Temptation - What is it really??

Matthew 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Jesus was led by the Spirit of God into the wilderness where He fasted for forty days. The devil tried to take advantage of Jesus in His hungry condition. We can imagine that after having been without food, Jesus's physical body will have been quite worn down. So satan tries to tempt Jesus into caving in to his own physical needs. But Jesus has just spent days in communion with the Heavenly Father, so even though in His body, he is in need of nourishment, He is strong. Jesus rebukes and says : Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Satan continues on with other temptations but Jesus remains firm and strong and never gives the devil even a bit of ground and the angels come and attend to Him and take care of Him. Matthew 4:11  Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him

Many times when people are discussing temptation, and trying to justify falling into temptations you will hear them say - Well, even Jesus was tempted, but He was God so, of course He didn't sin. That is true - Jesus is God and He didn't sin.
There are two aspects of temptation that I would like to address. The first is  the real definition of temptation and secondly standing strong in the face of temptation.

1) What is the definition of temptation?
The answer is found in James 1: 14-15  where it says : But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.  Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

Temptation is the act of Satan presenting something unrighteous (something that he thinks you might desire) before you, perhaps with a thought in your mind or a picture in a magazine or on TV.  If you have made the decision to live faithfully for the Lord you will have absolutely no desire for whatever it is that satan places before you. You will honestly say No, I do not want that, I do not need that and you refuse to take a second look or toy with the thought at all. It is awesome if  you can quote a Bible verse at such a time since satan cannot stand against the Word of God. That is what it means to not sin in a temptation.
If on the other hand, satan places a thought into your mind or puts a picture in front of you and you desire it in your heart- you have already sinned and you need to repent before God even though you have only sinned in your thoughts and desires at this point.  At this point lust has been conceived and sin is present. When not dealt with, this then will lead to death - spiritually and in relationships, and sometimes actual physical death.

How to Stand Strong against Temptation?
Let's think back to Jesus in His temptation experience. Jesus had just spent 40 days with God so though He was weak physically, He was strong in His Spirit. If Jesus needed to get away from people and busyness of life and spend time with His Heavenly Father - how much more do we need to get serious about spending time with our Heavenly Father. The closer we walk with the LORD,  the more victory we will experience in every area of our life. So we need to daily, ( I mean daily) spend time in the Bible and become quiet before the LORD and allow Him to soak and saturate us with His Word and in this way His desires become our own personal desires. The more we have with the LORD, the less we want of the world and it's useless pleasures. We need to get Scripture into our minds so that throughout our day, we are thinking and meditating on the things of the Lord. We need to have Scripture in our mind and in this way we can quote it and Satan cannot stand against the Words of the Bible and He must flee.
Our desire becomes to do only that which pleases the LORD and brings glory to Him!!
Psalm 37:4  Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

God's Rainbow Promise and Satan's Gay Deception

Don't you just love seeing a beautiful rainbow in the sky after a rain. I most certainly do. I can sense God's presence in the loud crashing thunder as well as in the calm rainbow that follows the storm. As we read the Bible, we will find that at the end of the story of Noah and the great flood, God makes a promise that He will never again destroy the entire world with a great flood. As a sign of that promise, God creates the rainbow. Now any time, after a rain we look into the sky and see a rainbow, we know that God is remembering His promise that he made thousands of years ago. God will always remember His promise and shows it to us by placing the beautiful rainbow in the sky. Genesis 9: 12-17 records the promise God made to us and reads as follows :
¹² And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:
¹³ I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.
¹⁴ And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud:
¹⁵ And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.
¹⁶ And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.
¹⁷ And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.
                                                      

We can be 100% sure that God will keep this promise to us. He is that kind of God - faithful and true to His Word throughout the ages. We can depend on Him.

picture from blogthehumanist .org

It seems though that Satan will so often come and try to take what God has created as precious and true and make it into a counterfeit deal and now again we see satan using the rainbow in a counterfeit way. God destroyed the world in Noah's day due to the wickedness and violence that had swept across the earth. God could find only Noah and his family who were living righteously. In our day today the gay pride movement is moving across the nations. And what does satan use to promote this wicked movement ?? - what else but the rainbow flag. Satan takes the rainbow and uses it for his evil purposes. Satan knows that he has but a short time left here on earth to continue deceiving people and sees the signs of the end of time nearing. I wonder if satan is trying to provoke God Almighty by using the rainbow colors in this evil display called gay pride.  As Christians we know that God will keep moving ahead with His end time plan schedule.God is right on time - never late!  We know that Jesus will return for those of us who love Him and we will be taken up to heaven to be with our Lord forever.  But  we also know that satan and his demons and followers will be cast into the lake of fire. Revelation 20:10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. and Revelation 20 14-15 : And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.  And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

 Isaiah 55:7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

God's Way verses Satan's Alternatives....

