Temptations of Jesus: The World

Well, Father, we are very thankful for today.

Lord, I pray that Your Holy Spirit would be present in this place and, Father, that You

would be present in our hearts. And, Lord, despite the music, despite the prayers,

despite the preaching, Lord, our only desire is for every person in this room to

walk out of these doors today and just be able to say, I felt God today. There was

something different. As, Lord, as we come together, I know we have a world of issues

and troubles and situations and circumstances in our own lives that we

could all dig through and try to solve and decipher. But, Lord, I just pray this

morning that we would simply rest in You, Lord, that we would just enjoy the

presence of Your Spirit. Guys, we celebrate Father's Day. You are our Father. No matter

how bad our own fathers may have failed us, no matter how good or bad that

relationship may be, Lord, You are a perfect Father. And so we can come and

celebrate today because we have You. You're always there. You're always present. And,

Father, we just thank You for being that for us. Lord, as we get ready to read Your

Word and talk about our temptations and things that we've been going through for

the past several weeks, Lord, I pray that You would just speak powerfully to our

hearts. Lord, for all of our requests, for all of our people, for a youth camp that's coming up

this week, Lord, we just pray that You would be with it. That You would work

and move powerfully. That You would speak and change hearts in ways that only You

can do. And this morning, Lord, we give this to You. We thank You and we love You

and we praise You. For it's in Jesus' name that we pray, all God's people said.

Amen. You may be seated.

Well, Happy Father's Day. I know that, I don't know if you know this or not, but when it

comes to church, typically Mother's Day is one of the highest attended Sundays of

the year. Mothers are super-celebrated. We have all kinds of stuff that we do for

them and celebrate them in so many ways, and we should. They're great. I think that

Father's Day is typically one of the least attended Sundays in the American

Church, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that if you ask a dad,

hey, what do you want for Father's Day? He's probably gonna say peace and quiet.

He's gonna say, give me a little bit of time to myself, and I think a lot of

dads choose that, but I want to read some statistics to you this morning. I don't

have a gift for you today, but this is my gift to you. Can I give you this

gift? Gentlemen, I think you'll appreciate this, and so men, this is for you. Ladies,

wives, children, this is for you as well. From several different studies from Pew

Research, South Carolina Center of Fathers and Families, A Father's Place,

and Alper Kids, I pulled these statistics from various different places. The

numbers may be slightly different, but it's basically all saying the same

information, so let me give you some of the things that I found. Kids without

fathers are five times more likely to commit suicide, five times more likely to

be poor, nine times more likely to drop out of high school, ten times more

likely to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape, 20

times more likely to end up in prison, 32 times more likely to run away from home.

In America, 90% of homeless population grew up in fatherless homes. 70% of all

teen pregnancies happen in fatherless homes, 70% of all child murders happen

in fatherless homes. A fatherless home is at a significantly higher risk

of children being exposed to sexual abuse, and in a fatherless home,

significantly less likely to be in church. Kids with fathers are two times

more likely to go to college, 43% more likely to earn A's, 33% less likely to

repeat a grade, 80% less likely to go to jail, significantly more likely to be

confident, significantly better mental health conditions, significantly better

economic statuses, and significantly lower crime rates in communities and

neighborhoods where fathers are present. And when a father is in church, 93%

more likely that the rest of the family will attend with them. So your gift

gentleman this morning is to communicate to the ladies in the room that simply a

father being present makes all the difference in the world. It does not

matter how much money they make, there's no distinction as to what all they do

or what they're involved with or how many chores they help out with. The

simple presence of a father changes everything for a child. So women allow

your husbands to be present in their children's lives, and that will be more

than enough. As Christians, we believe that the presence of the father changes

everything for us, and we get to see that a little bit in the presence of

the fathers in our physical lives as well. So I encourage you, we got a lot of

people in here today, and I know marriages and things aren't maybe what we

would like for them to be, and there may be considerations of choosing a different

venue, but to take a father out of the home exposes your children to a world of

risk that we could never contemplate or imagine. Happy Father's Day. We've been

talking about the temptations of Christ. I want to review that with you real

quick before we get going. Jesus was tempted, yet he didn't sin. So as we talk

about temptations in our life, I think it's really important this morning to

remind ourselves you can't control what you're tempted with. You can't control

why certain things appeal to you as an individual, why you are drawn to certain

things. But I do want to encourage you this morning that you do not have to feel

guilty about the things you're tempted with. You should only feel guilty when

you yield to temptation and begin to sin. That's whenever the guilt should be in,

