In church work, we do it all the time; like we say: hey, we've got an idea, and it's not well planned. It might be a little immoral, maybe even illegal; but it's an idea - and we don't have the money to even come close to doing it. No common-sense of any kind tells us that we're in a position to try to accomplish this - but we're going to believe God.
That's how we frame it! If that's faith, then it’s holy, but there's another way. If it's flesh, then it easily becomes: we're just going to presume upon God's power.
It sounds like this: I'm going to do what I want to do anyway, then I'll just believe God to fix it up. Jesus is like: God doesn't work that way.
In the South - I'm from the South by the way. In the South, smoking cigarettes is no big deal. In California, it's illegal to smoke inside a building; but In South Carolina, it's like illegal NOT to smoke inside a building; and I've prayed for people all over the South with lung cancer.
They've smoked four packs a day for their whole life, and you ought to see what their lungs would look like, if they were taken out of their body. So I pray for them; and then they go - and they still smoke! And I say: what are you doing? They say: oh we'll just believe God. We'll just believe God. We do things like that all the time - we presume upon God's power.
The third temptation is to take a short cut. Satan offers Him all the kingdoms of the world - which was Jesus' anyway; it just wasn't Jesus' right then.
Psalm 115:16, says: “the highest heavens belong to God, but the earth He's given to man”. Then eventually, at the end of the story, it all goes back to God's, and God uses us to rule; but right now, the kingdom of this world - it's given to us; and to the Prince of the Power of the Air.
So the Prince of the Power of the Air says: hey, I'll give it to you - now. I'll give you a short cut: if you worship me, you can avoid the cross - you can avoid all that pain - and I'll give you the end of it anyway.
But Jesus realised something very quickly: that a kingdom, is not a kingdom, without people. So to meet a legitimate need, in an illegitimate way, is to take a short cut to God's plan, and to presume upon God's power.
These are the temptations; and I realised there's a couple of keys to beating temptation, that isn't what we think. Let me just tell you what doesn't work: willpower. Your emotions will override your willpower, every single time. Willpower just typically doesn't work.
Has anybody, besides me, ever promised God that you would never do something - ever never, ever never, ever never again? How many of you lied? We all lied, yeah. But two things will help us beat temptation, and number one is this:
If we can simply pause, step back, and realise that there's far more at stake with temptation than meets the eye - there's far more!
One of the biggest lies in the world is: my behavior is between me and God. Listen, if your behavior is between you and God, then do whatever you want to do - God can handle you! Your behavior is never between you and God; your behavior affects everybody around you.
There's always much more at stake, with temptation, than meets the eye. The temptation is: oh, it's just me and God, and this one situation. It's just this one. One more beer – which, how many of you know, for some people, is never just one more beer. It's broken families; it's anger outbursts. It leads to other things.
It's just one more piece of cake; I'll start my diet tomorrow, it's just between me and God; and this one piece of cake. It's just this one new car purchase I can't afford. I'm going to get into debt for six years, for this one impulse, this one moment. It's just between me and God, and He's okay with it. It's just this one moment. It's just this one outburst of anger. It's just this one bit of rage.
I was with a guy once (he was 52), and we were praying together, a whole bunch of us were praying together. There was a lady who I'd never met before, and there was a group of us. This lady was very prophetic, very much the real deal, and we'd never met her before, but she asked if she could pray for this man, and I said: sure.