Fighting Temptations together:

I have been continuing to do some reading about the armor of God for my early morning devotionals.  The book I have been reading has been “Stand Firm: Putting on the Full Armor of God,” by Katie Linstrum.  I have enjoyed the reminders of putting on the armor of God in order to protect ourselves from the evil one, whether he tempts us with trials or temptations.  Last week I wrote a blog post that was all about the importance of putting on the armor of God.  I talked about how God showed us how to put on the armor of God because He himself put on the armor of God before He came down to the earth.  This week, I am going to talk about how we need to make sure our brothers and sisters in Christ are also putting on the full armor of God, so they can also avoid any temptations coming to them in their life.  

Today the reading was over Ephesians 6:18.  This verse says, “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.”  This was a reminder to pray over the Lord’s people.  However, we are not just praying for their physical health or needs.  We are praying for them to be able to fight against the trials and the temptations coming their way as well.    

One quote from this book was “The Battle against sin and temptation is not only a personal fight but a fight for all Christians face together.” (pg.71) I loved this.  It reminds me that we should be in the corner of each believer’s life.  We should be helping them out, being a big piece of support for each of the fellow believers.  This should often include praying over other believers, especially when we know there are sins or temptations in one another believer’s life.  It can be hard to fight these trials and temptations, and we shouldn’t do this alone.  

I have said this often before throughout my blog, but sometimes we as Christians can really get competitive with other believers.  We can start to think we should be the best Christian, which means when others stumble, we can start to believe that we are doing better.  We can start to think of this as an individual competition.  However, since we are a body of Christ, we need to work together more as a team.  When a piece of the team is hurting or struggling, the whole team suffers.  Our jealousy and comparison tendencies may want to start rooting for the downfall of other Christians, but we can know in our heart, this isn’t actually a benefit to us or the overall mission of Christ.  

This also serves as a reminder to ask other Christians to pray over certain sins we are struggling with.  It is often that many believers wouldn’t know about the sins or the temptations coming our way or in our lives unless we ask for prayer.  I know sometimes we can feel the shame of the sin or the temptations, but we can know every believer experiences temptations.  We even talk about how Jesus suffered from being tempted.  He spent a lot of time in prayer when he was in the desert being tempted by Satan, so he wouldn’t fall into sin.  Then when it was getting close to the end of his life and his sacrifice for all human kind, he went to pray in the area of Gethsemane.  He brought along the disciples to pray with Him.  They may not have known everything going on, but they knew he was going through hard times, and He asked for them to pray with and for Him.  

There are two challenges for this week.   The first is to spend time with another believer and let them know any sin, temptation, or trials you are experiencing.  Again, there can be fear of shame and embarrassment, but ultimately if we want to overcome this evil one, we are going to need a full army of God.  We need to be ready for battle.  This doesn’t necessarily need to be every single person in your life, or every person at church.  It can be just a few trusted brothers and sisters in Christ who we know will be the ones willing to pray for our safety from temptations.  This also may open the floodgates to have other believers open up about their sin as well.  It is not for shame or for hurt of the other individual but rather to help us all become closer to God.  

The second challenge for the week is to spend time praying over other believers, specifically if you know of any sin in their lives.  Hopefully, this will be the person you were willing to share your sin or temptation struggles with.  This way it can be a good time to spend time praying over one another.  It is obviously important to spend time praying over this person on your own time but doing it with the other person one on one is a great way to grow fellowship.