Fighting Temptation Full Movie Mp4 Download

[Ena Marklund]

WhenI thought of God as my stronghold, I thought of God swooping in and removing the temptation from me. I thought I could stay where I was at and He would fall down on top of me and shield me from the temptation.

When you take refuge in a place, you go into the depths of it. You steal back into the depths of the stronghold until the world outside is drowned out and the only thing you can see are the walls that surround and protect you.

Are you thriving as a rebelutionary? Or are you struggling with doing hard things? Take our quick rebelutionary checkup to find out and to get a free customized action plan on how to grow and thrive as a rebelutionary.

I had never thought about it this way. You make a great point! Everyone says we need to battle temptation, but really, God will protect us, and fight the battle for us. We just need to flee temptation and take refuge in God.

The sad reality is that these sources of temptation are lifelong; they do not go away. That means the person who struggles with the temptation to abuse alcohol or the person who fights against the temptation to use pornography or the person who combats the temptation to lust after another person of the opposite sex or the same sex may have to do so for a lifetime.

This is not a hopeless reality by any means. After the apostle Paul described his struggles in fighting temptation (Romans 7:15-24), he exclaimed, Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:25) There is forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ. There is power through the gospel of Jesus Christ to live godly lives.

What I can suggest is that you speak with your pastor or other trusted Christian counselor to develop strategies in combating the temptations you face. If you are not able to speak with your pastor about this, you might consider the resources of Christian Family Solutions, a WELS-affiliated ministry. The organization offers in-person and video counseling.

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

These cookies collect information that is used either in aggregate form to help us understand how our website is being used or how effective our marketing campaigns are, or to help us customize our website and application for you in order to enhance your experience.

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Brooks: Pastor Steve, it is always a shock to hear about a leader who has fallen. While we live in a culture that has a lot of temptation, it somehow still surprises us when we are tempted. No one is expecting it from their leader especially. Before we get started though, I would like you to clarify for us if this is something that can happen to any Christian, no matter their circumstances.

Pastor Steve: Yes and no. It can happen to any of us, especially in the culture we live in today. So yes, in that sense. But no, in the sense that if you are really walking with the Lord and you are living a spiritually disciplined lifestyle with protective boundaries, there is no reason why you should fall into any kind of sexual sin.

Brooks: Well as we get into this, let's start with the basics of the Christian life, because you mentioned the need for a strong life that is reinforced with different protections. Is there any one area you would highlight as something that leaders need to focus on if they're going to avoid falling into sexual sin.

Pastor Steve: The Apostle Paul said, if we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Walking in the Spirit is the key to freedom from sin and I believe walking in the Spirit primarily comes from developing a strong devotional life. It comes from spending time in the Word of God and spending time in meaningful prayer to the Lord. When you're meeting with God every day, you will begin to be lifted up spiritually, above carnality and the World. I'm not saying that a guy with a strong devotional life is exempt from temptation, but it will strengthen you and the most important aspect of living in victory is to have daily devotion with God.

Brooks: I would just assume as somebody who is sitting on the other side of the pulpit, that the pastor or leader that I'm looking up to has a strong devotional life. What have you seen?

Pastor Steve: Well, I saw a poll of pastors not long ago and the average time they were spending in prayer was six minutes. You cannot have a meaningful life in God if you only have a six-minute connection with Him. You must spend time with Him. You have to pour out your heart and you have to care enough about the people in your church to the point that you are interceding on their behalf before the throne of God. That's where power comes from, not from a six-minute prayer time.

Pastor Steve: Well, another real challenge for pastors is discouragement. Ministry can be very discouraging, because you're trying to elevate people's mindsets and motivate them to get their eyes on the things of the Lord. There are a lot of people in churches that are not interested, they want to just come in Sunday morning, make their appearance, and then forget about God the rest of the week and that can be very discouraging for a pastor. Discouragement is one of those human emotions that the enemy is very adept at using to drain a pastor's motivation to keep fighting, and it can be very dangerous.

Brooks: Ideally problems and pressures should drive us to God, but we know that doesn't always happen. What have you found to be the response pattern of people in ministry when they face a lot of pressure and are also facing sexual temptation?

Pastor Steve: It's just in human nature to want to take it easy in the battle. We want to just slump down, because we're tired from working and being stressed out all day dealing with, oftentimes, difficult people. Then there comes this desire to just escape and spend the evening watching television or getting on the internet. If you fall into this place, you can end up taking your mind and heart and handing it over to the enemy for a period of time and this has a very draining effect on your spiritual life. We have to be careful with the way that we live our lives, and the opportunities we give the enemy to get in and drain us of our resolve to walk with God.

Brooks: Going back to that daily life you were mentioning at the start of the interview, that disciplined daily devotion to God. I know you've tried to set that up here at Pure Life for those of us on staff who are ministering here. As you have seen that kind of lifestyle play out here over several decades, what's been the payoff you've seen for the staff who are working in a daily life of ministry?

Pastor Steve: Well, we all have our struggles and failures, but since we're all in the same mindset here at Pure Life Ministries, we can help each other and elevate each other. That's one of the challenges also for pastors, because most of the people in their daily life are people who are under their spiritual authority. They also need people in the ministry that they can fellowship with and have meaningful connection with. Connection with godly people is a real help to you when you're in the ministry, there's no doubt about that. Unfortunately, a lot of pastors don't reach out and they end up being on a little island by themselves and they can just become very vulnerable to the devices of the enemy. The bottom line is that the Lord has given us the tools that we need to live a victorious life and that life with God just has to be something that means enough to us that we are going to fight for it. All I can say is it is worth fighting for, it is worth the struggle, and it is worth maintaining. It means everything to us, it really does.

Steve Gallagher is the Founder and President of Pure Life Ministries. He has dedicated his life to helping men find freedom from sexual sin and leading Christians into the abundant life in God that comes through deep repentance.

Copyright 2024 by Pure Life Ministries. Permission is granted to use, copy, distribute, or retransmit information or materials on this page, so long as proper acknowledgment is given to Pure Life Ministries as the source of the materials, and no modifications are made to such material.

The best example we have to follow is Jesus. He faced the same temptations you and I have, and yet, He never gave in. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is going to show us how Jesus overcame temptation and what that can look like for you too.

3a8082e126