Resisting Temptation

As some of you know, I’ve been on a low-carb diet for some time now.  I started on June 1 of last year and have lost about twenty-eight pounds.  A low-carb diet is not hard to do--it doesn’t take any special foods or anything.  The main thing it takes is determination.  It takes staying away from the foods you know you shouldn’t eat, even though they taste really, really good.

I had been sticking with this diet pretty strictly.  Then, last Friday, I cheated.  Wanda and I were in Wessington Springs, where we used to live, and we went to visit an elderly friend of ours.  She had just made some cookies and offered us some.  I could not see my way clear to tell a ninety-year-old lady that I wouldn’t eat one of her cookies, so I took one.

Now, one cookie is not going to make me gain a bunch of weight back or anything.  The point is, though, that after giving in, after eating that one cookie, I really wanted another one.  In fact, I really wanted a lot of them.  I started craving all these things--cookies, cake, ice cream, brownies--that I had resolutely not been eating for months.  I have not--so far--given into it again, but it is a lot harder to resist.  Having given in to temptation once, I became a lot more susceptible to giving in to it again.

Don’t get me wrong--I’m not saying that eating that cookie was a sin or anything.  In fact, I still rather think I did the right thing.  The point is, though, that once we give in to something, it becomes a lot easier to give in to it again.  And it strikes me that this is how sin works in our lives. 

We give in to it once.  We do that under “special circumstances”.  Circumstances that allow us to convince ourselves that it’s okay, that it was even the right thing to do.  And then, we start wanting to give in to it again.  Sin becomes a lot harder to resist.  If we give in to it once, it becomes a lot easier to give in to it again.  Each time we give in to sin, it becomes easier to give in to it again and again and again.  At first, we make excuses for ourselves for why it’s okay.  Eventually, we stop making those excuses and just do it.  We don’t even think about whether it’s right any more.

So, the next time you feel yourself tempted, think about that.  Think about how giving in once, no matter how much we may justify it, makes it much easier to give in the next time.  In fact, it makes us want to give in the next time.  Think about that, and resist the temptation.  Yes, we can repent and ask God for forgiveness, and God will give it to us.  But our lives are a whole lot easier if we don’t give in to temptation in the first place.  After all, as it says in James 4:7, “Submit yourselves, then, to God.  Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”