ROOMMATES, BAD DATES & GREAT MATES
Temptation “. . .the fruit looks so fresh and delicious”
I’m glad you have chosen to be with us today, as we continue our series, Roommates, Bad Dates and Great Mates. Go ahead and pull out your message notes. We have had a lot of fun in this series so far. We kicked it off several weeks ago by looking at what the Bible has to say about sex. Two weeks ago we talked about marriage, and last week we talked about dating. Throughout this series, we have said that God created sex and He wants us to enjoy it, but He created sex to be best experienced between one man and one woman, within the context of a life long committed marriage. And today, we are talking about temptation. We are talking about overcoming the things in our life that test us to step outside God’s will and plan for our life in this area of sex. I recently read about a study that they did about the best tasting ice cream. They did a blind taste test. They brought some people together and they got all kinds of vanilla ice cream. They got gourmet ice cream. Homemade ice cream. Brand name ice cream and even the price saver cheapo ice creams and they did the taste test to find out what factor made ice cream taste better. What they determined was that the number one determining factor in the taste of ice cream and what made people like it, it wasn’t the price of it. It didn’t matter if it was gourmet or brand name, and it wasn’t if it was homemade or not. The number one determining factor was the percentage of fat in the ice cream. In other words, the more lard that was in the ice cream, the more people seemed to like it. Now, isn’t that one of the cruel ironies of life. Like the things that seem to be the most tempting, the things that seem to be the most desirable are often the things that in the long run are the worst for us. For instance, why can’t fried chicken, which happens to be my favorite food, be as good for you as an apple. I have never heard a doctor say—a fried chicken leg a day will keep the doctor away. And the reason they say that is because if you had fried chicken every morning for breakfast, it would probably keep the doctor nearby because your cholesterol would shoot up. I don’t know, but I guess I have to settle for apples. But see, this is the thing about temptation and about giving into temptation. It tastes good initially. And it feels good for a moment. But later, when we see that we have been tricked and when we realize what we have given up when we get into that temptation, we regret it. When we give in to temptation, we always regret it because in the long run we always give up something greater for instant gratification right now. But today we are talking about sexual temptation. And it is something that every one of us faces on a daily basis. I have discovered that if someone tells you that they do not struggle with sexual temptation that this person is either lying to you or they are dead. One or the other. But you are not alive and not tempted by sex. So under the right circumstances, anyone can fall into sexual temptation. Look at our next verse. It’s our memory verse for the day and we will actually have Scripture memory cards after the service. This is a great verse for you to take with you, pick up one of those cards and to memorize. Let’s read this verse together. This is what it says. “If you think you are standing strong, be careful, for you too may fall into the same sin. But remember that the temptations that come into your life are no different from what other experience.” See, there are two truths here in this opening verse that we need to pay attention to.
1. We all face the same temptations. Everyone here struggles with the same thing. It’s not just you. We all face temptations.
2. All of us, no matter who we are, no matter how strong we think we are, under the right circumstances, are susceptible to falling to sexual temptation in our life. For some of us, it’s the temptation of sex before we get married. Maybe it’s in a dating relationship. Maybe it’s a one night stand. But for some of us, it’s a temptation to have an affair, and to cheat on a spouse. Maybe our marriage isn’t going so well. Or maybe, someone exciting just came into your life. For some of us, it’s the temptation to have a sexual fantasy life. This usually involves an addiction to pornography, especially internet pornography and it is tied into masturbation. And all of these temptation, to step outside of God’s will, will cause us harm.
