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The Elephant of Temptation, Satan Wants You Alone, and the Iron Dome — Highlight Episode 337 · The Living Waters Podcast

• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Today how to guard against the temptations of the world.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: I wish you could somehow condense temptation into an object, dissect it and understand it, because, man, it's such a reality.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, when you think about the element of temptation.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: To me, elephant of temptation, good way to put it right, it's a big element of temptation, elephant of temptation, good way to put it right, it's a big boy, a big, fat elephant of temptation Wants to sit on you.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: To me it's as real as the law of gravity.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: It's just such a reality and as Christians, it is the constant element that we are battling against and fighting against.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: But we're all in this together and my hope from today's episode is really to dispense encouragement, to remind believers that you're not alone and that we battle this together.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: So temptations, oscar, I don't know, say something.
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: I love the way you put it.
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: I think I was just talking to somebody at the conference that I was at and he came to me and he, with tears in his eyes, confessed sin that he's been struggling with.
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: And he was like I'm so afraid to tell anybody about this and I don't know what to do.
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: And I, he was like what can I do to stop overcome this sin that I've been struggling with since I was 13, 14 years old.
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: And I told him, man, I said Satan wants you alone in this.
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: He does not want you to share this with your friends.
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: He doesn't want your pastor to know.
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: The Lord tells you that if you confess your sins, you will be forgiven.
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: That's not that he's holding back grace, but he's holding back a healing bomb, or I should say you are holding back a healing bomb from yourself to invite others in.
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: And so you make a great point, which is to just simply recognize to be a Christian is to be tempted by sin.
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: Those two things go hand in hand.
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: Jesus himself was tempted and, of course, did not sin.
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: I love John Owen saying which is temptation?
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: Is anything that lures us from obedience.
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: The devil wants you to not participate in obedience.
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: You are not alone in that.
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: And to your point, man, we fight temptation together.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Amen, yeah.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Ray Oscar mentioned Christ in the wilderness and the temptations he faced from Satan.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: What was the key to him overcoming Satan's temptations?
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Ray in the wilderness, the.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Iron Dome.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, israel's got an Iron Dome and I'm fascinated by this very sophisticated radar system that detects and neutralizes incoming missiles.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: And for the Christian, the dome, the Iron Dome is the fear of the Lord.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: When Potiphar's wife started Sending missiles towards Joseph, it was the fear of the Lord that caused him to run.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: And that's what we need.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: An Martin said you can only get in the realm of deliberate sin when you get out of the realm of the fear of God.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: I'm going to repeat that because it's so good, you can only get into the realm of deliberate sin when you get out of the realm of the fear of God.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Jesus said watch lest you enter into temptation.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: He said that to his disciples and then he said this.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: He said watch lest you enter into temptation.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: The spirit, indeed, is willing, but the flesh is weak, and that's the key to understand your flesh.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: It's weak.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: So you need the iron dome, you need to cultivate the fear of the Lord, and I liken it to when you're reading, innocently reading, some article, and there's a pop that comes in and you've got a little X in the corner that's the size of a microchip and you've got to touch it with your finger.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: And if you don't, you're into this site, an area you don't want to go to.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: It just takes you straight to it, and that's what the wiles of the devil is like.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: You just innocently go, phew, in your mind Some filthy thought and you've got a tiny X that you've got to touch.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: There's no temptation taken you, but it's common to man.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: God's faithful and has made a way of escape.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: That's the little X you've got to touch so you can get out of it, and so what you've got to do is watch and pray lest you enter into that temptation.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: And the way to be always ready to touch that X is to have the fear of God in your heart always.
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: And that's what we see with Jesus.
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: I have a question for you.
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: He mentions the fear of the Lord, but in addition to that, every time Jesus is tempted, he quotes scripture.
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, how important is scripture memorization for us in fighting temptation.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Huge right, Psalm 119.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Flavorful.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Your word have I hidden in my heart that I may not sin against you?
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: How can a young man keep his way pure by keeping it according to your word?
