June 7
“Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.” (1 Peter 5:8-9)
Imagery is a great tool for helping us refuse temptation immediately, decisively, and persistently. We have touched on this in earlier days, but it is worth repeating. For example, when you are tempted say by lust, imagine a demon hovering over the edge of a cliff with a sheet that has lewd images on it that he waves in front of us, like a bull fighter trying to lure a bull into charging. Unless we look carefully, all we see is the lewd images, and when we move toward them (i.e. when a person looks at pornography) the demon jerks away the sheet and we fall off the cliff. If we knew that there was nothing there but a demon dangling an empty temptation in front of us and that stumbling off a cliff will be the inevitable result, we will have a better chance at refusing the temptation. Even better, if you think of all the people in the pornographic images burning in unquenchable fire, in hell, with burns and boils on their skin and worms eating their dead and shriveled bodies, the appeal of pornography is greatly diminished. Our job is to so firmly replace the images of sin with repulsive images that make the sin repulsive to us that resisting and refusing the temptation become easier, even a habit.
Keeping in mind the devil and his schemes is helpful also. Satan is trying to advance his agenda. We are like guards, guarding a bank or a stash of precious jewels. These precious jewels are our faith, our good works, our testimony to others, our usefulness, our children and families and loved ones. When we sin, it is like we are allowing Satan to put a hood over our heads and steal valuables from us. Peter’s illustration is very graphic, as we can envision someone or even ourselves being devoured by a vicious, powerful, uncontrollable, and hateful beast if we let our guard down and give in to sin.
What is key to all of these prayers and techniques we have been talking about in order to boldly and immediately refuse temptation? Paul used an illustration of flaming missiles being extinguished by something (Ephesians 6:16). Do you recall what it is that extinguishes the flaming missiles (or fiery darts) of the evil one? First let’s ask the question, “What are the flaming missiles?” Are they not temptations of various kinds? Perhaps trials or circumstances designed to get us to stumble and fall into sin, but clearly their aim is to get us to sin, to bring about temptations or circumstances that will tempt us or harm us. So the picture is one of Satan shooting flaming arrows at us, trying to deal a lethal wound to us. What is it that Paul says combats these missiles?
This is a very important point, and we will continue this tomorrow.