and the guilt should be acknowledged. Number two, we see in this that Jesus

is prepared for his temptations. He's submitted to the Holy Spirit. He's

fasting in preparation for what Satan is going to bring his way. Satan is our

enemy. We're going to talk a lot more about that aspect this morning, but he's

an enemy that you and I cannot compete with. And if you're not prepared to do

battle with him, you're going to lose. You can't just show up and just say and

wing it and just think that you're going to be okay walking spiritually with

the Lord. That's about all you're going to lose. We've got to be prepared. Number

three, the Holy Spirit leads us to hard places. As the Holy Spirit led Jesus, it

led him to the wilderness. It led him to fasting. He was exposed to loneliness, to

hunger, to starvation. He was exposed to temptations, which are extremely

difficult. I don't know about you guys, but whenever I'm tempted, it's extremely

difficult to fight those temptations in my life. He's exposed to all these

things. The Holy Spirit doesn't just lead us to good places with rainbows

and sunshine. The Holy Spirit leads us sometimes to hard places, and we got to

be okay with that because the Lord is wanting to do something in our life when

we go to hard places and we walk through hard times. God is growing us in

those moments. Number four, Satan can use anything to tempt us. The first time

we talked about it, we talked about him presenting this turning stones into

bread. That's a very unique thing. There's nothing sinful about rocks, yet

Satan used that as a temptation for Christ. He can use anything in any

circumstance, in any situation, to tempt us to distort and pull away from the will

of God, and whenever we begin to pull away from the will of God and we begin

to gratify ourselves, that's when sin usually begins to creep into our life.

Fifth thing, Satan is no respecter of holy places. We talked last week about

how Satan took Jesus to the temple, took him to the highest point of the temple.

He also began to quote scripture in the second temptation, so it has nothing to

do with the place. It has nothing to do even with God's Word. Satan can use the

church. He can use scripture. He can use anything to frustrate you, to make

you question, to make you doubt. He can use anything to try to pull you away

from the Father and putting your trust and faith in him, and we need to be

aware of that. Sixth thing, he will come after your identity. We see twice that he

comes after Jesus, saying that if you are the Son of God, even though in chapter

3 God had already affirmed him as being his son with whom he was well pleased,

he will come after your identity over and over and over again. It's Father's

Day. I think men are a lot more concerned with their identity and how

other people see them, whether or not people respect them or admire them, and

so you need to know this more, especially if you're a man. Satan will come after your

identity and try to present things to you so that you will look better or work

on your pride or work on arrogance or something like that in your life to pull

you away from the Father. So we've talked a lot about physical things,

external things, and today we're talking about internal things, some things that

lie within that Satan is going to come at us for. So Matthew 4 verses 1

Matthew 4:1–11

to 11. Let's read it together. It says,

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the

devil. For forty days and forty nights he fasted and he became very hungry. During

that time the devil came and said to him, If you are the Son of God, tell these

stones to become loaves of bread. But Jesus told him, No, the scriptures say,

people do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the

mouth of God. And then the devil took him to the holy city, Jerusalem, to the

highest point of the temple and said, If you are the Son of God, jump off. For the

scriptures say, he will order his angels to protect you and they will hold

you up with their hands so you won't even hurt your foot on a stone. Jesus

responded, the scriptures also say, You must not test the Lord your God. Next,

the devil took him to the peak of a very high mountain and showed him all

the kingdoms of the world and their glory. I will give it all to you, he said,

if you will kneel down and worship me. Get out of here, Satan, Jesus told him.

For the scriptures say, you must worship the Lord your God and serve only him.