And giving into sexual temptation puts three very important areas of our life at risk. Three important areas of our life are at risk every time we give into sexual temptations. Those three areas are: our future, you know, our dreams, what we hope will happen in the future. We put that at risk. Our family, our relationships, our marriage, we put that at risk. And then our faith. Our relationship with God. Step outside of His will, that comes between us and God. So we put our faith, our future and our family at risk when we give into temptation. So here’s the question we are asking today: How do I overcome the sexual temptation that I face every day? How can I get victory in this area so that I can experience God’s best in my life? Well, to get some insight on temptation here today, we are going to look at the very first story of temptation from the Bible. We are going to look at the third chapter of the Bible, we are going to look at the first man and the first woman facing the very first temptation, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It starts off like this: God created Adam and Eve and put them in a perfect environment, in the Garden of Eden. And it was perfect. It was absolutely perfect. There was no sin. There was no pain. There was no shame, no regret, no envy, no greed. It was a perfect environment. They had a perfect relationship with God. Adam and Eve talked with God all the time. They had a perfect relationship with each other. They talked to each other all the time. They didn’t fight. They didn’t get mad at each other. It was a perfect relationship, a lot like my marriage. You know, Lori and I never fight. And if you believe that you will believe anything. And then it also said, they had a perfect relationship with nature. They had a perfect relationship with the Garden of Eden. In other words, they didn’t have to toil for their food. The Garden provided everything they needed. There was only one stipulation—God told them they could eat from any tree in the entire Garden of Eden, except, for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That one tree. He gave them this warning, “If you eat of its fruit, you will surely die.” Now, the first question that the people often ask is—why in the world would God put this tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden. Why would He even put it there? Because they could make the wrong decision and they could get into trouble. That’s a big question and it’s a question for another message, and we don’t’ have time to go into all of it today, but the short answer is this. If God didn’t give human beings the opportunity to choose right from wrong, choose good from evil, to choose to follow God or to choose not to follow God, we never would have been free. We would have never had any choices or decisions to make. We never would have really chosen to love God and have a relationship with God. So, God had to give us that freedom. But as our story begins today, the forbidden tree is there. And Adam and Eve are free to do anything that they want in the Garden of Eden except eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This, of course, is where temptation enters into the picture. But for the rest of our time today, Pastor Chris and I are going to look at three steps to overcome sexual temptation. These are three steps that Adam and Eve should have taken in their circumstances in the Garden of Eden.
1. Choose Godly influencers.
You see, we get to choose, for the most part, in our life, we get to choose the influencers that come into our life. And this is what I mean. We get to choose the people who speak into our life. We get to choose who guides our life, who speaks into our life. We also get to choose the images and the sounds that come into our mind and that we receive from the outside. Unfortunately, many of us just let influences enter our life without any question or any resistance. We give up the initiative on this issue and when we don’t intentionally filter the influencers that come into our life, and the things that come into our life, we set ourselves up for a big fall. That’s what Adam and Eve learned the hard way in the Garden of Eden. As the story begins, I want you to pay attention to who Eve is hanging out with in the Garden. Is she hanging out with God? No. Is she hanging out with her husband, Adam? No. She’s hanging out with the serpent, who here represents Satan. Look at what the Bible says in Genesis 3:1. “This is now the serpent was the shrewdest of all of the creatures that the Lord God had made.” Eve is hanging out with Satan on a lovely afternoon in the Garden of Eden. And that’s who she’s with. I hate to tell you, but if you want to overcome temptation, Satan is probably not the best person to be chumming around with in your life. After all, Satan’s nickname is the tempter, and in fact, later on in the Bible, the Bible says that Satan tries to tempt Jesus in much the same way that he tried to tempt Adam and Eve in our story. So here’s Eve’s first problem and it’s a big one. She has someone in her life who is pressuring her to sin. Someone who is asking her to step outside of God’s will for her life and to sin. And, she’s got someone whispering in her ear—it’s okay if you do this. There won’t be any consequences. No one is going to know about it. No one really believes God or believes the Bible anymore anyway, to go ahead and do it. There won’t be any consequences. That’s what she’s dealing with. The first question that we have to ask when we face temptation in our life is—who is whispering I our ear? Who are the people in your life who are the main influencers? Are you hanging out with Christians who care about you and always trying to pull you in and draw you to be closer to God? Are you hanging out with people who are whispering in your ear to step outside of God’s will, who are pulling you away from God? I Corinthians 15:32 says this, “Some say (and who are these “some” that are speaking into your life, these are the influencers that speak into your life) but feast and get drunk for tomorrow we die. Don’t be fooled by those who say such things for bad company will corrupt good character.” You see, bad influencers in your life will always lead you away from God. That’s one of the reasons why we have growth groups here at The Journey. That’s why you will always hear us talking about why it’s important to be in a growth group. We don’t just make it up. We want you to be in a growth group because you need people in your life, influencers in your life, who are pulling you to obey God. Who are pulling you closer to God, not people who are pushing you away from God. That’s why we encourage you, if you are not in a growth group, get into a group so that you can meet people who will draw you closer in your walk with God. Another big question to ask yourself, especially when we are looking at sexual temptation is this: who are you dating? Who are you going out with? Now, we spent a whole message