirit we will not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
Walking in the spirit is being in step, or being in line with the Holy Spirit in our life.
We looked at The Apostle Peter and John, after they were filled with the Holy Ghost, it not only changed their boldness, it not only changed the way they saw things, it changed their walk.
We can be victorious through temptation through the power of the Holy Spirit that helps us to triumph over temptation.