Then the devil went away and angels came and took care of Jesus. So in this,

for point number one, I think it's important that we understand that Satan

has powers. Satan has a lot of power. And I think in our culture in America, like

we really, we do not give enough credit to spiritual things. Like we've entered

into this, this culture of education and we like to discredit things and the

supernatural. And so a lot of people, because of that reason, don't even

believe in God at all. They don't believe in the powers of God. And

whenever it comes to us as believers, like when we start looking at Satan, we

can be tempted to think like, okay, this guy's just a jokester. Like he's the

court gesture. He's the goofball over here on the side, just trying to mess

things up. And we really don't give him the credit that we should because we're

talking about the enemy of God. The only reason he's our enemy is whenever we

give our hearts and lives to God. You remember we talked several weeks ago how

if you're being tempted, that's a good thing because it's revealing to you who

you belong to. Because if you don't belong to God, you're not going to be

tempted. Satan's not worried about you. He has nothing to offer you because you're

already his and you don't even know it yet. So he's not our enemy. He's God's

enemy. He's powerful. You're talking about the one, the being who is in

heaven, who led all of creation in worshiping the True Father. From what we

know in Scripture, which is very little, Satan led the worship in heaven of all

beings to worship God. And somehow even though all those angels and all those

things in heaven saw God with their own eyes, understood his power and his

authority, somehow Satan convinced one-third of the angels to rebel

against God and turn with him. He's powerful. He has power. He has

authority. And he has the ability to just dangle things in front of our faces

that he knows we specifically won't and desire and lean towards. And he has every

ability to draw us to himself. Now I think it's important that whenever we

look at Scripture, we kind of get a broad view. And so this morning I want us to

look at Luke chapter 4 verses 5 through 7. If you'll turn there, it'll be on the

Luke 4:5–7

screen. But so far everything that we've talked about, the Scripture's been

pretty similar. But this is the first passage that we see where Luke gives

us a little more detail into this temptation that Jesus is experiencing. So

let's read Luke's account for it in verses 5 through 7. It says,

Then the devil took him up and revealed to him all the kingdoms of the world in a

moment of time. I will give you the glory of these kingdoms and authority over them,

the devil said, because they are mine to give to anyone I please, and I will give

it all to you if you will worship me. So one thing I want us to notice is is

that when we're talking about Satan, this is this is a spiritual being. Like this

is not this physical thing. You're not gonna see him. You know, God doesn't sit,

it's not like a cartoon. God doesn't sit on one shoulder and the devil on the

other and they're just bickering back and forth and you're trying to decide

what you're going to. No, it's not like that. We're talking about a spiritual

being who very much has power and authority. And when you look at this

moment or this passage, when you think about how Satan is operating this

moment out as he's tempting Jesus, it's not like Jesus and Satan are hopping up

on camels and they're riding into Jerusalem and they climb a ladder and

they get on top of the tipple mount and then he starts tempting in there or

then he like they make this track to a high mountain so that they can

literally see all the kingdoms of the earth. But what Satan is doing is he's

taking Jesus and it's almost like he's transcending time and reality and

physicality of everything where he's taking Jesus in these moments and

they're at the temple. And whether he's just given Jesus these

visions or he's taken them there and they just end up there, I don't know. I

can't explain that. But it's not a normal perspective of what normal

reality is for us. So he's moving Jesus from one point to the other. They were

at the temple we talked about last week. They were up at the highest point and

he's being tempted to jump off. Now he takes him up on this mountain and in

Luke 4 it says, in a moment's time he shows him all the kingdoms of the earth.

So he's able to reveal to Jesus everything that he has power and

authority over in this moment in a moment's time to say I will give this

to you if you will bow down and worship me. Satan has power. He has

authority. And it's important for us to see today that Satan's power and

authority is much greater than ours but it's still very limited. You see he's

up here he's tempting Jesus and you have to ask the question why is he tempting

Jesus? Why is why is Satan willing to give him all the kingdoms and all the

power and all the authority of the earth at this time and give it to

Christ if he will simply bow down and worship it? Because Satan has a lot of

power and authority on earth but he doesn't have the power and authority to

distort the will and plans of God. But do you know who does? You and I do. Yeah I

said it last week or maybe the week before I can't remember it all runs

together. I can do very little to make people get saved but I could sin and like

that tear this church apart. I could take God's will for his kingdom and to see

people get saved and I could really screw that up so could you. That's

so in this moment Satan does have power and authority you trace it back all the

way to Genesis when God puts Adam and Eve in the charge of the garden and as

soon as they sinned they relinquish their power and authority and they put

it in the hands of Satan and now Satan is in control and when you look

when you look at this world man you know this the best it would be awesome

if we could do A and B and then we know we're gonna get C because we like being

in control right we like to know what the outcome is gonna be we like to know that