last week on this, and if you missed it, you can pick up a CD in the back, or you can get it at journeyipod.com, so I won’t spend a lot of time on it, but you have to ask yourself—who am I going out with? Because if you are dating someone who is constantly pushing you and pressuring you to be involved sexually, someone who is constantly asking you to step outside of God’s plan and will for your life, you are dating someone you shouldn’t be dating. You need to get out of that relationship. Because in a dating relationship, you need to be with someone who is constantly pulling you into God’s will, who is pulling you to obey God, and not forcing you to step away from God. I want you to notice in the story, Satan is not the only bad influencer that is there with Adam and Eve in the Garden. Our next verse in Chapter 3, verse 6 says this. And this is after the serpent has talked to her and tried to convince her to disobey God. This is what it says. “The woman was convinced. The fruit looked so fresh and delicious and it would make her so wise so she ate some of the fruit.” Now, here’s what catches my attention in this verse. You need to underline this. Where it says—the fruit looked so fresh and delicious. Underline that part. To Eve, the fruit looked so fresh, it looked so delicious. Here’s my question—what in the world was she doing standing so near to the fruit. What was she doing standing and admiring how fresh and delicious it looked? God had told Adam and Eve that the only thing that they couldn’t eat, and if they ate it they would surely die, you would think that they would have put a big rope around that tree and made sure they never went anywhere near it so they wouldn’t be tempted. And here’s Eve. She’s right up next to the fruit. She’s looking at it and she’s actually lusting for the fruit. Now, this is important. Because many of the influencers in our life, they aren’t people. The images and thoughts that we let come into our mind and these images, these thoughts, these sounds are so important, because ultimately what you allow into your mind, what you allow to come into your ears and through your eyes, you will internalize it and it will eventually come out in your actions. Whatever you let come into your mind, will eventually come out in the way that you live and what you do. Proverbs 24:3 says it this way, “Be careful how you think. Your life is shaped by your thoughts.” You see, that is the problem with pornography. A lot of people think that pornography is safe, it’s harmless. Number one, nobody is going to know about it. It’s just something that I do. No one knows about it and it doesn’t hurt anybody. It’s not hurting me. It’s not hurting anybody else. And so we think that it’s safe. We think that it’s harmless. The problem is, it does hurt somebody. It hurts you and it will eventually hurt the people around you, because you see, if you let pornography into your mind, you will become addicted to it. In fact, some studies show that pornography is as addictive, in some cases, as crack cocaine. And you will become addicted to viewing it and ultimately to the masturbation that is connected to it as well, and when you become addicted to it, it is going to distort your view of the opposite gender of what a future spouse should be. It is also going to distort your view about sex is about and what sex is like. It will cripple, and studies show this, it will cripple your ability to carry on a healthy relationship, a healthy dating relationship, and a healthy marriage. And if you never stop letting those images come into your mind, they will eventually destroy your life. Because what starts as a little bit of pornography will inevitably lead to acting out sexually in ways that threaten your future, that threaten your family and that threaten your faith. It threatens your entire life. Listen, if you are struggling with pornography right now, number one, you need to know that you are not alone. There are hundreds of people in this church that struggle with it. I guarantee that there are hundreds of people that are struggling with it. If you are struggling with it and you know that it’s not right, and you know that it hurts you, don’t play around with it any more. You need to walk away from it. You need to get it out of your life. For some of us, we are not strong enough by ourselves, to do it by ourselves. We need help. This weekend at This Week at The Journey there are going to be a couple of resources in there. We are going to put some articles on pornography. We will also put an online resources, an accountable site program that you can download for free into your computer and for someone you trust, you can have an accountability partner that is able to hold you accountable for what you view on the internet. But sometimes it’s too hard to break even in that. If you are serious about wanting to step away from this, and you aren’t able just to stop, and some of us can just stop and we know we can just stop now, but for some of us, we are addicted to it, we are caught in the middle of it. If you need help, email us, write it on your Connection Card. Nobody is going to see it except our pastors and you aren’t alone, and we will find a way that you can get help that you need to get away from this, because it will destroy your life. You see, a lot of times as Christians, we will go to church. We will be in a growth group. We will read our Bible every day and we will pray, but we will still allow ungodly influencers into our lives and then we will wonder why we are struggling with sing. We will ask God—why don’t You help me overcome this? That’s sort of like someone who wants to be really healthy. They take their health seriously. So they exercise religiously and they are on a great diet. And every night when they go home, they take a syringe full of deadly poison and inject it straight into their bloodstream. And they are sick, and they wonder why they are sick. They are wondering why the exercise and the diet doesn’t help them. Let me tell you folks, this isn’t rocket science. If you want to get better. What do you have to do? You have to remove the poison before the exercise and the diet do any good. And here’s what we do. So many of us are standing right next to the temptation. Here’s the temptation and we are standing there just like Eve in the Garden of Eden and—oh, it looks so fresh and delicious and I know I shouldn’t, but we are keeping it right in our face all of the time. Then we have influencers in our life that are speaking over our shoulder and are saying—go ahead, you can do it just once. No one will know. There are no consequences. No one believes the Bible anyway. Go ahead and grab it. And when we do that, we are going to fall, every time. You see, God wants to help us overcome temptation, but He can’t help us overcome temptation until we take the step to remove those bad influencers from our life, and instead bringing people and bringing habits into our life that will build us up.
