The best way to deal with temptation in our daily lives is to not sit fighting it but to rather just refocus.Whatever we spend time on resisting will continue persisting. The Word of God does not tell us once that we are to resist temptation.We are told to resist the Devil, but this is a completely different issue. The key to overcoming temptation is not to push back but It’s to change our focus.

The truth is that whatever gets our attention captivates us.The battle for sin always starts in the mind and that’s why Scripture tells us in Psalm 119:6, “Thinking about your commands will keep me from doing some foolish thing” (CEV). The reason for this is that if we’re thinking about God’s truth, we’re not thinking about less important things.

Temptation always follows a predictable pattern: attention, arousal, and action. Our mind gets hooked, our feelings kick in, and then we act on it. We mustn’t expend energy fighting a temptation but we must rather just turn our mind to something else.

Scripture clarifies it like this: “We capture every thought and make it give up and obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5 NCV).

The thing is, most people aren’t very good at capturing every thought and turning it to Christ simply because it takes lots of practice. We can’t always control our circumstances, and we often can’t control the way we feel.However we can control what we are spending our time thinking about. This is always our choice. If we change the way we think, it changes the way we feel, which will change the way we act.

We need to stop fighting temptation and instead, change our mind because that will change our life.

Erick Bouwmeester