Today in our 31 Days of Purity Challenge we prayed that God would create in us a heart to flee areas of temptation. It is a call to get serious about sin. I really appreciated this in Tim’s devotional:
Flee, my brother. Learn how and when to run and do not be ashamed to do so. Do not toy with sexual sin. Do not make light of sexual sin. Do not laugh or joke about the very sins Christ died for. Do not allow yourself even the smallest taste or the briefest glimpse of what God forbids.
We also read Richard Sibbes’ sermon A Breathing After God in our Year with Sibbes challenge. I found what Sibbes said on page 222 very applicable to our prayer for today:
If a man pray, as St. Augustine, in his confessions, that God would free him from temptations, and yet is unwilling to have those loving [temptations] from him, he prays, but he doth not desire. There are many that pray; they say in their prayers, “Lead us not into temptation” (Mt. 6:13) and yet they run into temptation; they feed their eyes, their ears, and senses with vain things. You know what they are well enough, their lives are nothing but a satisfying of their lusts, and yet they pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” And there are many persons that desire that, that they dare not pray for, they desire to be so bad. But a Christian, what he desires, he prays for.
Sibbes is telling us that we are hypocritical and do not have proper desires if we are praying for purity and yet not pursuing purity by fleeing areas of temptation. Just as we read in Proverbs 6 if you walk by the harlots house—even if you are all prayed up—you are being a fool.
If you are in Christ you have been given the strength to flee areas of temptation. Taste and see that the Lord is good—indeed much better than the fleeting pleasures of sin. Let us repent of our hypocritical praying without Spirit-fueled action and obedience.
If you find yourself to be a hypocrite in this regard don’t give up hope and turn to yourself for rescue. Flee to Christ. Cast yourself upon His mercy and pray that He would change your desires. Get to the heart of the matter. Confess to him that you want and desire the sin that you know is killing you. Humble yourself before him and pray that he would stir up your affections.
And then smash your idol. Not to show the Lord how serious you are—but because Christ is more precious. Don’t forget what we’ve prayed in our other days and fall back into some pointless legalism—smash your idol because Jesus has already disarmed it on the Cross.
Smash it!
Smash it!
Smash it!