2. Choose to trust God.
To overcome temptation, I must first choose my influencers. The next step is to choose to trust God. Listen, it never starts out as a choice between the right and the wrong choice. It always starts out as a choice as who to believe, who to trust. Let’s up our story about Adam and Eve in Genesis, it’s verse 3 to 5, and Eve is speaking, “It’s only the fruit from the center of the Garden that we are not allowed to eat. God says we must not eat it or even touch it or we will die. You won’t die, the serpent hissed, God knows that your eyes will be opened when you eat it. You will become just like God knowing everything both good and evil.” Let’s look at what happened here. God said, you may freely eat of all of the fruit, or from all these trees, except this one tree or you will surely die. The serpent says, “God’s lying. You’re not going to die. He just doesn’t want you to become like Him.” Now you see, Adam and Eve have a choice immediately. They have a choice whether to believe God and to trust God who has given them everything, including their very lives, or to trust the serpent, the usurper of truth, who has taken God’s truth and distorted it. They have a choice to trust God with all the freedom that He has given them. There must have been hundreds of different trees with fruit on it. They had to decide to trust that freedom or trust the serpent, when he ignores that freedom and picks out the one thing that God says they cannot have. They have a choice whether to trust God, when He says “you will surely die if you eat of this fruit” or to trust the serpent who says “you won’t die. God is lying.” You see, Adam and Eve had a choice about who to believe, who to trust. We also have a choice whether to trust God or something else. Now, listen to me for a second. At the heart of every temptation is the question—God can you be trusted? And every time that we give into that temptation, what we are saying is—no, God, you cannot be trusted. Now the thing is, what we see, or feel or hear, it often sounds that it feels pretty good, doesn’t it? It is never a choice between something drastic, between an awful option and a good option, it’s somewhere in the middle. For instance, imagine if someone said to you—I think you should have sex with that women because your wife will find out, it will destroy your marriage, it will destroy your family, plus you will get a sexually transmitted disease. Okay. I mean, no, temptation doesn’t work that way. It is more like this. That woman is so hot. She is so into you. It would be so much fun to spend one night with her. I mean, look, no one knows you around here. No one is going to find out. It’s a one-time thing. Why don’t you live a little? Why don’t you go for it? I mean, that’s more realistic and appealing, doesn’t it? But the results are the same. No matter how it is set. You see, the devil will entice you with half truths, with distortion. He knows that an outrageous lie will never work. He knows the complete truth will never work. So he works the middle ground. He is the great manipulator. You see, he will always emphasize the pleasures, so even if we know it’s wrong, it becomes hard to resist. For instance, he will emphasize the pleasures of drinking, but he won’t talk about the poor judgment that will occur or even the alcoholism that may occur. He will emphasize the pleasures of sex outside of marriage, but he won’t emphasize the results of broken hearts, broken lives and even disease and AIDS. He will emphasize the pleasure and excitement of elicit affair but not the broken marriage, and the destruction of the family. You see, the devil will always attack the truthfulness of God, and God’s motives, so we will begin to doubt God Himself. The devil does his best work when he gets us to think that God is the one that’s lying. And that’s when we are most likely to make the wrong choice. There is a writer named Henry Morrison and he said, “Sin always begins by questioning either the Word of God, or the goodness of God, or both.” Listen, we have to decide what is true, what to believe, what God says or what we hear from someone else or somewhere else. Of course, we have to know what God’s Word says, but once we do, then we can face temptation and we can put our trust in the truth of His Word. Now, you may ask, why trust God? Well, let’s look at our next verse from Numbers 22:19, it says, and let’s read this out loud together. It says, “God is not a man that He should lie. He is not a human that He should change His mind. Has He ever spoken and failed to act? Has He ever promised and not carried it through?” God does not lie. God does not renege. God can be trusted. But when we fail to trust God’s truth, there are consequences. Sin has its consequences, especially when we step outside of God’s plan for our sex lives. Let’s look at what happened to Adam and Eve. When they decided not to trust God, everything changed. Immediately, after eating of the forbidden fruit, they felt shame for the very first time. And they hid their bodies from each other. Immediately, their relationship changed. Then they felt fear for the first time, and they hid from God. So their relationship between them and God changed. Then as we all know, the relationship between them and the Garden changed, because they were expelled. They were removed from Paradise. And from them on, they had to slave and toil for their food. Childbirth became extremely painful and death became a reality. Everything changed for the worse. When we fail to trust God, we also suffer the consequences. Paul says it this way in Galatians 6:8, he says, “Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful desires will harvest the consequences of decay and death. