Independence Day by Michael DiMarco

Author:Michael DiMarco
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JNF049130, Christian youth—Religious life, High school graduates—Religious life
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

—Charles Spurgeon

This is the perfect picture of the fake promises of temptation. They promise so much and deliver so little. In fact, most temptation delivers more pain than good in the end. And that’s the biggest downside to temptation: it doesn’t pay off what it promises. Temptation is a liar.

Affirmation plays on your need for love; it plays on your need to feel important and special. That’s why so many people are obsessed with how many Facebook friends or Twitter followers they have. And ultimately it plays upon your pride, your sense that you deserve affirmation, and so you’re going to get that affirmation however you can. And you know what they say about pride, right? It comes before the fall. Any choice that you make based on pride—on thinking you should get what you want when you want it—sets your desire up as a little god that needs to be catered to and honored no matter what the cost.

I can tell you from experience that affirmation temptations can ruin your life, or at least make you feel that way until you learn to combat them.

Ambition

The third way that temptation comes is by whispering promises in your ear that tickle your desire for more power and achievement. Ambition is something you’ve probably spent a bit of time thinking about and planning for as of late. And while wanting more out of life isn’t inherently bad (it’s actually important as you step out into your new life), just like with appetite and affirmation, ambition temptation takes something that can help you and turns it into something that can consume you.

Ambition can make people do some crazy things. It can end friendships, destroy marriages, and even start wars. The temptations that play on your ambition will ask you to do some things that are inconsistent with who you are and who you want to become. Like I said, wanting more in life isn’t all bad, but when you want more and are willing to go after it at the expense of everything and everyone else, then temptation has had its way with you. You are an easy target when ambition is your god, when you live to serve it and do whatever it takes to get it. There is a big misconception about the idea of money and faith. A lot of people think the Bible says that money is the root of all evil. But that’s not exactly true. There are two more very important words in that verse that change its entire meaning, and they are the words love and of. It is the love of money that is the root of all kinds of evil, not the money itself (see 1 Tim. 6:10).

Ambition temptations, just like the appetite and affirmation ones, play upon your particular loves. They promise more of what you love, so if what you love is money or power, they will promise you more than you could ever imagine. And just like any other kind of

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