Practical Ways to Deal With Temptation

I heard about a young believer who went to an older believer and said, how long will it be till I get to a place in my Christian life where I'm no longer tempted? The old man said, when you're dead. Look, you're going to get tempted throughout your Christian life.

The battle is going to rage to the very last day of your life. And I think when we're dealing with temptation, we need to be practical. Let's say that you have a weakness for drinking. You say, I get tempted all the time, even when I'm in my house sitting in my wine cellar, I'm tempted to drink.

Oh, really? Well, if that's a weakness for you, why don't you get rid of it? Pour the booze down the toilet. Make sure you flush it. The dog might drink it and get drunk and we don't want that to happen, do we? You know, if you have drugs, get rid of them. Can I sell them? No, don't sell them. That's called drug dealing.

Do whatever you need to do. I remember a while ago someone gave me a big giant container full of pretzels that had peanut butter in them. Have you ever tried those? I'm not a huge peanut butter fan, but there's something about a pretzel with peanut butter.

I think it's a salty and the sweet together. So I ate one, then I ate two, then I ate five, then I'm eating them by the handful and I realized I'm going to eat this entire giant jar of peanut butter pretzels and I have to get rid of them. I can't resist them.

So I feel bad about this because they were with something. I poured them down the toilet and flushed it. My wife came into the kitchen. Hey, I want to have another one of those peanut butter pretzels. Wait, the container is empty.

What happened? I said, I flushed them down the toilet. She didn't believe me. She said, you ate them all.

No, actually I didn't. But sometimes we have to take practical steps. Let's say you have a struggle with porn. I look at porn on my phone.

Well, put some kind of a filter on your phone or hey, get a flip phone. I don't care, but get real, get practical and don't put yourself in a place where you are unnecessarily tempted. Listen, with every temptation, there's a way out. First Corinthians 10, 13 says, there is no temptation taking you, but such is as common to man, meaning we all get tempted, but God is faithful and will not allow you to be tempted above your capacity to resist. But listen, but will with that temptation, make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it. Sometimes the way of escape is as simple as walking out the door, terminating the conversation, hitting the off button on your remote controller, whatever it is that you find yourself tempted by. Be practical, flee from temptation and don't leave a forwarding address.