James 4:7 brings it together:

1. Let Jesus rule in your life (Life’s most exciting adventure)

‘Submit to God,’ is the way James put it. Let God control your life.

At first thought, this seems so oppressively restrictive that it’s frightening. And we’re scared we’ll be told to go somewhere awful and do something embarrassing. In reality, for you to fear God’s commands is as unnatural as a much loved baby fearing its mother’s breast; as a shivering child fearing sunshine; as someone sick fearing health. To obey God is to say good-bye to mistakes and regret and open the door to excitement and achievement.

No one understands you like your Maker. No one knows your future like your God. No one has your best interest at heart like the One who shed his blood for you. No one can bring you happiness like the Inventor of sex and sunsets, sight and sound, touch and taste, life and beauty. He alone offers heaven.

When you really analyze it, nothing could be more exciting, fulfilling and rewarding than God’s desires for you. Fearing God’s will is as irrational as worrying about what the world’s best mechanic might do to your car, and as stupid as insisting on defusing a bomb for fear that experts will not do it properly. The Almighty, your Creator and Savior, is selflessly devoted to maximizing your happiness. Moreover he has infinite knowledge. When God asks you to do something, he is granting you the unique privilege of tapping into the greatest Mind in the universe. You have the opportunity to do something infinitely smart. Explore that thought. It could add a whole new dimension to your life.

Disregard your Maker’s right to tell you what to do. He merely gave you life and everything you’ve ever touched. He holds your atoms together and gave you the brain cells you think with. Forget that Christ purchased your allegiance by trading his life for yours, becoming the devil’s plaything on the cross so that evil couldn’t touch you. And overlook the power of God to determine your eternal destiny. Consider merely God’s infinite knowledge, perfect goodness, and self-sacrificing devotion to your highest good. That alone is enough to force the conclusion that disregarding God’s slightest suggestion is the height of stupidity.

Yet another exhilarating thing about God’s will for you is that it is not only perfected by infinite love, it is backed by infinite power. It is not only achievable, it is unstoppable. For as long as you let Jesus rule your life, nothing can thwart it. Do you believe God is all-powerful? Then you believe he could over-ride your every weakness. He could ask nothing of you that he couldn’t do through you. And if he has a speck of love, or any respect for his reputation, he’s not going to command, and then abandon you to your own resources. It’s exciting when God asks the impossible of you. A miracle is around the corner!

Since God, in his love, longs to see you reach your highest potential, his desires for you will stretch you to the limit. But no matter how Satan tries to distort that thrilling truth into something scary, there is always something more frightening than doing God’s will – not doing God’s will. The mere fact that we could fear God’s beautiful will is clear proof that God has a spiritual enemy who carpet bombs our minds with malicious untruths. Nothing could be wiser, or better, than obeying the God who has a sacrificial commitment to giving you the very best.

God telling you to do something is the Almighty Lord expressing his desire for you to enjoy his best. And obedience is simply receiving that love, delighting and rejoicing in the beauty, perfection and security of God’s yearnings for your welfare. We only disobey when we secretly believe we are smarter than God, that his love for us is inferior, or that he is so weak that our inadequacies could nullify his power. Obedience is love made real.

It has rightly been said that God’s will is the greatest good his infinite wisdom can devise. Snuggle into it. Experience the exquisite perfection of his love plans for you. Then luxuriate in the security of knowing that of every possible alternative, you have chosen the very best.

Note that submission to God is letting God be God – allowing Jesus to assume his rightful place in your life. The emphasis is not on you trying to obey, but on Jesus ruling. It is letting him do the work. It is avoiding taking upon ourselves responsibilities that don’t belong to us. The Evil One would love to distort this into a dreary put down, but it is actually a glorious relief. We’re free to enjoy life as God’s children and leave all the hard work to Jesus. We don’t have to prove ourselves to God, Jesus has already done it. We don’t have to defeat sin, Jesus has already done it.

