Quotes About Temptation

Love is an angel disguised as lust.

Horniness is a human constant, the engine that drives the world, and even back then, in the dark age of the mid-twentieth century, students were fucking like rabbits.

They say a cigarette takes three minutes off your life, but good hashish makes dying seem so far away.

Flirting is the sin of the virtuous and the virtue of the sinful.

Could it be that desire for a good thing has become a bad thing because that desire has become a ruling thing?

For students who have not been required to confess that it is easier to learn theology then live it, it is tempting to think maturity is more a matter of knowing in a matter of living

The blinding ability of sin is so powerful and persuasive that you and I literally need daily intervention.

Adam and Eve weren't just after God's forbidden fruit; they were after God's position.

An idolatrous heart will produce idol words, words that serve the idol that grips us.

Envy tempts you to crave what is temporary while you devalue what is eternal. This never leads you anywhere good.

the struggle of midlife is fundamentally rooted in the idolatries of the heart.

Sin makes us better fighters than lovers.

We're all spiritually promiscuous, running from lover to lover, giving the loyalty of our hearts to things other than God.

There are times when you are tempted to wonder if it's all worth it. But in all this, God is still at work, molding you into the likeness of his Son. It is, in many ways, a multifaceted life of hardship—the hardships of life in this fallen world intersecting with the restorative hardships of grace.

You and I must live temptation-aware; to fail to do so is to fail to recognize the fallenness of the world that happens to be the address where we live.

It is so difficult for us to remember and be motivated by what is truly important. It is so tempting to be committed to our little kingdoms that the transcendent kingdom of God is of little functional influence.

What is that lie? It is the lie that was first told in the garden of Eden—the false promise that life, heart-satisfying life, could be found somewhere outside the Creator. It is the lie of lies, the cruelest lie ever told. If you believe it, it will not only leave you empty and discouraged, but it will set your life on a course of destruction.

So the desire for good possessions is not wrong, but it must not rule your heart.

At the end of the day, what do you long for: for God's grace to do its work or for more of the stuff that this physical created world has to offer?

A desire for a good thing becomes a bad thing when that desire becomes a ruling thing.

Perhaps all the fear of man, the pride of knowing, the seduction of acclaim, the quest for control, the depression in the face of hardship, the envy of the ministry of others, the bitterness against detractors, and the anxiety of failure are all about the same thing. Each of these struggles is about the temptation to make your ministry about you. From that first dark moment in the garden, this has been the struggle—to make it all about us.

I am still tempted to assess the "good" of a day by whether it pleased me versus whether I pleased God and was loving toward others.

It is tempting to forget that there is an eternity or to think that it doesn't make any difference in the present. Paul says just the opposite to the Corinthians; that if you only have Christ in this life, you are a person to be pitied. Eternity is the only thing that can give you a reason to continue.

Envy is universal because sin is.