So he came forward, and she said: sir, I'm seeing you crouched in the foetal position. It's a yellow house on the outside, with old wood panelling on the wall; and you're crouched in the foetal position by a stove. There's a stove, a wood stove that was used to heat the whole house, and you're crouched in the foetal position. You're roughly nine years old, I'm guessing, and I'm seeing your father walk into the room, and your father walks into the room and he's yelling, and he said this to you, and she quoted something that this man's father had said to him when he was nine.
This man who I knew very well - and he's the real deal, and he is not an emotional freak of nature, or anything like that - this man started heaving and crying. I'm talking about crying, to the point stuff's coming out of his nose; stuff's coming out of his mouth. I knew this guy. This guy was the real deal. He is crying and weeping so hard from that; and she said: that's been the seed-bed of your depression for all of these years.
This man had been hospitalised four different times for depression in his life, and I thought: maybe when his dad did that; because he kept saying: “my dad was a good man. It was just that...”; maybe when his dad did that, he convinced himself: ”oh, it was just one outburst of anger.” It was just one fit of rage. God will forgive me anyway. No, no, no. This affected - this man was 53 years old, so for 44 years he had been dramatically affected by that one moment.
I think sometimes with temptation, if we can just step back and realise, that there's something far more at stake with temptation than meets the eye.
If we could ever just step back and realise: if I buy this car, I'm going to have to make payments for six years. I'm going to end up paying way more than the car's worth; and it's going to go down so fast in value I can't keep up.
And yeah, if I just drink this, if it's just this one more beer, if it's just this one more then whatever. But it's not going to be that. If this one more beer is going to push me over the edge, then I might get a DUI on the way home. I might yell at my wife. This is going to affect everybody.
This one more piece of cake, it could be just one more piece of cake, but if I step back and realise this could be the thing that throws me over the edge to diabetes. This could be the thing that causes heart disease. It's never just one more piece of cake.
The first thing is: there's always more at stake with temptation than meets the eye. The second thing is: overcoming temptation has far more to do with who we trust, than our willpower.
It has far more to do with this: where's our eye on? What are we thinking like?
Beating temptation has far more to do with: do we trust the people to bring three cookies out?
Do we trust that God's way - is three cookies -better than our way?
Where in our life are we settling for one cookie, when God intends for us to have three? Where in our life does God have three cookies waiting for us, if we'll just die to our need to be in control of the one?
It's not so much about willpower, of not eating the one cookie; it has everything to do with: do I trust that the three cookies is a better way.
I've had so many teenage girls in my counseling office, and they say stuff like this: I thought that he would love me more, if I crossed the line morally with him, and so I did, and when I woke up, I was lonelier than ever before.
It wasn't so much that they succumbed to sexual stuff; they do succumb to sexual stuff, but bigger than that. It's more: for a moment, for just a brief moment, I trusted that my way was better than God's way. All it takes is just that moment, and it affects their whole life.
In a room this size, most of us, anybody over a certain age, would have something, some decision, that they did way back in their past, that they thought was just about the moment; that they still, every now and then, think about today.