Tempted Beyond Control

"If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." - Genesis 4:7

This is another story from the Christian conference I was at last weekend. One afternoon, we were given about two hours of free time to "do whatever you want" between many hours of teaching, so we were all discussing what we could do. Then all of a sudden a thought came to me about leading a Bible study for the few people that just got saved on how to pray and how to have a quiet time each morning. So I brought up this idea among other ones we were talking about, and immediately the girls agreed to join me. But there was one guy who said, "I'll do it." Then all the other guys decided that they were going to play basketball, and tried to talk this guy into going with them. "Come on, there's plenty of opportunities to do Bible studies in future! There's always more than you'd want to go to." But this new believer said firmly, "But I want to know how to pray and how to study God's words - NOW!" I was really encouraged because I knew how big a temptation it was when all the other guys were going to play basketball.

Later in the evening, when we were having a tie-down/sharing time, I used this example and shared about all the temptations we face. Someone said that we always hear two voiced, one from God and the other from Satan, but we are confused many times because both voices says "This is God, and I'm suggesting this for your own good..." yet they suggest completely different things. We are confused because we don't know which voice is from God. Then the perfect example came...

After the tie-down time, many of us got together to play Mafia. Although the conference notes stated clearly that everyone should be very quiet after 11pm, we continued to play until around midnight, thinking, "We don't get many chances like this to play Mafia. Plus several of us were saved at the conference, so it's worth celebrating!" One guy left around midnight, but we didn't even take note of that, "Well, he's just a teenager, but we are adults!" Then we went on for another couple of hours. By two-ish in the morning, another guy left, "I need to go to bed, or I won't be able to get up in the morning." But a few said, "Let's just play til the morning so we won't even need to get up!" So we kept on until almost 5am. Before we left, I reminded everyone to get up at 6.30am (in one and a half hours) so we can have breakfast and start the Bible study at 7.30am. I thought, "Surely everyone will be at the Bible study at 7.30am - how can we put an hour of sleep above God?!"

The next morning, I got up at 6.30am, and woke up my roommates. As we were eating breakfast, I noticed that none of the others we played Mafia with the night before were at the canteen. I started to worry - well, it wasn't a hard choice for me, but it sure would be a much harder choice for the new believers and young believers! When no one else showed up at 7.30am for the Bible study, I opened up with the prayer: "Dear Father, forgive me - I have led my brothers and sisters into temptation!" Then we started the Bible study. Since I didn't really know what to talk about, we turned to Genesis 4 to study Abel and Cain's story, because someone asked me a specific question the day before as to why God looked at Abel's sacrifice with favor. We came across Genesis 4:7 (when God spoke to Cain):

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.

I immediately realized that this is exactly what we did the night before! For us, to do the right thing would be to go to bed and be quiet by 11pm, according to the housing rules at the conference. However, we didn't do what was right, so we invited the temptation in. Then before long, this temptation has gotten a hold of us, making most of us unable to get up in the morning to honor God by starting a day reading His words, and some of us were even late for or falling asleep during the morning teaching. It was shocking to be reminded about how sin is trying to devour us, and that we must master it after we've let the temptation in. The three of us prayed together and asked God to help us overcome further temptations to fall asleep during the teaching, etc.

Later on our way back from the conference, I shared this verse with several others that were playing Mafia with us the night before. Luckily we all learned a good lesson from this. Later someone else invited us to play Mafia again this coming Fri at her house, two or three people answered at the same time: "No we can't do that, or we'll be tempted again and won't be able to make it to the Bible study this Sat morning!" Praise the Lord, for His grace is sufficient to always bring us back.