Overcome Your TemptationsНамуна

Stage #1: Temptations start when you are distracted and drawn away.

But each one is tempted when he is drawn away.

The opening ten words lay out the launching point of every temptation: “But each one is tempted when” something specific happens: When you are“drawn away.”  Therefore, temptations never begin before this “drawing away” happens to you.  You cannot and will not be tempted unless you are pulled “away” from whatever you are doing or thinking to a different focus. 

Unless the temptation pulled you away to something, you would not have been able to be tempted. This isn’t for some people but every person, “But each one (every person) is tempted” only when they have been drawn away. 

“Tempted” from Greek word peirazo which is translated in the New Testament as “tempt” 29 times and in the noun form as “tempter” 2 times and means to try or test one’s faith, virtue or character by enticement to sin.  The same word is used referring to Christ’s temptation in the wilderness by Satan in Mathew 4:1:  Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

The word “tempted” is in the present passive which means when you are the recipient of temptation, not the cause of the temptation.  

Although you might think that you cause your own temptations, the Bible states the exact opposite.  You don’t draw yourself away, but temptations do.  You receive, you are the passive recipient, of the temptation.  

Temptations come to you.  The temptation take a specific plan of attack against you. Even when you think that you purposefully plan on heading to sin, that initial desire was caused by a temptation that drew you away to that thought! 

The Biblical author uses a series of words in these verses that also are used to describe the process of a fisherman catching a fish, so we are going to use that analogy throughout the day's reading..  

For instance, picture a beautiful river peacefully meandering through the countryside. On the riverside, a large tree branch overhangs the water shadowing a slow-moving pool of water, right where fish like to gather. 

Look through the water and you’ll find our unsuspecting school of fish calmly resting, totally unaware that a fisherman has just crept up quietly and is standing out of sight behind the tree. They are all facing upstream so they can swim just a little and rest in this safe location. 

Without their awareness, the fisherman quietly prepares his fly rod with the perfect fly as bait for this type of rainbow trout.  The fish obviously have no idea what’s happening behind the tree. 

The crafty fisherman begins swinging that fly with its hidden hook over the water so it looks just like a wandering fly. Then, the fisherman carefully lays that fly down so it just touches the water right in front of the fish and then flicks back up into the air. The moment that fly hits the water guess what every fish in that pool did? They instantly glanced up to see if a delicious bug or fly fell off the tree branch into the water. 

At that moment, our fisherman knows his secret battle has begun! He knows that at least one fish has been distracted and drawn away, hoping his breakfast bug will return.  Now the unsuspecting and innocent fish is now thinking about something he wasn’t paying attention to until that very moment. 

Such is the precise nature of being “drawn away.”  Temptations only occur when the drawing away has successfully occurred. 

Who then distracted the fish? The fisherman of course.  That’s exactly how every single temptation starts in everyone’s life. All of a sudden, you see a person or thing and you are drawn away to look at it. Or a stray thought flashes across your mind, totally off the topic you were considering. 

To be effective, the process of being drawn away must be very subtle and just below the consciousness of the fish.  Why? To hide the fact that a fisherman is behind the bait hitting the water.  If he mistakenly splashed the water too hard, the fish would instantly know that wasn’t a fly.  

Similarly, if you are drawn away too abruptly, your innate senses would be alerted and you would be on guard because you knew instinctively that something unusual is going on.  Subtle. Delicate. A whisper. A glimpse.  A touch. 

Sometimes a person can be the source of your being drawn away. Sometimes a wicked entity such as Satan can even be involved.  Watch how the first temptation in human history began in Genesis 3:1: 

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?’”

The Hebrew word “cunning” means to be subtle, shrewd, crafty, and sly.  Satan’s question was so subtle that Eve thought the serpent only needed some clarification and certainly was not attack and lead her to directly disobey God. The moment she heard his question, Eve was drawn away.  

Like Eve, we are drawn away from our current thoughts by a subtle distraction. It’s subtle because the Temptation knew if you recognized that this was the first step in a whole series of steps eventually to hook you, you would never even pay attention to it but swim in the opposite direction. 

To be “drawn away” means that you were beckoned to leave one area to another area. 

No one lives their life in a continuing stage of temptation, do we?  Instead, all of us are busy with our families, work, ministry, and friends—and then something happens and without us being aware of it, we are subtly wooed into thinking or imagining a different area where our temptations are seeking to lure us.  

Think of this drawn away first stage as a subtle distraction.  Subtle means faint, delicate, and even difficult to perceive. Distraction means to divide the attention and prevent concentration. It’s a diversion, an interruption—but hardly noticed.  

So, what happens next?  What do you think every temptation will do next in Stage #2?