Submitting to God must never be thought of as obeying a set of rules. That’s dull and cold. And God is neither. Following a list of dos and do nots is not following God the person, but something impersonal. It brings with it the great danger of shutting God out. Submitting to God is loving God the person, getting as close to him as you can, and drawing strength and comfort and direction from him. It is driving with God in the front seat with you, enjoying his companionship. From time to time in your conversation he will say such things as, ‘Turn left. . . . You’ll need to slow down a bit here. . . . Let me show you a short cut. . . . This next part is easy, drive however you choose, I know you’ll handle it well. . . . Further on it gets tricky. Better let me do the driving for that stretch.’

Now let’s be brutally frank. God’s directions are seldom that clear, although when the situation demands that degree of clarity, he will give it. Mostly, God leads by such things as vague feelings. That can be frustrating, but it’s our opportunity to let faith rise, trusting God to guide with whatever degree of clarity divine wisdom knows is best, while we play our part by drawing close and listening intently. God and I seem to have an on-going argument. ‘Speak louder!’ I keep telling God. And I think he keeps replying, ‘Listen harder!’

An important aspect of submission involves avoiding battles God has not authorized you to fight. Sam has the commendable self-control to never switch a television on, but if it’s on, and a sex scene appears, he rarely musters the will power to switch it off until he has seen it all. Jody finds it very hard to resist sex when subjected to heavy petting, but she can carefully pray as to who she dates and ensure she only goes out with men she can trust to never touch her where they shouldn’t. Sam must avoid all television that has a remote chance of a sex scene and Jody must avoid getting into compromising situations with men. In other words, they are winners, provided they are not so foolish as to engage the enemy on a front where they have no right to be.

Some situations God permits no Christian to enter. Some situations he permits only certain Christians to enter. Don’t be influenced by what other Christians can get away with. Listen for your Commander-in-chief’s personal orders. We live in a war zone. Various areas are subjected to differing types of attack, and some areas are more heavily protected. The Commander-in-chief knows his troops, and he has equipped them to engage in different types of warfare. All of us are safe, provided we each follow his orders, staying within our designated areas.

Sin has you in its deadly sights. It’s about to pull the trigger. Jesus steps in front of you and takes the bullet, so that you can live and enjoy life. To try fighting sin without your Savior’s constant help is to slap Christ in the face and then walk out of his protection into the devil’s hail of bullets. If we face temptation alone (ie without Christ), sin will mow us down. But we need never be so foolish. We need never face temptation alone.

The moment Joe Ordinary becomes a police officer he gains special power over evil. He’s no stronger, nor smarter, yet suddenly law breakers fear him. His extraordinary power rests entirely on him submitting to his superiors. Disregard their orders and he would be suspended from the force. His powers would immediately vanish, and law breakers could walk all over him. Likewise, our power over sin hinges on our submission to God.

Because your power link with God is critical to the defeat of evil, the Enemy will do all he can to drive a wedge between you and your Savior. He’ll do his best to make you feel that God is harsh, thinks lowly of you, and so on. If you have the slightest doubt about God’s feelings for you, I again remind you of the following webpages.

You Are loved!

To God You Are Special

And a helpful series of webpages beginning with:

Handling Guilt

2. Resist the devil

Stubbornly refuse to give in. How dare that slimy loser act as if he owns you! Dig your heels in.

Imagine your father buys you a sleek second hand car for your eighteenth birthday. Next day, the former owner arrives, demanding your car keys.

‘No way!’ you exclaim.

‘It’s my car!’ he shouts. He’s bigger and older than you.

The car’s mine!’ you protest, ‘My father paid for it!’

The veins in his neck bulge. ‘You know nothing! Hand me the keys!’

‘Get out of here, or I’ll call my Dad and he’ll have you for trespassing and for fraud!’

That’s resisting. It’s standing up for your rights. It’s refusing to be cheated out of something Father has given you. It’s preventing a con artist from walking off with things that cost your Father greatly.

