Written by Dawn Rutan
As happens to me periodically, I’ve received similar messages from multiple sources in recent weeks. The first source was Tim Keller’s book Prayer. He was talking about the Lord’s Prayer and the fact that the provision of needs and deliverance from temptation are daily prayers, not just occasional or spur of the moment prayers. Soon after that Ron Thomas made a similar comment during his Sunday school lesson on Genesis 3, as he urged us to frequently ask ourselves “Where are you?” Most recently, I read John Piper’s short book Sanctification in the Everyday, in which he writes about fighting sin. He says that he learned to fight sexual temptation with aggressive, conscious, daily opposition. However:
What I realized was that I was not applying any of this same gospel vigilance—what Peter O’Brien calls ‘continuous, sustained, strenuous effort’ against my most besetting sins. I was strangely passive and victim-like. I had the unarticulated sense (mistakenly) that these sins (unlike sexual lust) should be defeated more spontaneously.
I’ve found the same to be true in my life. Until these themes converged upon me, I’d never really considered the need to pray regularly for deliverance from evil even though that was part of the Lord’s Prayer. At some subconscious level I believed that frequent repetition of the Lord’s Prayer or any other prayer would become rote and useless. But, like Piper, I also mistakenly believed that temptation didn’t need to be fought until it arrived, so I wasn’t terribly proactive about it. I had a vague idea of what I would do when temptation came, but that’s about it. I’ve repeatedly read 1 Corinthians 10:13 (ESV), “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” For whatever reason, I assumed that meant I didn’t need to look for the way of escape until the temptation came.
I began to learn the truth over the last year out of a sense of desperation as I pleaded with the Lord to protect me from temptation, because I knew I was too weak to fight it myself. These recent messages have helped to solidify and verbalize what experience has shown to be true. It also gives fresh meaning to Jesus’s words in Matthew 7:7-11, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you… How much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” And James 4:2, “You do not have, because you do not ask.” When a child asks for something that they want and need, parents are delighted to provide. So also God wants to provide for us, but He won’t force us to take something we don’t yet want or know that we need.
God wants us to be victorious over sin, but so long as we are trusting in ourselves to fight temptation when it comes, we will continue to be disappointed. We have a real enemy who wants to keep us feeling helpless and defeated, so we need the power of our Savior to set us free. He’s already done the hard work of defeating sin and death, but we have to learn a daily reliance upon His strength rather than our own. It’s not often that God provides instantaneous deliverance from a temptation, though there are those who have found freedom from drugs and alcohol and the like. Most of the time it is a slow growth in learning to depend on Him, and that doesn’t come until we realize our own weakness.
The fight against sin is not one we are meant to battle in our own power. This battle isn’t going to be quick and easy, but we are assured that one day we will see the ultimate defeat of our enemy. Until then we need to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, keep putting on the armor of God, and keep fighting all day every day. “Will not God give justice to His elect, who cry to Him day and night?” (Luke 18:7).
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” –Ephesians 6:10-11
