KEY TO VICTORY OVER TEMPTATION

KEY TO VICTORY OVER TEMPTATION

Everyone has trouble with temptations of many kinds, while listening to a teaching CD by Bob Mumford recently, this thought came to me. It is tied to a little poem that Bob quoted, which goes like this.
"Tobacco is a dirty weed,
they say it fills no human need,
it makes you thin, it makes you lean,
it takes the hair right off your bean,
But I like it!"
The moral of this silly little poem as I see it, is that we can never be delivered from a habit that we like, even if it is destroying you. I think you can apply this to any evil habit that you might be trying to quit. God has promised us victory over our enemies, but not our friends, or things that we love to do! So if you like some evil habit that you are perhaps even "addicted" to, the only hope of being set free from it, as near as I can see, is to count it as an enemy.

Another fact that I learned from listening to this teaching by Bob, is that what we focus on always enlarges, or expands. In other words if we see a sign like "Wet Paint Do Not Touch", or "Keep Off The Grass", what is the first thing you want to do? Our fallen nature, which has been handed down from Adam, just naturally wants to disobey every restriction placed upon us. If we focus on positive, God honoring things, the scripture from Paul given to the church at Philippi, gives us some good advice. (Phil 4:8-9). Then there is a passage in Paul's letter to the churches in Galatia, recorded in (Gal 5:16-26) that speaks to this same issue. God has provided us with His Holy Spirit, to help us with this struggle with our fleshly nature. A careful reading of these verses point out clearly the difference between the "works of the flesh", and the "fruit of the Spirit". The works of the flesh will result in our failure to enter into our heavenly inheritance, (verse 21). While the fruit of the Spirit will produce in our lives, the character of Jesus Christ. This Is the real 7 fold DNA of God the Father, as outlined in (Exod 34:6-7). These qualities recorded by Moses were God's own self described parts of His very being, 1/ Compassion,
 2/ Grace, 3/ Slow to anger, 4/ Merciful, 5/ Truth, 6/ Faithful, and
7/ Forgiving. When Jesus said "I and the Father are one", we know that He came to put a face on the Father, so to speak, since God is a Spirit and is invisible. (John 4:24)!!
Sincerely submitted.
Dave Jamer