P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

PUT THE MONEY IN THE BANK
BEFORE YOU WRITE CHECKS

There was a wonderful cartoon in Leadership magazine recently — and I'm starting to worry that some of you may begin to think that's all we ever read it for. Actually, the articles in this Christian journal are quite outstanding too, and we'll need to start referring to them as well just to protect our reputations. But in this particular bit of comic-strip wisdom, a pastor is standing outside his church on Sunday morning when he sees a particular parishioner coming toward him.

And he thinks to himself: "Oh no! I promised Bob a couple of weeks ago that I'd be praying for him . . . and I forgot all about it. Here he's been going through all sorts of difficulties, and I gave him my word that I'd be lifting up his name before heaven. And it totally slipped my mind." But Bob, coming down the line toward him, is still about ten seconds away. So quick as a wink and a handshake, this pastor says a lightning-fast silent prayer: "Dear-God-please-bless-Bob-amen." And then immediately calls out: "Hey, Bob! I've been praying for you, man!"

Well, let me say two things. First of all, here at the Voice of Prophecy, when we promise to pray for people in our Thursday morning prayer sessions, we try to give it more energy and thought than that! But our second goal this Thursday is to link prayer, especially hasty, emergency prayer, to this business of resisting temptation. You recall in our study yesterday that Billy Graham teenager anecdote, where he faced a very attractive temptation in a dark classroom. And he did two things: he shot up to heaven an emergency prayer, and he then did a hundred-yard dash out of Delilah's dark den of destruction.

Which is all well and good. "Pray . . . and Run" is not a bad formula. And yet, as we've tried to build a case for total dependence on God as the ONLY way to successfully fight Satan's temptations, I think it's important today to make this further statement: Friend, the best way and the only way for us to have victory over Lucifer is to be depending on God and His Son Jesus Christ ALL of the time, 24 hours a day, in a state of ongoing relationship, and not just when the dark sweaty moment of temptation comes.

In other words, it's important to pray when we're tempted, but it's even more important for us to be praying before the temptation, during the time of calm, during the season of preparation and relationship-building.

You know, we find this with Jesus. We studied in depth the other day the Matthew four story where in the wilderness Jesus gained victory over His enemy Lucifer three times in a row. And there's no record that Jesus Christ prayed right at that moment — although He certainly might have. But we find that He had spent the previous 40 days before Satan came on the scene . . . doing what? Fasting and praying. The Bible talks about Jesus getting up early in the morning and praying, while His 12 disciples are still sleeping. The Bible talks about Jesus sending His disciples out in a boat on Galilee while He goes up into a mountain all by Himself to pray. Is there a crisis happening right then? No . . . but Jesus is preparing ahead of time, learning how to depend completely on God NOW, so that later when soldiers are driving nails into His hands and shoving a crown of thorns down on His head and spitting in His face, He can keep trusting God THEN.

In Morris Venden's book, It's WHO You Know, he discusses this Matthew four scenario, where three times in a row Jesus answered His opponent with a Bible verse. And then the question is asked: Is that how Jesus beat him? Was it the Bible verse that did it? Obviously no, because after Jesus gave Satan a verse for Temptation #1, Satan came right back with Number Two. And Jesus' second scriptural response didn't faze Lucifer either; he flipped through his playbook and went right to a third option just like a salesman. "Well, how about this used car, Jesus . . . if I can't interest you in the other ones?" Listen, quoting Scripture isn't how Jesus beat the devil. But the quoting of Scripture does prove that our Savior had spent time BEFORE, filling His mind with the Word of God, and getting Himself ready BEFORE to trust in God and Heaven's answers to every temptation.

In that little Billy Graham story, where a pretty high school girl got him in a dark corner and said, "I want you," it's wonderful that young Billy Frank prayed and ran. But I can guarantee you that he had done a lot more praying BEFORE. He was already living a life of dependance on Jesus, so that when this temptation hit, which was so urgent, so pulse-pounding that there was barely time to even say a prayer — one sentence maybe — one sentence was enough. As Venden says, the time to get money in the bank is before you need to write checks.

