1. Try and ignore them
2. Ask God to remove them miraculously and without my own efforts
3. Give in to them (never the answer I know!)
But the thing that seems to be God's way, I am finding is I have to:
1. Acknowledge the sin or temptation
2. Hold it up to the LORD and let His light shine on the dark places in my heart
and mind. So much I struggle with seems to start in my mind.
3. And walk through the temptation by God's empowering.
In other words, temptations are NOT going to go away, nor even disappear because I want them to - but I have to face them and find God's way.
I like this quote from my favorite author C S Lewis:
"Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. ....We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means - the only complete realist."
from Mere Christianity.
He made another statement I've loved. I cannot find a direct quote or remember the book, but it's meaning has often come as a comfort. It is to the effect that when you feel you cannot resist one second longer, that you just have to yield, if you resist at that point you are past that point of the temptation for that time.
And the verse which has come to comfort me most I thing is :
I Corinthians 10:13 (KJV)
13. There hath no temptation taken you
but such as is common to man: But
God is faithful, who will not suffer you
to be tampted above what ye are able;
but will with the temptation also make
a way to escape, that ye may be able to
bear it.
Oh LORD God Almighty, thank you
that I do not walk alone.
