One time I heard a preacher in the pulpit give several examples of how he thought we should overcome temptation. “Suppose you have a problem with alcohol,” he said.

“You go down to the liquor store and purchase a bottle of wine. You get back in your car, remove the cover of the bottle, and lift it to your lips. Suddenly, you are aware that you are being tempted!”

Well, I guess so!

But he continued.

“Suppose you have a problem with drugs, and you contact your drug dealer and purchase a supply of the strongest stuff. You return to your apartment, get out your syringe, heat up the mixture, and just as you are ready to plunge the needle into your arm, you realize that you are being tempted. What do you do?”

Perhaps one of our biggest problems with temptation has been that we wait until the times described by this preacher and then try to decide what to do. But by then it’s too late! If sin begins in the mind, in allowing our trust and dependence in Christ to be broken, then the temptation was presented and given in to long before.

If sins are not just wrong actions, but wrong thoughts and plans and desires as well (as we have noticed in the last few chapters), then the temptation was successful even before the trip to the liquor store or the drug dealer. The temptation had already become sin at the point of consenting in the mind. Planning and acting out the sin followed, and were simply the inevitable results of the sin that had already taken place.

Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, page 60, tells us:

“The season of temptation, under which, it may be, one falls into grievous sin, does not create the evil that is revealed, but only develops or makes manifest that which was hidden and latent in the heart. As a man ‘thinketh in his heart, so is he:’ for out of the heart ‘are the issues of life.’ Proverbs 23:7; 4:23.”

If you find yourself flunking an examination in calculus, the real problem took place when you failed to learn your multiplication tables or neglected to solve the daily assignments. If you find yourself unexpectedly overdrawn at the bank, the real problem took place when you didn’t write down the checks you sent out or didn’t add or subtract correctly.

If you find yourself drowning in the deep end of the swimming pool, the real problem is that you haven’t learned how to stay afloat in the shallow end first.

The strong have used all sorts of techniques to try to overcome sin at the time of the temptation. The weak try the same techniques and find that they make no difference in the out-come. The problem is not finding the right words to say or prayer to pray or song to sing at the time of the temptation. The problem is finding the Source of power, so that when the temptation comes the Spirit of the Lord lifts up a standard against the enemy in your behalf.

Any method that tries to force right behavior at the actual moment of temptation is going to focus your attention on yourself, and that is a dead-end street right there. The only way anyone ever overcomes sin and the devil is through looking to Jesus–not to self. Even the strong have discovered that when they are separated from Christ, all they can hope to control is the outward action. They cannot change the desire of their hearts.

When Jesus came to His disciples in the Garden and found them sleeping, He said to them,

“Rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.” Luke 22:46.

Were they being tempted at that time? Well, they were being tempted to sleep. But the thing that set them up for defeat when temptations came, was the fact that they gave in to the temptation to neglect available power from above. And because of their neglect, when the crisis came, they all forsook Him and fled.

Hebrews 4:16 tells us to

“come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”

Too often we have read instead that we are to come boldly to the throne of grace in time of need. It’s true that Jesus always accepts us whenever we turn to Him, but only by seeking His mercy at the throne of grace now will we have grace to help when the time of need comes. He always offers forgiveness from sin–but if we are delivered from sinning, it will be because we have come to Him for His power before the season of temptation ever arrives.

We gain the victory by learning to abide in Him day by day, and moment by moment.