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit.” What are the consequences of decay and death? We know a lot of the physical consequences like disease, but there are serious spiritual and emotional and relational consequences when we act apart from God’s plan for our sex lives. Like Adam and Eve were separated from God, and it also damages our relationship with each other. Look, there is always more at stake when it comes to temptation than what we hear or what we are led to believe. We have to remember every time there are three things at stake—our future, our family and our faith. Listen, people get hurt severely when they think it’s only about them. I will do this one thing and it will only affect me. It’s not true. There are serious consequences to giving into sexual temptation. There are serious consequences if you decide to have sex before you are married. There are serious consequences if you decide to have an illicit affair. There are serious consequences if you decide to let pornography into your mind. And these consequences will spoil your future, your faith and your family. But let’s look at the last part of Galatians the end of verse 8 of chapter 6, it says, “Those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit.” You must decide to please God and nothing pleases God more than when we put our trust in Him. That’s why we must choose to trust God. We must choose to trust God’s Word. We must choose to trust in the truth. God can be trusted.
3. Choose God’s best
To overcome temptation, I have to (1) use Godly influencers, (2) I have to choose to trust God and then (3) I have to choose God’s best. You see, in our story, Adam and Eve are in a lot of trouble, right now, because (1) they didn’t choose Godley influencers. Instead they are chumming around, hanging around with Satan in the Garden of Eden, and he is whispering in their ear to disobey God. So that’s one strike against them. Then, also, not only do they have him in their life, they are hanging around the temptation that they know they shouldn’t be hanging around with, so they are letting imagines comes into their life that are tempting them to act upon that. Then (2) the second mistake they made, they don’t trust God. Satan comes into their life and begins to whisper lies into their ear, and that’s like us listening to what other people say, listening to what the media says, listening to what movies tell us when it comes to sex, and they begin to believe Satan instead of God. So they have two strikes against them. Let me tell you, if you are in this situation and you have bad influencers in your life, and you don’t believe God but believe other people, then you are going to fall to temptation, there is no way around it. But even if you do (1) and (2) right and you have good influencers and you believe God, you can still fall to temptation. You still have to choose wisely because temptation never goes away. That means, taking personal responsibility for our actions and for the decisions that we make. You see, too often we try to play what is called “the blame game” and we will do anything to justify our actions. We will say—well, everyone else does it. Or, I couldn’t help myself. Or, I’m addicted to it. Or, it’s this person’s fault and not my fault and we will play the blame game to justify what we have done. But the problem is, it didn’t work for Adam and Eve and it doesn’t work for us. Look at what happened with Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. This is after they have eaten of the fruit, they weren’t supposed to, God confronts them in the Garden, and this is what Adam says. “It was the woman You gave me who brought me the fruit and I ate it. Then the Lord God asked the woman, how could you do such a thing. The serpent tricked me, she replied, that’s why I ate it.” I want you to get this. We can justify anything. God comes and the first thing He does is ask Adam. I imagine he was afraid. Maybe He was thinking, maybe Adam will be valiant and He will stand up for me. What does Adam do? He said—she did it. She’s the one that gave it to me. I imagine he sees this look on God’s face that says—I’m not buying that. And then he blames God. Did you notice that? He says—it’s the woman that You gave me. She tempted me with the fruit, but You put her in my life. So this is everybody’s fault but my own. It’s Eve’s fault. It’s Your fault. So God turns to Eve and what does she say? It’s not my fault, the serpent tricked me. He was cunning and he messed me up. And so they tried to pass the blame along. But the problem is, justification never removes the consequences of