Over and over, Scripture affirms our need to take action against sin. Here’s a sample:

Get rid of all moral filth – James 1:21

Rid yourselves of all malice . . . deceit, hypocrisy, etc – 1 Peter 2:1

Put on the new self – Colossians 3:10

Put aside the deeds of darkness – Romans 13:12

Put off your old self – Ephesians 4:22

Put to death . . . whatever belongs to your earthly nature – Colossians 3:5

Throw off . . . the sin that so easily entangles – Hebrew 12:1

And many more.

Notice, it’s not all God. We would have to cut our Bible to shreds to produce one that says God does it all. We ourselves are expected to put in an effort. This surprises many people, and others get it wrong, so let’s see what is involved.

Sin kidnapped us, and our effort does nothing to pay our ransom. Only Jesus could pay that exorbitant price. Innocence was nailed so that we, the guilty, could go free. All we do is stand up for the rights Christ paid for in blood. Resisting the devil is simply cooperating with God; choosing to enjoy the freedom Christ has won for us. All the hard work has already been done for us, and even then God is with us every step, to ensure we make it.

But there’s a spine tingling reason why God wants you to play a part. Like the proudest father, your God wants you to be like him. The Almighty actually wants to share his throne with you! This is serious, and glorious. You are being readied for a heavenly crown, not a party hat. That’s why God has entrusted you with a role in resisting Satan’s attempt to trespass on your turf. You are being trained to rule.

You’ve probably heard of people being effortlessly freed from sin’s grip, such as heroin addicts delivered from addiction without a single withdrawal symptom (see Amazing Examples). That’s the mighty God we serve! For God to forever do everything for us, however, would be like a teacher never trusting us to sit for a test, but always taking the test for us. Eventually, like the devoted parent he is, our heavenly Father wants us to begin to grow up and start exercising the authority he has proudly entrusted to us. Maturity must never be confused with lack of intimacy with God, however. We exercise spiritual authority only by maintaining our power link with the Almighty, and letting his power flow through us.

If you’re looking for a soft religion, dump Christ right now. Hebrews urges us to look to Jesus for inspiration. He suffered enormously to make us pure. And he chose the agony, knowing it would be totally eclipsed by the joy it would finally produce. Your war with sin, Hebrews continues, hasn’t yet reached the point where your blood pours out (Scripture). The Bible never promises that our fight with sin will be painless, just that surrender would end up being significantly more painful.

I’ve heard it said that holiness is reaching the point where you have no more longing to sin than you do to eat horse manure. Not likely. Remember Jesus, nearing starvation after eating nothing for forty days, being tempted to turn stones into bread. Remember Jesus, in the garden sweating and praying ‘with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him’ (Hebrews 5:7) as he stammers, ‘Nevertheless not my will . . .’ Remember Jesus in agony on the cross, when he could have called legions of angels to his rescue. ‘He learned obedience by what he suffered,’ (Hebrew 5:8). Holiness is not reaching the point where temptation loses its attraction. Holiness is choosing God’s way when it seems every fiber of your being is crying out for the devil’s way.

“If Almighty God loves me, why doesn’t he take from me my craving for sin?” Here’s the reason: because God is good.

To be good is to be selfless. It is to live not to feel good but to be good. It is to want what is good so passionately that one is willing to sacrifice every longing, no matter how intense, in order to do what is good. And to be good is to want the best for everyone else, which involves wanting everyone to be good, not because they are forced to be good, or have no cozy alternative to doing what is right, but because they are good, which means wanting more than anything else in the universe to do what is right.

Grasp that and you will understand who God is and why he yearns for you to be like him. Stopping a particular sin just because you no longer desire it, does not make you good. You could do that while being as self-serving as the devil himself. Moreover, to do what is right merely because you have no cravings for anything else, not only does not make you Christlike, it exposes you to the terrifyingly dangerous delusion of smugly presuming that God approves, when your heart could actually be the very opposite of God’s.

We are not to “hunger and thirst” for the smug satisfaction of breaking an addiction that is becoming an inconvenience. Rather, we are to “hunger and thirst for righteousness,” (Matthew 5:6 – emphasis mine).

