Daily Escapes from Tempting Sins.

Common Temptation.

Placed in a room painted entirely white, with a white chair, with a too bright white spotlight pointed directly where you sit, alone in that straight back hard wooden seat, you are filled with fear. You are all by yourself and the weight of your aloneness, your fear sets in as time slowly passes. You try to move but you're paralyzed by some unseen force. You look frantically around you trying to see past the blinding light, but no matter which way you turn your head the light is there. You panic as your mind scrambles to unravel what is happening to you. You wonder why you are going through this. You want it to stop. The awful unknown, the powerlessness you feel, the total lack of control over yourself is excruciatingly painful to your mental wellbeing. Why is this happening to you!

Then suddenly the light goes off and the white wall in front of you becomes a screen of sorts, or is it a window? It's too difficult to tell. What isn't difficult to see is the rows upon rows of rooms exactly like your own with other people in the same position you are in. Similar to an infinity mirror, the rows of endless rooms is horrifying to you, but at the same time a small sense of relief touches a part of you when you realize one fact…you are not alone in your situation at all. Others are going through what you are going through and somehow that lightens the awful weight of what is going on. The relief is short-lived though because you are still trapped, only you're not trapped alone.

Being alone in a bad situation can be very frightening. Sharing a horrifying experience somehow lessens the weight of fear.

Knowing you're not alone in your situation can make a big difference. When we are told that there is no temptation- not a single one- that isn't common to others- Satan can no longer isolate us in our guilt. Satan can no longer point the finger at us and tell us that we are horrific above all people in our tendency towards temptations. 

Do we all face the same exact temptations?  I may be tempted to gluttony while you would never feel a pull towards it. You may be tempted towards fornication while I may never feel pulled in that direction. We can be sure though, there are many, many people leaning towards gluttony and many towards fornication. We are not alone in our temptations. The reason this is good to know is to keep Satan from singling us out- to keep him from putting us in a white room situation. To stop Satan from terrifying us with our seemingly individual nightmares. He wants us to believe there is NO hope for ourselves.

Our temptations are common to us as human beings, but not a single one has the power to force us to sin.

We are not forced to sin. And if you are forced - literally forced - into an act of sin by the very fact you were forced negates the sin in you and places it on the one forcing the sin. Barring a literal forcing into any sin, you are not forced to sin- but there is always a way to escape. 

The way of escape doesn't mean that it will be easy.  Many escapes from horrible situations are very, very difficult. The fact you have to escape indicates you are captive to something or someone.

Let's say you're back in that white room, only now you are given two different ways to escape your captivity. The quickest way is the hardest, the longer way is the easiest.  Now the choice becomes do you want to suffer terribly to end the captivity almost instantly, or do you want to remain captive longer without suffering? You have ways to escape and the choice is yours.  If you only had one way to escape without a choice, you of course would choose that way no matter how awful, wouldn't you?

When we are tempted to sin we make a choice.  If you get caught up in a sin of ignorance that means you find yourself embroiled in sin without any awareness of how you got into it, the thought process wasn't there at all for choosing. As soon as the awareness comes to you that you are in sin, you must stop sinning and seek forgiveness. Temptation to sin is the choice to sin or not sin. You face temptations that are common to others, you aren't alone in the world- a horrible monster of a person because you feel pulled to sin. Sin exists and Satan has such great influence he will attack us in such a way we believe we are hopelessly trapped in our sins even if the temptation is what we are trapped with and not the actual sin. TEMPTATION DOES NOT MEAN WE SIN.  If that were true, if our worst temptation, our daily agonizing temptation towards some vile sin was in fact us sinning and not escaping daily from its tenacious pull, we'd have no hope at all.  JESUS WAS TEMPTED TO SIN. The temptation was NOT the sin. The struggle with temptation is NOT the sin. The escape made from the temptation keeps the sin from occurring. 

We will face temptations- maybe the same one over and over, or maybe different ones each day. We mustn't confuse temptation with sinning, we mustn't allow Satan to use that sneak attack to draw us into his web of deceit. If he can get us to believe our being tempted is the sin, then it is very easy for him to lead us down the path into sin. The slippery slope from temptation to sin is hideous, but we do have an escape from the temptation…even if that escape is something we have to suffer to be free.  We will be able to bear temptations, but it won't necessarily be easy at all in any way. The bearing of temptations is something we need to recognize as a fact of our lives. Not that we will be temptation free- ever- but that we CAN bear them through the escape made possible for us by very faithful GOD.

1Co 10:13  There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.