Quotes About Temptation

Are we staying here like this all day? Lily could feel the lower part of him stirring again. She didn't think she had the strength to repeat their performances. Cade swung her back against the rug and leaned over her. All day and all night for as long as we can. You have made me wait forever. Lily

They'd had their minds snatched, their souls snared, their peckers hung with golden chains attached to the women in their lives.

He had been fooled. He had not, after all, had a great time: he had merely been drinking again.

It is not a bad exercise for a man to sit quiet once in a while and watch the workings of his mind and heart and notice how often he can find himself favoring five or six of the seven deadly sins, and especially the first of those sins, which is named pride. — CARL SANDBURG AMERICAN POET

Like King Saul, many of us have our own versions of a witch of Endor (1 Sam 28).

If we are to know the abundant provision of God's unlimited resources, we must also understand how Satan works to rob us of that experience. He does so by deceit.

Satan's efforts to defeat God's purposes for humankind. This is the basic idea behind all temptation: God is presented as depriving us by his commands of what is good.

This is the true situation: nothing has power to tempt me or move me to wrong action that I have not given power by what I permit to be in me. And the most spiritually dangerous things in me are the little habits of thought, feeling, and action that I regard as "normal" because "everyone is like that" and it is "only human.

The only way the devil can hurt God is through humans, and so he focuses upon us. His strategy is to try to frustrate God's purpose for humanity

Satan can do nothing about God's unshakable kingdom directly, but only indirectly through human infirmity and rebellion. His way of doing that is to persuade, and to tempt, and to deceive humanity.

we see a clear pattern: Satan's constant deception of human beings.

Satan, then, is God's primary target, for he is the one who bears the primary responsibility for all that is wrong with the world.

This "world" is marked by three spiritual dynamics that John identifies as "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" (1 John 2:16).

the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life.

Notice there are three things about the tree that caught Eve's attention. It was (1) good for food, (2) pleasant to the eyes, and (3) desirable to make one wise.

JESUS' TEMPTATION EVE'S TEMPTATION THE WORLD Turning stones into bread Good for food Desire of the flesh Jumping off the temple Pleasant to the eyes Desire of the eyes Political power and glory Desirable to make one wise The pride of life

Satan uses not only our desires to deceive us but also our fears. Fear that we will not get what we desire can provide the motivation for actions that cause so many of our problems.

desires are terrible masters. The objects of desire may differ; I may want to eat or sleep, I may want to dominate others, I may want great wealth. Taken by themselves, desires are inherently chaotic and deceitful (James 4:1–3; Eph. 4:22).

Satan's constant assault is aimed at our belief in God's goodness and power, that God will supply all our needs, and that we can trust God to be sufficient in all ways. When our minds are on God, and our thoughts are formed by our knowledge of God, such sufficiency will flow to us. Thus Satan's main task is to keep our minds elsewhere, anywhere but on God.

Those who let God be God get off the conveyer belt of emotion and desire when it first starts to move toward the buzz saw of sin.

Satan can do nothing about God's unshakable kingdom directly, but only indirectly through human infirmity and rebellion.

When life is hard, pleasure can be more than a diversion. It can easily become a need. We easily move from a properly moderate enjoyment of sensuous experience to a consuming desire for it.

it is in hearing the voice of the devil that we can better appreciate the voice of god.

It seemed Eve's bite from the apple of knowledge was a debt women were doomed to pay for eternity.