God’s Word alludes to being trained in righteousness (Scriptures). As pushing through the pain barrier trains athletes, so battling cravings trains us in righteousness. Training to be a champion is not meant to be easy. Neither is training in righteousness. In Gethsemane, our Role Model’s sweat dripped like blood as he agonized over surrendering to God’s will. “Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered,” (Hebrews 5:8). We are told not to find some comfy alternative to what it cost the holy Son of God, but to take up our cross and follow him.

Yes, God can, and sometimes does, eliminate a certain craving someone has, but it achieves little. God could likewise grant a couch potato the title of champion by eliminating all the competition, but the result would be meaningless. Christlikeness without facing the pain of sacrifice is just as ridiculous. You are not called to be a fake hero. You are called to be the real thing.

To be Christlike is to be willing to suffer for the sake of God. Strong temptation toughens us. When resisted, temptation acts like your personal training coach, building you up so that you will receive more glory on the Big Day.

(For inspirational material to build courage, click here).

Ironically, the more prepared you are for a long, tough fight, the shorter it usually is. Once you uncover one of Satan’s schemes, and become determined to hold your ground no matter how strong the pressure gets or how long it lasts, the Enemy quickly senses he is wasting his time persisting with this tactic, and he usually backs off soon after.

Satan is furious at having lost you. He knows he has no hold over you, but if he fools you into thinking he can still boss you around, you’ll make his day. He’ll try every dirty trick he can dream up to bluff you out of all that is rightfully yours, and to cast doubt on the extent of Christ’s stupendous victory. To stand up to someone as persistent and conniving as Satan, you have to thoroughly know the rights Christ won for you, as spelled out in God’s Word.

Think of it this way. Through a life and death struggle, Jesus disarmed Satan and handed you a loaded weapon. Don’t expect Jesus to pull the trigger. That’s easy. He’ll let you have the fun of scaring off Satan. But if that diabolical cheat can fool you into thinking the weapon Jesus gave you is unloaded, he knows you won’t bother to use it. He then has nothing to fear, and he’ll walk all over you.

Because you have given Jesus control of your life, you have the upper hand whenever you meet evil. Resisting is simply realizing that your enemy is beaten, and acting accordingly. It is refusing to let a defeated enemy steal back your precious liberty and dignity that cost Christ everything. The almighty Son of God let the devil nail him, so that you could walk free. Live in that freedom. And no matter what happens, keep seeing yourself as God sees you – powerful, holy, victorious. It is this faith that makes you a conqueror (Scripture).

Submit to God, resist the devil . . .

3. And the devil will flee

We’re winners! By ignoring Satanic lies and letting Christ do all the hard work, we have the firepower to put the devil on the defensive. With Jesus in us, we make demons quake. But it is important not to misunderstand the implications. Temptation will not vanish after one token resistance. Look at Jesus’ battle in the wilderness. He held out against temptation #1. So what did Satan do? Hurl temptation #2. And after that, temptation #3. And that was nothing like the end. Satan skulked away, only to seek a time when Jesus was more vulnerable (Luke 4:13). We don’t know how many times the devil renewed the attack. We know Jesus had to tell Peter ‘Get behind me Satan.’ We know the enemy entered into Jesus’ dear friend, Judas, to destroy the Son of God. We know Christ had a bloodcurdling battle in Gethsemane. And we know Jesus won every time.

And through him, you, too, can win every time. That’s God’s promise. It’s in black and white (Scriptures). There’s not the vaguest hint that you won’t feel like giving up. Nor the slightest suggestion that you won’t feel as helpless in the teeth of temptation as a mouse trapped in a lion’s cage. But there’s a divine guarantee that no matter how weak you feel, no matter how horrific your past failures, no matter how impossible it seems, you can beat every temptation that comes your way. If you ever meet a temptation too strong for you, the God who raises the sun each day has suddenly become unreliable, the God who didn’t spare his darling Son for you has suddenly lost interest in you, and the moral integrity of Holy One has collapsed.