There's a wonderful New Testament verse that tells us what we need to do in order to have victory over temptations. It's over in Hebrews chapter four, and it leads in with the idea that we have a high priest today named Jesus Christ. Isn't that good news? Verse 14 tells us that Jesus understands things like temptation because He's been through them all. He "sympathizes with our weaknesses," we're told in verse 15 because He looked Lucifer in the eye more than you and I ever have or ever will. But now verse 16, and there's a nuance we might not pick up the first time. Here it is:

"Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us IN OUR TIME OF NEED."

Now, since this whole passage is talking about how Jesus faced temptation just like we do, it's fair to assume that the Bible writer, when he uses the phrase, "help us IN TIME OF NEED," is referring especially to moments of severe temptation. We need help then! We're desperate! And isn't it wonderful that there's a throne in heaven where Jesus our High Priest is ministering to us, knowing exactly what we're feeling, what we're enduring? In fact, here's the NIV comment for that very passage:

"Because Jesus our high priest has experienced human temptation, He stands ready to give immediate and sympathetic help when we are tempted."

But here's the nuance I'd never noticed before, and maybe you hadn't either. I have to thank our Sunday program host, Pastor Morris Venden, for this one too. But this verse isn't telling us to rush to the throne of heaven just during our time of need. Notice again:

"Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence," it says . . . and this can mean all the time. Let's fall on our knees before Jesus all the time. Let's seek heaven all the time. And then here's the rest of the verse: "SO THAT we may receive mercy and find grace to help us IN our time of need."

Do you see the difference? Friend, this is an exciting teaching! Heaven is a place that takes emergency 911 calls, to be sure. But it's so much more! And we're invited in the Word of God to be seeking the throne of grace all the time! With confidence! And then when temptation comes, we'll be so used to depending on heaven, we'll be so accustomed to NOT trusting in ourselves, we'll be so much in the habit of calling on Jesus, we'll be so fortified with Scripture, we'll be so instinctively ready to pray . . . that — just like Jesus in the wilderness — we'll simply keep on doing what we HAVE been doing.
There's a question we want to save for tomorrow, but let me lead into it right here for a moment. Our title for this radio series was this: RESISTING CHERRY CHEESECAKE AND OTHER SINS. And the on-air promo paragraph we used read like this:

"Paul must have been looking in the refrigerator when he wrote Romans 7: ‘What I don't want to do, I do all the time! Help!' On a practical level, what do we do to resist temptation? Are we fighting the ‘wrong fight' if we even try?"

And right here I want to share at least part of the Bible's answer. Friend, how do we resist temptation? We depend on God and we spend time every single day — especially BEFORE temptation hits — building a trust relationship with Him. That's precisely and exactly what Jesus did, and He scored the greatest victories against Satan ever witnessed in this universe. He didn't beat Satan simply by the quoting of Scripture, or by clever answers, or by mind games, or by being strong within Himself; after all, it was Jesus who admitted, "By Myself I can do nothing." No, He scored victories by drawing upon a relationship He'd already worked hard to establish with His own Father.

So let's also answer this question: "Are we fighting the ‘wrong fight' if we try to resist temptation?" We'll clarify tomorrow, but it's true that the Number One fight we have is to get to know God. It's not to fight the devil; it's not to "(quote) get stronger"; it's not to develop more backbone. We fight the right fight if we dig into getting to know God and approaching His throne of grace — both in time of need, and especially BEFORE the time of need.

That still leaves us with one thing, though. A piece of cheesecake in the fridge. That overly friendly co-worker who leaves a note on your desk that says, "Tonig ht's the night." That person you hate and LOVE to hate. Even when we love God and surrender self, there's a temptation that continues to look good. What then? Tomorrow we'll try to stay the course.