Overcome Your TemptationsНамуна

Stage #2: Temptations can only tempt because of your inner desire.  

But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires. 

Now think about this second stage for a moment:  Just because you are drawn away, it doesn’t mean that you are feeling anything remotely like a temptation yet.  Until you start desiring what you were distracted to, then temptation cannot interest you in “biting the bait.”

What happens to our unsuspecting fish?  The fisherman snaps his line very carefully and allows that hand-picked bait—that fly—to hit the water a second time, just a split second longer.  It’s at that moment that our fish begins to imagine how good that would taste as his early morning snack. 

The fisherman knows that until the fish “wants” the bait, he’ll never catch that fish. 

It’s in that split second when the fish starts to desire the bait that the temptation has begun in earnest. Although fish can’t lick their lips with desire, that’s exactly what happens. 

You see, every temptation must awaken our desire or we’ll never consider chasing the bait. 

Obviously, the fisherman doesn’t desire the fly; and the fly doesn’t desire the fly—it’s only the fish that desires the fly. 

Every one of our temptations can tempt us only because it stimulates our personal desire! In context, the desire is for something forbidden—tempting us to sin.  

When we are drawn away, our attention is pulled away to something.  When our desires are touched, then the temptation has something with which to work with inside of us.  Think about it, if you aren’t desirous of the bait, would you ever pursue it? Of course not. 

Where do “desires” dwell? Inside of us. Our appetites, our emotions, our longings, our hungers. 

You have just finished a big steak dinner with your favorite bowl of ice cream. You couldn’t eat another bite.  You then head out of the restaurant and a close friend approaches you as you are getting into your car and invites you over for a big barbeque at their home in 30 minutes.  How much desire would surface under those circumstances? How much could your friend tempt you when your desires have already been satiated?  

The word behind “desire” is epithymia which is translated lust 31 times and desire 3 times and simply means a desire, craving, longing, mostly of evil desires.  

It’s important to recognize that temptations never seek to raise our desire for us to do good, but only to do evil.  You never are “tempted” to go and help a poor person, but you can be tempted to rob that person of whatever they have.  God never limits our desires for good, nor does He make a “way out” of our desires to serve others.  God only intervenes when a temptation seeks to lead us to sin.

This verse also reveals that these desires are specifically our “own” desires and not anyone else’s. 

That’s why two friends walking past the corner bar can be affected very differently. One person may not even notice the bar, while the other person who is a struggling alcoholic may immediately feel an overpowering desire to go in for a quick drink on the way home. Our desires are the root issue.  

As John Owen once said, “There are many outward temptations that best men, exciting and stimulating them to do evil. But the root and spring of all these things lie in the heart.  Temptations do not put anything into man that is not there already.” 

So, after being drawn away and having your desire peaked, what happens next?