stepping outside of God’s will. No matter how you justify what you have done, it doesn’t remove the shame. It doesn’t remove the guilt. It doesn’t remove the emptiness, or the brokenness or the broken relationship that results from stepping outside of God’s will. Ultimately, we have to carry on our shoulders the consequences for stepping outside of God’s will, for falling to temptation. You see, in every temptation we face, in every decision in life, there are ultimately two options. We are either choosing God’s best or settling for something less. We are either taking hold of God’s best or we are settling for something less in our life. Proverbs says it this way. Proverbs 14:12. “There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death.” You see, there is a path that looks so good, it looks so fresh and delicious and it seems like everyone else is going down that path and people are whispering in your ear—you ought to go down that path, too. You ought to take hold of the fruit. There are no consequences. It’s okay. Listen, nobody believes the Bible anymore anyway. Nobody is following God. But the Bible says, if it’s not God’s way, it’s a path to death. It’s leading you to death. We have to choose, either the path to instant gratification or God’s path to true gratification. You see, in God’s eyes, it’s not about denying us pleasure. God wants us to enjoy sex. God wants us to have the most pleasurable life that we can have. But for God, He understands it is not instant gratification, it’s delayed gratification. You see, choosing to delay gratification for the greater reward is a sign of maturity. For instance, if you have an infant, a new born baby, and you are on the subway with this infant and this infant is hungry and wants it now and starts crying, you can’t reason with an infant. You can’t say it. You know it wouldn’t work to feed now. You have to wait until we get home. It will be better for you. Trust me, it will be better for us and you will have greater rewards if you will wait. You can try to reason with an infant, but what are they going to do? They are going to cry. They want it now. They don’t want to wait. They want it now. But as we mature, as we grow up, and you aren’t born with this, but as you mature into it, you develop the ability to say no now in order to experience something better later on. It’s a sign of maturity. When I give up a small benefit now for the greater reward later on. You see delayed gratification is multiplied gratification. See, that’s the decision you and I have every time we stand face to face with sexual temptation. We can either say yes to instant gratification and when we do we put our future, our family and our faith on the line. We are at risk when we say yes to instant gratification. Or we can say yes to God and experience His best for our life for our relationships and for our sex life. The next time you are standing face to face with sexual temptation, I want you to say this to the temptation, out loud, when that temptation comes up and you fall into it over and over again, or you are about to fall to it for the first time, I want you to say this out loud. I want you to say—temptation, address the temptation, call it temptation, temptation, you will not take my future. You will not take my family. You will not take my faith. Temptation, you will not take my future. You will not take my family. You will not take my faith. Now, I want you to say this with me. I want you to repeat what I say. Temptation, you will not take my future. You will not take my family. You will not take my faith. The Bible says that when we take that step, and we step forward and we say this, we are fighting temptation and we are trying to honor God, the Bible says that God will step into that situation and He will give us the strength we need to overcome that temptation. But we have to choose to trust God. We have to choose God’s best. I Corinthians 10:13 says, “God is faithful. He will keep the temptation from becoming so strong that you can’t stand up against it. When you are tempted, He will show you a way out so that you will not give into it.” Let’s pray together.
Father, You know that we face temptation every day of our lives. We face this temptation in the sexual area of our life. The temptation to step outside of Your will, whether it is to have sex in a dating relationship, to have a one night stand, to commit adultery, get involved in pornography and the addiction that is there. We are tempted every day. God, when we are tempted, we are risking our future, our family and our faith. We are putting those at risk and on the line. Father, today, we pray that you will give us the discipline to bring positive influencers into our lives. Give us the wisdom to trust that what You say in the Bible is true and is best for our life, and the courage to choose what You say is best for our life in every situation, when we face any temptation. Father, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Help us to overcome and emerge victorious against temptation with a stronger future, with a stronger family and with a stronger faith. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