The Devil is the Deceiver

Satan is a con artist. He wants to rip you off, cheating you out of everything that is rightfully yours. He’s the enemy of everything good, hating you with all his filthy fury. He offers the soft, warm bomb that will explode your life into a million pieces. He generously gives momentary relief and fun that leads to deeper bondage and torment; the short cut to heaven’s ecstasy that ends in hell.

With Christ having rendered all of Satan’s weapons inoperative against Christians, the Enemy has nothing left but psychological warfare – illusions, false accusations, attempted brainwashing.

Suppose you were a soldier at war, and an evil enemy had the opportunity to attempt brainwashing you. The enemy would try to wear you down by repeatedly putting thoughts into your mind that the side you serve:

	is wrong, or not worth serving
	will lose the war, or is not strong enough to protect you
	has rejected or abandoned you, or does not care about you.

The enemy would also try to:

	isolate you
	make you feel useless
	destroy all hope.

That’s the diabolical enemy you face every day. He’s the master of the half-truth. Yes, sin is delicious – like candy laced with poison. It’s true that sin is exhilarating – as exciting as skydiving without a parachute. And he’s right when he hisses that God’s ways can feel annoyingly restrictive – as confining as a parachute harness when you are plummeting to earth.

The author of pain and despair and death maliciously paints God as a killjoy. The Almighty has your highest good in focus, not some short term fizz that ultimately leaves you cold, empty and without a future. God’s way is the way of eternal joy; of love, triumph, self-respect. He’s the sole source of beauty and of everything that lasts. He empowers you to make this world a better place. He offers you protection, security, purity and wisdom. Don’t slip out of his divine embrace into the devil’s quicksand.

The Seducer makes giving up seem the easy option, but the real cost is enormous. Any area of defeat is an ugly blemish. The Lord wants to beautify your whole life but he dare not bring other things to your attention while this one is such a burden to you. So other shameful blotches, probably obvious to those who see you, remain untouched.

No matter how horrific the pain of resisting, it always ends up the genuinely easy option.

Sin is never the easy way out; the attractive alternative. Take the bait and you’ll feel the hook. Swallow the lie and you’ll writhe in regret.

The best defense against cunning lies is to fill your mind with truth. Immerse yourself in God’s Word.

Strategies

Feel defeated? Chances are that you could be weaker than you are, and still have total victory over the temptations that presently defeat you. How? By taking temptations more seriously, and drawing the line against them much earlier.

If we could only grasp the enormity of the dangers, our drive to beat temptation would skyrocket. We would sooner tap-dance on a minefield than toy with sin. And Satan would get such a scare at our new determination that we might not see him for days at a time.

Knowing how critical this is, I believe the Deceiver expends much effort trying to keep us in a fog, only vaguely of what is really at stake. I have prepared a tiny eye-opener. For a new glimpse of the seriousness of sin, click here.

Over and over and over, Scripture insists that, like nothing else, sin has the power to destroy you (Scriptures). Sin is the most fearsome thing on this planet, worse than a ferocious wolf lusting after your blood. Better to lose a limb or an eye or to drown, than let it get you, warned Jesus (Scriptures). When a blood-crazed beast is on the prowl, the only sensible thing is to put as big a distance as possible between it and yourself. That’s how we should treat sin. Yet instead of seeing sin as a ravenous wolf with deadly fangs, we often treat it like a smelly stray pup – rather disgusting, basically harmless, at times almost cute. The thought of dabbling with sin should terrify us. If it doesn’t, we are toying with disaster. We need to flee from sin, warns many a verse of God’s Word (Scriptures).

Ways to increase the distance between you and sin

Disclaimer

I dare not try to set rules for you. My longing is that you listen intently to the Spirit of God for his direction. He alone has mapped your personal escape route. My hope is merely to offer a few suggestions for you to talk over with your Lord, and to see where he leads from there.