if we do everything right then we're gonna get this and then you as you grow

and as you live in this world you realize you could do A and B and you

could do it perfectly and you may not get C because we live in a jacked up

world that Satan's in control of and we don't always get justice in this world

we don't definitely don't get fairness and we deal with all these things that

Satan is just manipulating and moving around but it's his to give it's his

it's his to bestow on whoever he wants to he cannot distort God's will but he

can cause us to sin which will distort God's will this is why he's very much

willing to offer all this stuff to Jesus because if Jesus sins think about

what happens if Jesus sins you and I have no hope we have no forgiveness of sin

we have no salvation and we very much can distort the will of God because of

the free will that we've been given as humans that's why Satan's willing to

trade at any moment any time everything that we do every temptation that you're

faced with it seems harmless it seems like nobody's gonna know it's not hurting

anybody else this is mine and it seems so little and insignificant but we have

no idea what we're trading every time we give in to the temptations that he

offers you we make a deal with the devil every time that we sin whether we

realize it or not point number two Satan is the God of this world that's a

really strong statement you may not like it but let's look at scripture first

second Corinthians chapter 4 verse 4 as Paul's writing to the church in

2 Corinthians 4:4

Corinth and he's talking about what it means to follow God and what it means

to separate ourselves from the world in order to follow God look at what he

says in verse 4 it says Satan who is the God of this world has blinded the minds

of those who don't believe they are unable to see the glorious light of the

good news they don't understand this message about the glory of Christ who is

the exact likeness of God so Satan who is the God of this physical world they

don't get too up in arms about that God is the God of all things he still has

power and authority over Satan Satan cannot do any more than God allows him to

do but this physical world belongs to Satan and every time you and I sin it's

just that testament and affirmation of the sin that Adam committed in the

garden that you and I are still doing to still give him that power and

authority in this world that stinks but that's truth okay now in Job chapter 1

Job 1:6–7

verses 6 through 7 it says one day the members of the heavenly court came to

present themselves before the Lord and the accuser Satan came with them where

have you come from the Lord as Satan Satan answered to the Lord I've been

patrolling the earth watching everything that's going on and he's

trolling he's watching it because it's his it's his authority he's watching

everything that's going on if you know the story of job read it great great

story Satan and God's having this conversation about tempting job and

Satan says oh yeah well you know you protect him you guard him that's why

he's never gonna turn and says God says okay we'll take all that away and then

you have your time with him he only has the power and authority that God

gives him and you need to know that in your life sometimes the Lord is gonna

have Satan on a tight leash and he's gonna draw him in and he's gonna give

you space to grow and mature and develop and prepare and to be filled with

the spirit and have these moments in time but then there's gonna be a time

like he did with Job where he may let that leash out and he may give him 50

foot instead of 5 foot in your life and it's not gonna make sense and you're

not gonna understand why and the truth is is we have an enemy that we cannot

compete with and if we're not preparing when he's on the short leash we're

definitely not gonna be prepared when he's on the long one and he has more

freedom in our life to move like he did in Job's life the world belongs to him

and every time we sin we relinquish the authority that God has given us and we

give more authority to Satan this is exactly why Satan takes Jesus up to

the highest point and in a moment's time he says shows him the kingdoms of the

earth he says I will give these to you because they're mine to give because he

knows that if he can get Jesus to sin it's worth giving up the whole world

because if Jesus sins he has us he has every one of us if Jesus sins without

a perfect Savior there's no forgiveness of sin without a perfect Christ there's

no hope without a pure and spotless lamb there is no eternal life we only

have that through Jesus Christ this is exactly why Satan's willing to give it

to him in order to gain access to us and in Luke 6 or chapter 4 verses 6

through 7 he says I will give you the glory of these kingdoms and authority

over them the devil said because they are mine to give to anyone I please and I

will give it all to you if you will worship me now we said a couple weeks ago

I've never been tempted to turn a rock into bread I don't have that ability

I've also never been tempted to take over the world like I'm not Dr. Evil

I'm not pinky in the brain don't know if you know that reference or not I've

never been I don't have that that desire ability to be president of the United

States would be like the most awful thing in the world to know that the day

you step in office half the people hate you as soon as you get started they're

all pulling against you and it's our nation and half the people hate and it

doesn't matter which one gets in I have no desire for that I'm never going to

be tempted with the kingdoms of the world and ruling the world like never

even thought about that never came across my mind have no desire for that but

there are plenty of things in this world that I would love to have plenty of

things I would like to do places I'd like to go stuff I would like to possess

