Jacob Ninan
Playing with fireEach one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust - Jas.1:14 The temptation starts with one thought. That is not a sin, and we haven’t become dirty yet. This is where we have the opportunity to hop off from the train that will quickly gather speed. The easiest way is to turn our thoughts to something else, instead of mulling over this delicious idea in our mind where it quickly becomes too strong for us to stop. We can yield or overcome this way.
No one falls into sexual sin suddenly. The first door we open is in an attitude that tolerates this sin. We need to keep this door firmly closed with a desire to be pleasing to our Lord by being faithful here. This is what gives us strength to resist temptations. The next door is to indulge in sexual thoughts, excusing ourselves thinking that we aren’t doing anything! Then comes allowing sexually stimulating inputs to come into our lives through books, TV, movies, internet, etc. By now we have already become very weak, and it is only a matter of time before we begin to actually take action towards sexual pleasure.
We may not intend to ‘flirt’ with people in the workplace to start with. But when we spend a lot of time with someone over work or travelling for work this ‘friendly’ relationship may slowly become personal and intimate if we are not deliberately watchful. Even when we begin to enjoy this flirting we may not realise that we are already being unfaithful in our heart and slowly edging nearer to the precipice.
If we are single, we may have opportunities to strengthen our guard with spending more time with God, and when we are married we can pay more attention to building our marriage relationship.
One of the lies the devil usually tells us is that we can always stop whenever we want. But if we just look around we have thousands of examples to warn us.
Lord, give me a sober and watchful attitude that I don’t get fooled or fool myself when I face sexual temptations.
Published in Management Devotional - Biblical insights for daily work life, Christian Institute of Management.