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: I'm telling you, guys, there's no discipline that has been more helpful to me in times of temptation than having memorized Scripture.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: And again, what you're doing is you're loading yourself up to give the Holy Spirit an opportunity to activate God's Word at a given moment, in a given instance.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: That's what I love about it, because that's what God does.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: It's His Word and he brings it back to heart and mind.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: I'm not waiting for an esoterical word from the Lord.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I'm not waiting for an audible voice.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: It's His Word, hidden in my heart, that the Spirit activates and that he uses to guard me in those moments.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: So that makes the enemy tremble, but also reminds us of the promise that's in the Word yeah.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: So it's got a dual purpose, but also reminds us of the promise that's in the word yeah, so it's got a dual purpose.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: How do we stand strong in the midst of that battle between the flesh and the spirit?
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: I think that you run with the right people.
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: You run alongside people that are like-minded.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: You link arms with people that are heading in the same direction.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: It's not enough to flee youthful lust, but we pursue all these other things with others who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: Right Blessed is the man who walks, not in the counsel of the wicked right.
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: You become like-minded to those who you hang out with.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: So if you are going to hang out with people that are just entrepreneurs and that's all they're thinking about, you will somehow kind of catch that it will not so much be taught as much as it is caught.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: So we want to hang out with people that have good morals, because bad company corrupts good morals.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: We want to run our race and run it well.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: Surround yourself with people that you think are running the race and running well.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: So run with the right people and run from wrong places.
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: So you find yourself inside of a place where you typically wouldn't be.
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: If you're going out to lunch with your pastor, Well then you don't need to really be hanging out at that place as it is.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: You have a problem with alcohol.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: Don't go hang out and have your Devo in the corner of the bar, right?
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: You don't need to be winning people for Christ in the bar if you have a problem with drinking, right?
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, I think that that's really what it is right.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: The idea is just you link arms with people that are like-minded, or people that are running the race, maybe a little bit better than you.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: I think it's interesting to note that Jesus was led by the spirit of the wilderness and yet he said in the Lord's Prayer, for one of our prayer, the Lord's Prayer, lead us not into temptation.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: And then following that is deliver us from evil.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: The two go hand in hand Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: I think it's very noteworthy.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: You realize the word devil is four-fifths evil.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: It's just got a D on front.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: I see what you did there.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: You realize the word devil is four-fifths evil, it's just got a D in front, so the D ruins it all.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: No, give place to the devil and you give place to evil.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: So you don't want to give place to the devil, because evil comes with it.
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: Ultimately, what we're doing is we're talking about spiritual disciplines that help us with temptation.
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: We've already talked about Scripture memorization.
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: We've talked about prayer.
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: Another important one is fasting.
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: We see Jesus do this himself, and fasting was formerly a very common regular rhythm practice for the early Christians that I sense we've lost an element of it in our day today.
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: So many people don't fast, and those who do might do it on very rare occasions.
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: And why fast?
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: Certainly it draws you closer to the Lord, independent at that moment.
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: But something that Timothy Keller points out is that fasting also prepares you for temptation.
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: He says.
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: Fasting trains believers to resist natural and lawful urges so that when they face illicit promptings they can say no.
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: In other words, when we willingly participate in neglecting ourselves of things that bring us joy, that isn't sin.
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: What we're doing is we're building up a spiritual muscle to say no to when the devil is tempting us with sin.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: I have a serious problem, Okay are you praying intensively about it, not just.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: You know, lord, bless my burrito and help me with this sin, praying intensively daily, continually.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Are you fasting over the issue?
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Are you reading books on the subject?
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Are you getting counsel on it?
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Are you memorizing scripture and studying the word on it?
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: If you haven't done all those, don't complain that you have this sin you're struggling with and don't say I just can't overcome this.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: It's just, it makes no sense.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: Are there any books that you could?
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: Disciplines of a Godly man yeah, but listen, if you can get down what you just said, right?
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: This is the litmus test to see where you're at, if you really care about what you are struggling with.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: Go back to listen to what EZ just said.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: Go back 30 seconds and he just laid down your pathway out of that destructive path in which you've been found yourself marinating in.
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: Right, it's that simple.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: Don't overthink it, don't overcomplicate it.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: One by one, go through those, and if you're saying to yourself, no, I'm not, then remember, return and repent.
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: This is the idea, and you'll come out fine on the other side.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning in to this week's highlights from the Living Waters podcast.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Friends, we value your time, so we've created a bite-sized version of our podcast for listeners who want to get equipped, without the jokes and fellowship.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Ah, be sure to check out the full episode every Thursday where we dive deeper into the topic.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Until then, you can watch the full podcast episode available now on livingwaterstv.