and own and there's plenty of things in the world that inherently they're all

good things right when God created the heavens and the earth and everything in

the world and all of life what do you say he said he created and said it

was good but for us as people we can take anything good and we can use it to

gratify ourselves and take glory from God and give it to ourselves and use it

to be sinful and because we've given that power and authority to Satan in this

world he takes things of the world and uses it to draw us away from the

Father and this is why we have to be so very careful about the things of the

world you're sitting here this morning and we talk a lot about sin and like we

can like clearly identify certain sins and we can say well we know scripture

says this is wrong and this is wrong and this is wrong and this is wrong and

this is wrong and people of the world who are blinded by the enemy which we

read about in second Corinthians from Paul they're blinded and you can't even

convince them that what God clearly says sin is sin but then you take us as

Christians and we live in a sinful world and we love Jesus and we want to

follow him and yet there's still this desire in our life to cling to the

world and we can rationalize and justify and and have all these excuses of why

all the things that we cling to and all the things that we hang on to and all

the things that we do are okay because I've done it a million times in my own

life but the world is temporary the world is fading away this world belongs

to our enemy and if there's anything in this world that you're clinging to in

any sort of way and putting it above God whatsoever you're not walking in

fellowship with the father there's no possible way because we're called to die

to the world and to live for God to put those things to death and let the

Spirit of God live inside of us and you can't do both point number three even

Jesus was tempted by the world and this is not something that we should be

surprised by if God's one and only Son who was perfect was tempted by things

of the world what makes us think that we're any better than him we will be

tempted by things and probably less things than he was tempted by and it

will draw to us and it will pull at us and it will call our names and it will

be extremely hard to say no because here's the problem with American

culture and all you young people in here this is for you because when you

old like me you begin to realize I'm never gonna be famous I'm never gonna

be rich I haven't no road or state or territory anything named after me when I

died like 15 years nobody will remember me and then you just accept that so it's

a little easier to begin to die to the world because I'm starting to get closer

to the other side and I got to think about death a little more it's a lot

easier to die to the world when you guys start living on the other side but

when you're young you got all this time ahead of you and you have all the

world and you have education and you have job and you have money and you

have cars and homes and relationships and friendships and social media and the

potential to be famous now is so much easier and more attainable than what it

ever was before and you have all these goals and ideas and dreams that you could

have and they are pretty attainable we live in a culture where money is pretty

easy to come by if you're poor today you probably made bad decisions money's

everywhere and a lot of people blow it so it's not hard to get because

people blow money all the time we watch people put like $20 in some little claw

machine in a Mexican restaurant in Hendersonville yesterday it's really sad

they had a great time but they lost $20 people blow it now sorry for the rabbit

trail you start looking at this you start looking at the world and

everything that you can attain in life and it's really hard to say I'm not

going to pursue this as a young person things that I can see things that I

can touch things that I've seen other people achieve so I know that I can see

it and yet you're over here and the crazy 41 year old pastors understand that

no die to the world live for God but I can't see God and like I think I feel

him but I don't know if I really feel him because I can't explain it and I've

never really had anybody in my life explain to me what that is or explain

to me like when God is speaking to me and how I'm supposed to respond to that

and what it means to really walk with Christ on a daily basis it's I could

have all this stuff and I know I could have it and I don't really know what's

on the other side because I can't see it and nobody else can and so to die to

the world that you know you could have versus living for the world to come

based completely off of faith that sounds like insanity and to the world

it is but for somebody who's truly experienced Christ and the Holy Spirit

in their life it makes absolute sense and as a 41 year old who's lived as a

Christian for 26 years now it absolutely makes sense to me now that doesn't mean

that I'm perfect on the other side but I completely understand the concept of

dying to the world and every time that I do die to the world my life is much

better and any time that I do cling to the world my life gets really hard and I

made it hard for myself by clinging to it because I knew what was right and what

was wrong and James chapter 4 verses 4 through 5 loved the book of James

James 4:4–5

because James just throws it out there not because that's my name he just he

just says and in verse 4 he says you adulterers he's talking to Christians

and he's calling them adulterers don't you realize that friendship with the

world makes you an enemy of God I say it again if you want to be a friend of

the world you make yourself an enemy of God do you think the scriptures have no

meaning they say that God is passionate that the spirit he has placed within

