When Temptation is More Than We Can Bear

I walk along the stony path. On one side I see flowers swaying in the breeze. The sun shines on their golden faces and I feel their joy. But one glance later, my eyes are drawn to the view to my right—the valley of bones. Death is there—and suffering. But something glitters there too, something shiny and tantalizing. The more I look at it, the more I wonder. The sparkle says, “Come and see!” Magic and mystery abound, and before I think to forcibly resist, my heart is inflamed with curiosity.

I pause on the path. I see the dead and rotting things around the glittering object. But surely it will not harm me. Maybe it is even worth dying for—this pretty thing—this sinfully sweet object of my affection. A centipede crawls over bones of a hand whose flesh has blackened in clutching it, but an irresistible longing for the object consumes me. I rationalize my need for it. No one will know. It will be my secret. I mean, it’s not as if I’m not hurting anyone.

I had the great pleasure to visit with a childhood friend recently. We grew up together in the church and both of us walked away from God in our youth. We rejected the rigidity of the Christian faith, especially in regards to all of the wonders we saw in the world and wanted to experience. We rejected rules and people who would rule over us. As I stood talking to him on his parent’s front porch and considered our journeys, I felt so thankful that we survived. Talking to him was like coming home, but the walls of that house are marred by the painful memories of so many things we regret.

At one point our conversation turned to the topic of addiction. The meth epidemic in his community is a real problem. He told me about the ruthless behavior a meth addict resorts to when in desperate need of a fix. “It makes me sick.” He said. “I hate it.”

I told him that unfortunately addicts are broken people just trying to satisfy the longings in their hearts.

He looked at me and said, “Yeah, but they do terrible things.”

I can’t disagree.

But I do sympathize with addicts. The overwhelming desire for that glittering object drives one to madness. They sacrifice beautiful, tangible things like family and friends for a fleeting physical experience and excrete only waste and heartache.

At the heart of every temptation is a promise; namely that our souls will be satisfied. So why do we keep reaching for it once we find out they are not?

I had dinner with a friend recently who was despairing over her inability to lose weight. She exercises regularly but has not seen the results she longs for in part because she is compelled to overeat. She told me, “I can’t stand my body. I’m sick of it! I want to be able to move freely and feel better but when I start to eat something savory, I literally cannot stop. I have no self-control.”

So here is the good news I get to share with you today: You can stop. You can break free. “I can’t” is not the end of your story. At least it doesn’t have to be.

As I stood with my friend on his parent’s front porch, he said something that struck me as beautiful. “You know, Margaret, my parents really didn’t ask so much of me back then. They asked me to be home on time to eat dinner, to not drink and smoke, and they asked me to be respectful. I don’t know why I couldn’t do those things.” I silently pondered this, and because I am a parent I thought to myself that the reason they did this is because they loved him. They gave him rules to keep him safe because he was precious to them.

But he wanted the glittering thing. He rejected their love and chased after it only to find it did nothing but bring him and those who loved him, pain.

It’s strange how we can look back on our youth and see so clearly the mistakes we made knowing that without them we wouldn’t be who we are today. Still, we struggle when tempted to make the same or similar mistakes. We parlay with our vices, integrating them into our lives and justifying their hold on us. We choose to believe we are powerless. But we are not. And love is the only key that will truly set us free.
We must love something or someone more than our vices. It is the only thing that will save us.

I have recently been crushed beneath the weight of a terrible temptation. Every cell of my body screams out for it. I dream about it. I think about it constantly. Some days a weariness comes over me and I know I have no strength to resist it. Still, I cry out to God for help because I know His love can save me. This temptation would be the end of me. If I give in to it, my life will be ruined. But if I choose to love God more than this fleeting pleasure, He will be pleased to save me. I hesitate to write too much about it because it has been the great distraction of my life. I speak of it only because I know there are those reading this who can relate. But I would encourage you with these words; love can save you if you let it. It is not hyperbole. God’s love is real, and he longs for nothing more than to wrap you up in it and give you His peace.

There have been days lately where I was tempted to believe God’s love isn’t real or that he is not good because of this thing that is driving me crazy. My physical and mental anguish would eclipse these great truths, but not unlike the glittering object I want so badly to reach for, I choose to reject this lie. God is good, and his love is real. He proved it on Calvary and so I have no reason to doubt it. He sacrificed everything so that he could draw me close to his heart. All I need to do is lean into him and accept his love and grace.
And this is the heart of what I want to share with you today; dear reader, reach out to Him. Love Him more than you love anything else and not only will he save you from temptation, He will satisfy the deepest longings of your soul. This is the key—when any kind of temptation arises, we can run to Him and ask for help. If we are willing to submit to His rules, He promises to deliver us.

Now it’s curious to me how some people reject this kind of love. They say, “I don’t want to believe in or love God. For one thing, He’s restrictive. I want to do what I want to do.” In fact, someone close to me is struggling with a terrible addiction and when I asked him if he wanted help, he said yes. But when I told him he could give his struggle to Jesus to break the chains that were binding him, he got very, very angry with me. He said, “Margaret, you act like it’s so easy to just give it all to God and He’ll solve everything. It doesn’t work that way.”

But it does. I have chosen not to reach for that glittering object. I choose to believe what the bible says is true: “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” The only reason my friend is not saved from his addiction is because his faith is too small. I know it doesn’t always feel good to resist temptation, but I also see the end result of my sin if I give in and that is death! Instead I choose life in Christ!

The disciples cried out when the storm was raging, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” (Matthew 8:25-26) They were in the boat with the creator of the waves, what in the world did they have to be afraid of?” They had a disconnect; a fundamental misunderstanding of who God is.

Why did the power of sin (addiction to food) hold sway in my life for so long? Why could I not deny my lusts and desires for it? Because I did not truly believe that God could deliver me from them. I did not trust that he was strong or mighty to save. Instead, I rejected his love and clung to my weaknesses. I thought God was punitively restrictive. He didn’t want me to do “fun” things. But when I chose those things I learned they were traps that tormented me and caused me to be a slave to them so that I served them at the expense of any real measure of happiness. It wasn’t until I realized that I wanted to be set free and desired the power those things had over me to be broken that I allowed Jesus love to save me. It is a beautiful thing to be set free from the power of sin, not just being forgiven for my sin, but the freedom to not sin when I am tempted to.

Jesus did that for me. And He can do that for you too.

What saves us from temptation? The knowledge that there is something better that will satisfy the deepest longings in our hearts. When we come to realize that the thing we are tempted by will never satisfy us, we have hope that we can find the strength to resist it. What breaks the chains of slavery to sin? Love. God’s love. When we come to know that there is a love so unimaginably pure that will wrap us up in joy that floods our senses, we will resist temptation. We will cry out to God, “Help me! Save me!” And by His grace, if we believe that He can and we let Him, He will.