At all costs, avoid the horror of following a set of rules, rather than a living Savior. This double tragedy ends both in arrogance and deserting Christ. Ugly pride, even bigotry, festers when you discover you draw your line further from sin than someone else. And you are in danger of abandoning your Savior when you begin to trust your homemade rules for salvation (your holiness and protection from temptation) rather than seeding your entire faith in your crucified Lord.

Burn your bridges

What would you think if a husband told his wife he wants to be faithful to her, but explained that just in case temptation gets too strong, he will keep his former girlfriend’s phone number programmed into his phone? Well what does your Lord think if you deliberately make it easy to access drugs, or some other thing you are trying to give up? Don’t you think God sees right through a person who asks for forgiveness for substance abuse, or porn, or whatever, and keeps a tiny supply ‘just in case’? Divine forgiveness is not available to the person who is not willing to be finished with sin (Explanation). ‘Make no provision for the flesh,’ says Romans 13:14. In other words, store up nothing, make no allowances, for sin.

When Jesus spoke of hacking off a hand or foot, or gouging out an eye, he was not speaking literally, (proof) but he was describing the need for radical, painful and costly sacrifices in order to make it harder to sin. Cancer is so deadly that people are willing to lose parts of their body in order to halt its spread. If people go to such extremes to fight something that can only affect earthly life, what sacrifices should any sane person make to fight something that can afflict someone forever?

Your collection of things that help you sin might have cost you a lot of money. If you don’t destroy it, however, you’ll find it will cost you a lot more still! (Scriptures)

Here are some ways of attacking sin that you should seriously discuss with God.

	Destroy all spiritually dangerous books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, addresses, phone numbers, membership cards, occult objects, illicit drugs, and so on that you own.
	Radically alter your television viewing habits. Most of us are so hooked on television that to keep it switched off would hurt as much as losing an eye, yet it fills our minds with sinful thoughts that we could regret for all eternity. Even most programs said to be suitable for children are tainted with impurity and ungodliness. And on commercial channels, acceptable programs can be laced with poisonous ads.
	If the internet presents you with temptation, obtain software designed to keep children from objectionable material.
	Note the circumstances in which you are most vulnerable to temptation and do all you can to avoid those situations. If, for instance, when you lie awake in the morning, your mind wanders to things it shouldn’t, try your hardest to avoid that situation. Set your alarm earlier and make sure you get up. If you find you are more vulnerable when alone, avoid that situation as much as possible. Would it help to share accommodation with someone? Alternatively, would it help to move out? When you feel vulnerable to temptation, get your mind off it by visiting or phoning someone. Go for a walk or a drive, if it will help.
	Resolve that if ever you sin against someone, you will confess it to that person and put it right. If, for instance, you steal, you’ll restore what you stole, with an additional 20% as compensation. If you lie, confess it to the person you lied to. Make yourself accountable to a mature, trustworthy Christian, who is unlikely to be tempted by the knowledge that you have fallen (should the unthinkable ever happen). Be sobered by the knowledge that if ever you sin, you will have to endure the shame of confessing to your accountability partner.
	To maintain your purity while dating, carefully explain that saying no to something you used to do together is not because you are growing cold toward your friend. (I am appalled at what some couples do to each other and still regard themselves as virgins.) Since people differ as to what arouses them, it is important to tell each other what not to do, and to respect another’s guidelines, even if to you it seems quite innocent. A person may have got into a habit of crossing a particular boundary and innocently forget. Sometimes many reminders are necessary. Be cautious about being alone together.
	Give the Evil One less time to entice you, by filling your life with spiritually wholesome activities – more church services, Christian fellowship, prayer, Bible study, and so on.
	If sexual purity is a problem for you, see Helps to maintaining sexual purity

Not to be sold. © Copyright 1997, Grantley Morris. May be freely copied in whole or in part provided: it is not altered; this entire paragraph is included; readers are not charged; if used in a webpage, the new page is significantly different to this one. Many more compassionate, inspiring, sometimes hilarious writings available free online at www.net-burst.com  Freely you have received, freely give.
For use outside these limits, consult the author.