us should be faithful to him if you claim Jesus Christ this morning and

the Holy Spirit lives within you the Holy Spirit calls us to be faithful to

God scripture tells us over and over again he is a jealous God he is a

passionate God he did not bleed and die and resist temptation and and resist

the entire world that he could have possessed so that you and I could just

go out here willy-nilly getting everything we want and our cake and

eat it too and get heaven also it doesn't work that way the scriptures

absolutely have meaning the scriptures absolutely call us to die to the world

and to live for God to let the Holy Spirit live within us and guide us and

show us and teach us to take us to hard places and bring us through those hard

places because it's the only way you're going to get to the other side

dying to the world is the only way that we get to the other side if we

cling to the world we make ourselves enemies of God and this is James

writing this letter to other Christians people who have already accepted Jesus

Christ as Lord and Savior he says if you cling to the world you're an enemy of

God and that's hard teaching and I will be the first one to tell you as a

pastor that dying to the world is extremely difficult tons of things in

this world that I would love to have love to do love to experience and say a

no to it is extremely hard the temptations may be very different

between Christ and me I've never been tempted to take over the world but I'm

just as tempted with the world as he was and I guarantee you most of you are

too but we're called to die to it you got to be very careful about the

things of the world because you never know what you're trading to get them

you never know what deal you're making with the devil to get them remember

it's his world everything that's in this world is his and it's his power and

his authority and his ability to give it to whomever he pleases so the things of

the world that we chase after we have to be oh so very careful because we may be

making a deal with the devil to get them now there are also passages of

Scripture like in Proverbs that talks about God punishing the wicked taking

the wealth of the wicked and giving it to the godly there are times where

that happens so I'm not saying that you can't have a house you can't have

a car and you can't have nice clothes and you can't have a big bank

account I'm not saying that those things are sinful what I'm saying is is

that when we take the things of the world and we cling to them and elevate

them above God they become idols they become sinful and we have to be willing

to die to the world in order to live for Christ in Galatians chapter 6 verse

Galatians 6:14

14 Paul writes to the church in Galatia and he says as for me may I never boast

about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ because of that cross

my interest in this world has been crucified and the world's interest in

me has also died as a believer in Jesus there has to come a point in our life

where we need to die to die to the world to where we say man like yeah there's

gonna be times where you're faced with stuff and you're tempted with stuff

you're gonna be drawn to it and that's okay because you're gonna be tempted

because if you belong to Jesus Satan's gonna be working on you that's a good

thing thank God for those moments most of us is like man this is hard I wish

God to take this away thank God for those moments it's a reminder of who you

belong to but you got to die to it die to the world to live for Christ and this

morning each and every single one of us we've got to look in that spiritual

mirror and we got to be honest with ourselves about the things that appeal

to us about the temptations and sins in our lives that are there that we know

God is working on us and probably convicting of us right now in this

moment and say God I don't want to do this I don't want to turn from you I don't

want to be displeasing you got I want to live for you help me to die to this so

that I can live for you and only you know what those things are only you can

invite the Spirit of God into your life to guide you to lead you only you can

read God's Word only you can pray only you can fast to be prepared for the

moments where temptation is gonna come because they're gonna come I guarantee

you if everybody in this room raised their hand right now probably everybody

in this room would raise their hand right now we said how many of you have

found it harder to do the right thing whenever you gave your life to Christ or

now that you've been trying to grow in your relationship with Christ and life

has gotten harder it's harder to do the right thing right now because every

time I try to grow whenever time I try to do it it's like Satan comes in he's

like double time but that's only something that we can do through the

help of God because your enemy is stronger than you are the only way that

you can do it is through Christ let's pray father God thank you for the day

and thank you for the opportunity to call you father to celebrate your

presence in our lives in order to think about those statistics we read at the

end of the service to just think that your presence in our life makes all the

difference in the world I pray God that we would just invite you in all the

things that were tempted by all the things that draw us all the things that

appeal to us Lord we can't control that but Lord you are more than able so

Lord we invite your Holy Spirit into our lives to strengthen us and guide us and

give us the desire to read scripture give us the desire to pray give us the

desire to fast and to be prepared for moments when the temptation comes

because it's going to come and I pray that you would help us to be ready and

filled full of you for when it dies Lord help us to die to this world help us to

live for you we love you we thank you and ask all this in Jesus name amen