Have you ever considered how satan tries to make people believe that his ideas are good alternatives to God's true ways?
Take for example marriage. God says marriage is to be between one man and one woman.
Satan suggests sinful alternatives such as homosexual and lesbian relationships.
God's way is to save sex for after the wedding. Satan's sinful alternative is to not wait for marriage. Satan's way is fornication - sex with whoever you choose, the if it feels good then do it attitude.
God's way is to love your spouse deeply and dearly. Satan's way is lust and pornography.
God's way is for a couple to begin sharing a home together after marriage. Satan's way is for a couple to shack up together and then give the excuse that you need to try it out first before making any real decisions.
 God's ways are best because His way  provides protection from foolish choices that lead to unnecessary heartache and failure.
God's plan is for us to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Satan's sinful plan is for people to fill up on alchol, drugs and abusive substances.
God's plan is for women to be modest in the way they dress and to not be sensual and flirting in character. Satan's way is for women to wear the skimpy, the tight, the short, the low tops and to show skin inappropriately and to attract attention to your body.

Now let us examine another one of satan's counterfeits, one that is more difficult to understand.
 The one true holy God is a trinity. He is Father, Son ( Jesus) and Holy Spirit - three in One. Not three Gods but One God in three distinct persons. Just as God has three persons so Satan also tries to copy a trinity for himself  and it is displayed quite clearly Revelation.  So if you study the book of Revelation 12, satan is depicted as a great red dragon. Then in Revelation 13 the beast comes on the scene which is the Antichrist. It says that the dragon which is satan gives his power to the beast.  Then thirdly, also in chapter 13 another beast comes onto the scene which is a false prophet. The false prophet then makes the people on the earth worship the Antichrist. In order to be able to make any business transactions that is buy or sell anything, people are required to obtain a number in either their right hand or their forehead. Without this number people will not be allowed to do business. Revelation 13: 18 tells us what that number will be 666. -¹⁸Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
However, we who are Christians must be prepared to never accept this mark 666 as no one who does will enter the kingdom of Heaven.
To be sure there are many more of satan's counterfeits that we could discuss. Perhaps one comes to your mind even as you read this.

Only 1 Real God....

One of Satan's schemes to deceive people is that he would have us believe that there are many ways to get to heaven. Satan would have us believe that one god is as good as another and you can choose which one you want to serve. Satan would have us be favorable to all of the various religions (such as Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism ,etc) and have us believe we can live however we choose and still reach heaven. This is absolute falsehood and not true. The only God that Satan doesn't want us to have is the true God and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Satan is fine with any or all of the rest of the gods that people worship.  BUT there is only one God - the three in One -( FATHER, SON, HOLY SPIRIT) who  created the world, and there is no other God. There is only one way to Heaven.  Jesus is  only way to get to God.  Jesus, the only begotten Son of the Father came as a baby, born of the virgin Mary, walking  on this earth and  showing us how to live,  died on the cross as the payment for our sin, rose again on the third and ascended to heaven to the right hand of the Father and now we wait for His soon return to earth to come for us. Those of us who are saved will meet Jesus in the air.  If we choose to try to reach God some other way, it will result in failure. Our eternal destiny is at stake here. And there are only two destinies - If we choose Jesus, then heaven. If we choose one of the others, then hell.
So the question is - What must we do to be saved so we can get to the one true God and heaven?
First, lets get a few scriptures that tell us about the only true God and there is none besides Him.
 Isaiah 43: 10-11..Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.  I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour
Here it is clear - there never was any true God other than the LORD and there will never be any other after.
Isaiah 44:6 Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.
and verse 24:
Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;
Revelation 22:13 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

Now let us consider the way to salvation. This very thing was asked of Paul and Silas while they were  in prison in Acts 16:30 -"...... Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"
And the answer is very clear in verse 31 - And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.
 Mark 1:15  is very clear where is states - And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.
And of course the well known verse, a favorite of many people is John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
So basically it involves repenting - which is to see sin as God sees it, If He says something is sin, it most certainly is and we give those things up in our lives and ask Him for forgivenes and cleansing through Jesus blood.
And we believe - Believe in Jesus , his death and ressurection as described in the Bible. Believe in the only true God the Father, Jesus the Son of God, and Holy Spirit who then comes to live inside of us and guides us through life.
Accept Jesus as Savior today and begin today to live the rest of life for Jesus.

So we can see that Muhammad is not the way, Buddha is not the way, Joseph Smith is not the way... JESUS alone is the way.
Acts 4:12 - Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

Fear of the LORD....

What does it look like to fear the LORD? I mean we all know that we should fear the LORD, because He does really have the final word in everything. We can say oh I think this is the way and a friend may have a differing opinion but really our opininion of truth is only accurate if it parallels to what the Bible says, -simply because the Bible is the true Word of God and it is alive and active in our lives when surrender to Him.  Proverbs has many verses relating to the fear of the LORD. So in Proverbs 8:13 we get a glimpse of what it looks like to fear the LORD.
Proverbs 8:13 - The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.
We need to hate evil as the LORD does, and put it out of our lives. Pride and arrogance have no place in our lives nor the froward mouth. The NASB uses the words "perverted mouth".  
Pride can lead to many destructive ways and pride was what got angel Lucifer thrown out of Heaven to become the devil and satan. So it is one of satan's schemes to use pride and arrogance to bring us down also.
Proverbs 16:18 -Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Proverbs 10:27 The fear of the LORD prolongeth days: but the years of the wicked shall be shortened.