Have you ever or are you currently dealing with failing at the temptations in your life? Have you beat yourself up for giving into the temptation to sin? Do you feel that you are just a failure and can never get it right, always doing the things that you do not want to do or that you should not do? With every temptation is the oppertunity for growth. Instead of looking at it as temptation, look at it as growth of the fruits of spirit within you. God uses temptations to grow the fruits of the spirit. And as it is with natural fruits, it takes time for them to rippen. You will not produce them over night. You will not over come temptation of anything over night.

Do you need more love for others within you? Well God is going to put hard to love people in your path so that you have practice on developing that love within you. Do you want more peace within you? Well in order to develope the peace you are going to have to face troubles and learn to choose to stay at peace, trusting God, while you are enduring them. Do you want more joy within you? Well you will have to face sorrow and lack of external things to learn to choose joy. DO you need more self control? Well that is when you will be faced with overwhelming temptation to do what you know you should not do so that you can learn to choose what is best for you instead of what your flesh wants. With every temptation there is a choice that we have to make. And sometimes we have to make the wrong choice 1,000 times before we make the right choice. But with each choice we are growing in some way. Even if it seems that all we are doing is failing, we are getting stronger.

Satan uses temptation to try to destroy us but he is predicable. He has used the same tactics since the beginning of time. Knowing these tactics can help us in our fight of temptation and growth of the spirit. There are four steps that he uses and for today I am going to name them but will go into detail about them on my next post. They are desire, doubt, deception, and disobedience. The four D’s for destruction. For today, focus on the fact that you are not a failure because you fall into temptation. You are growing the fruits of the spirit slowly but surely.