Not My Strength

Although we as Christians should know that we are saved by faith and not by works, we often fall into the trap of trying to pursue sanctification by works. We think that if we just get the right combination of avoiding tempting situations and quoting enough Scripture we’ll be able to keep from sinning. We make our list of rules: don’t watch certain TV shows; don’t look at the magazines lining the checkout aisle; don’t buy ice cream and candy; put Covenant Eyes on the computer; avoid restaurants that serve alcohol; and so on. While those can all be good things, they are limited in their ability to stop the temptations that assail us. As the Apostle Paul wrote:

“If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulation—‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’ (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (Col. 2:20-23).

The problem with external rules is that they do nothing to change the heart. “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander” (Matt. 15:19). When rules and regulations don’t work, we may move on to memorizing Scripture:

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? …So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19-20). “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions” (Rom. 6:12). “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation He will also provide a way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13).

Scripture memory too is a good thing. However, if you’re like me, you may start thinking “OK, when temptation comes I’ll just quote five verses and I’ll be fine.” That is doomed to fail because you are relying on your own strength again. The same is true of the “power of positive thinking”— “I am dead to sin;” “I am a new creation;” “I can say no to sin.” Even though those things are true, simply adopting them as a new mantra doesn’t automatically stop temptation in its tracks.

Though I have done all of the above, the one thing that was most helpful to me has been to acknowledge to God my complete inadequacy to resist temptation and pray that He would guard me from its presence and power. It didn’t work to wait for temptation to come before trying to remember to pray. Rather, I asked that He would keep me away from sources of temptation. I am still a work in progress. We’re all still works in progress.

Jesus taught His disciples to pray “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:13). God is the only One who can answer that prayer. But again, we can’t just mindlessly recite the Lord’s Prayer every day and expect it to make a difference. Prayer is just one small part of a lifestyle of depending on God’s strength and not our own. The fact is, there is no five-step program to overcome sin. We can pursue all kinds of spiritual disciplines and yet still be enslaved to habitual sins. And different things may be helpful to different people.

We will all struggle with sin in varying degrees as long as we live. It is a lifelong process of being transformed by the renewing of our minds (Rom. 12:2) and becoming conformed to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29). Sanctification is God’s work just as much as justification was His work. But we can trust that “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).

“Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 4:6b).

© 2020 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images are copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Keep Fighting

As happens to me periodically, I’ve received similar messages from multiple sources in recent weeks. The first source was Tim Keller’s book Prayer. He was talking about the Lord’s Prayer and the fact that the provision of needs and deliverance from temptation are daily prayers, not just occasional or spur of the moment prayers. Soon after that Ron Thomas made a similar comment during his Sunday school lesson on Genesis 3, as he urged us to frequently ask ourselves “Where are you?” Most recently, I read John Piper’s short book Sanctification in the Everyday, in which he writes about fighting sin. He says that he learned to fight sexual temptation with aggressive, conscious, daily opposition. However:

“What I realized was that I was not applying any of this same gospel vigilance—what Peter O’Brien calls ‘continuous, sustained, strenuous effort’ against my most besetting sins. I was strangely passive and victim-like. I had the unarticulated sense (mistakenly) that these sins (unlike sexual lust) should be defeated more spontaneously.”

I’ve found the same to be true in my life. Until these themes converged upon me, I’d never really considered the need to pray regularly for deliverance from evil even though that was part of the Lord’s Prayer. At some subconscious level I believed that frequent repetition of the Lord’s Prayer or any other prayer would become rote and useless. But, like Piper, I also mistakenly believed that temptation didn’t need to be fought until it arrived, so I wasn’t terribly proactive about it. I had a vague idea of what I would do when temptation came, but that’s about it. I’ve repeatedly read 1 Corinthians 10:13 (ESV), “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” For whatever reason, I assumed that meant I didn’t need to look for the way of escape until the temptation came.

I began to learn the truth over the last year out of a sense of desperation as I pleaded with the Lord to protect me from temptation, because I knew I was too weak to fight it myself. These recent messages have helped to solidify and verbalize what experience has shown to be true. It also gives fresh meaning to Jesus’s words in Matthew 7:7-11, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you… How much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” And James 4:2, “You do not have, because you do not ask.” When a child asks for something that they want and need, parents are delighted to provide. So also God wants to provide for us, but He won’t force us to take something we don’t yet want or know that we need.

God wants us to be victorious over sin, but so long as we are trusting in ourselves to fight temptation when it comes, we will continue to be disappointed. We have a real enemy who wants to keep us feeling helpless and defeated, so we need the power of our Savior to set us free. He’s already done the hard work of defeating sin and death, but we have to learn a daily reliance upon His strength rather than our own. It’s not often that God provides instantaneous deliverance from a temptation, though there are those who have found freedom from drugs and alcohol and the like. Most of the time it is a slow growth in learning to depend on Him, and that doesn’t come until we realize our own weakness.

The fight against sin is not one we are meant to battle in our own power. This battle isn’t going to be quick and easy, but we are assured that one day we will see the ultimate defeat of our enemy. Until then we need to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, keep putting on the armor of God, and keep fighting all day every day. “Will not God give justice to His elect, who cry to Him day and night?” (Luke 18:7).

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” –Ephesians 6:10-11