“We capture every thought and make it give up and obey Christ.”2 Corinthians 10:5 (NCV)
Here’s the secret to temptation: Don’t fight it. Refocus—because whatever you resist persists.
Did you know that the Bible doesn’t tell you to resist temptation? It says to resist the devil, and that’s a whole different issue. But the key to overcoming temptation is not to push back. It’s to change your focus.
Whatever gets your attention gets you. The battle for sin always starts in the mind. That’s why the Bible says in Psalm 119:6, “Thinking about your commands will keep me from doing some foolish thing” (CEV). Why? Because if you’re thinking about God’s truth, you’re not thinking about other things—like temptations!
It’s true in every single area of life—good or bad. If you focus on godly things, your mind will begin to naturally gravitate towards them. If you focus on worldly or negative things, your mind will begin to naturally move in that direction. Whatever you focus on gets your attention. And whatever gets your attention, gets you.
The key is to change your mind.
Temptation always follows a predictable pattern: attention, activation, and action. Your mind gets hooked, your mind kicks in and emotions come into play, and then you act on it.
So instead of trying to fight a temptation; turn your mind to something else. “We capture every thought and make it give up and obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5 NCV).
After Jesus was baptized and went into the wilderness for 40 days, Satan tried to tempt him by saying, “Tell these stones to become bread”Matthew 4:3 (NIV). Jesus didn’t say, “Oh, no I’m not hungry.” He was hungry! He’d been fasting for forty days. But he turned his mind to something else. He quoted the Bible. He said, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4 NLT).
The more you fight a particular temptation, the more it controls you. You can’t fight a feeling, but you can choose to focus on other things. When you do, the feeling loses its attraction because your attention is on something else.
Capturing every thought and turning it to Christ takes lots of practice. You can’t always control your circumstances, and you definitely can’t always control the way you feel. But you can control what you think about. That’s always your choice.
And if you change the way you think, it changes the way you feel, and that will change the way you act.
For more Daily Hope with Rick Warren, please visit pastorrick.com!
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