God’s Word tells us in 1 Corinthians 10:12-13 NLT, “If you think you are standing, be careful not to fall. The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, He will show you a way out so that you can endure”. We also found in part 1 that temptation is any trial regarded as enticing one to sin. Sin not only hurts us spiritually, it deceives, desensitizes, and it hardens us to God and the things of God. It is designed to destroy our relationship with God and our confidence in God.
Today I want to share with you the first step or key to overcoming temptation, it is found in 1 Corinthians 10:14. The Amplified Bible translates this verse, “Therefore, my beloved, shun (keep clear away from, avoid by flight if need be) any sort of idolatry (of loving or venerating anything more than God)”. Wow! There is a ton of insight to overcoming temptation in this verse. Most people would never imagine idolatry being a problem in their lives until they really understand what it is. Idolatry is anything that takes the place of God or the place God should have in your life. So what place is God supposed to hold? You know the answer – first place. So we find the first step or key to overcoming any temptation is to keep God first in our life. We simply cannot win over temptation without God being and staying our first priority or number one in our lives.
So the real question is how do we keep God first in our lives? In answering that question I want to share something I believe will make this clearer for us to see. I once heard a NFL coach who has won multiple Super Bowls questioned about his team’s success. He said one key to their success was that week in and week out they stress, reinforce, and continue to work on the fundamentals of the game. That means they daily work to continue to improve on the very basics. He said, “You can always get better and a coach must not allow these to be neglected”. I immediately thought about how that is related to our Christian walk as a believer. There are basics or fundamentals in our Christian life that we can’t afford to neglect if we are going to be successful and we never outgrow doing them. We must work on the fundamentals of our Christian walk so that we continue to improve and so that we can continue to win in life. The takeaway from this is: to win as an individual, team, or church, we will have to work on and continue to improve on the fundamentals. Now I haven’t digressed from our subject, which is how to keep God first in our lives. So the question I will answer next time is, what fundamentals of our Christian walk help us to keep God first in our lives? We will look deeper into this in an upcoming blog because remember, keeping God first in our lives is key to us overcoming any temptation.