Put to death… whatever belongs to your earthly nature. Colossians 3:5 (NIV)
When it comes to your battle with temptation, God does not say, “Pray about it.” He says, “Act against it.”
The problem with praying about a temptation is that you end up focusing more attention on it, and that can have the effect of making the problem worse. Temptation is not an issue to passively turn over to God; it’s an issue to actively fight.
This is always the language of Scripture when it comes to our struggle with temptation. Paul says to the church in Rome, “Put to death the misdeeds of the body” (Rom. 8:13). And in his letter to Titus, Paul says, “The grace of God… teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions” (Titus 2:11-12).
If you have the opportunity to enjoy a meal outside during the summer, it’s a real treat, unless some wasps get a whiff of your food and start flying around. What do you do when a wasp keeps bothering you? You swat it!
That’s exactly the language of the New Testament: “Put to death the misdeeds of the body.” You find a thought buzzing in your mind about that person in the office, or the adult store you could visit on the way home, or the internet site that was advertised on your computer. What are you to do? Treat that thought exactly like the wasp: “Put to death the misdeeds of the body.”
The most important thing to know is that you have the power to do this, so don’t listen to the enemy when he tells you that you can’t!
Is there a temptation you’ve been passively praying about, as though God were going to take care of it, and you need to start taking action?
