Winning Over Temptation

Something that is common to every single person on the planet is temptation. There is not a person who doesn’t know what it is like to struggle to do what we ought and not do what we should not. And there is a lot of advice that gets handed out on the subject as well. There is the whole ‘will power’ thing the world seems to emphasize and we Christians have our own thoughts.

One of the most popular movements in this regard in the past few decades puts the focus on accountability. I think accountability is very important. However, I read a really interesting article today. It was an interview with Dr. Arnold Cole. He is the CEO and Director of Bible Engagement Research for Back to the Bible. Apparently they conducted an extensive study over the course of 4 years that included several surveys with over 40,000 respondents. Some of their findings are quite interesting.

For example:

“Very few respondents said that other people (at 5.5%), accountability relationships (at 2.1%) or church (at just 0.5%) helped them to stand firm against temptation. Three out of four had shared their temptation with another person, but only a tiny percentage named Christian friends as helping them resist temptation.”

I think this would come as a pretty big surprise in light of all of the conventional wisdom about what we need to keep us on the ‘straight and narrow’. So, do you want to know what people identified as the one thing that really did help them live right?

“When asked, ‘What currently helps you win the day spiritually’, Christ-followers named reading the Bible as number one.”

That in itself is pretty significant but there’s more and the more is even more significant:

“For several of the behaviors we examined there is no statistical difference between Christians who read or listen to the Bible two to three days a week and those who do not engage Scripture at all or only once a week! And for those where there is an effect for engaging Scripture two to three days a week, the effect is much smaller than for four or more days a week. So there is a clear crossover point at four days. Those who read or listen to the Bible at least four days a week are 36% less likely to smoke, 57% less likely to get drunk, 61% less likely to use pornography, and 68% less likely to have sex outside marriage.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking that this research has some pretty profound implications. Reading the Bible, even three times a week doesn’t really have a lot of effect on people’s capacity to withstand temptation. But reading the Bible 4 times a week or more has a very significant effect. What’s the message? I guess the old discipline of being in the Word daily is very sound practice for us. It really drives home the urgency of this tried and true devotion to the Word of God and it should certainly challenge us to be setting at His feet each day.

Maybe we need to take a fresh look at Jesus’ prayer to the Father for us:

“My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.” Jn 17:15-17