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Resist Temptation

At some point in each one of our lives, the devil will come to us and try to tempt us into wrong doing. This will happen to even the strongest and most faithfull christian. After all, if the devil himself came to Jesus and tried to tempt Jesus, then how much more will he not come to us and try to tempt us into sin.
The First Temptation.

Luke 4: 3
And the devil said to Him, " If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread"
Pride is one of the biggest downfalls of man. Every person wants to be something special and to be seen as being better than others. It is this very thing that the devil will attack and challenge you on."It is Written".
We have to defend ourselves with the word!The Second Temptation. 

Luke 4:5 to 7
Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain,showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
And the devil said to Him, "All this authority I will give You and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish.
Therefore if You will worship before me, all will be Yours.""It is written ..."The Third Temptation.

Luke 4 :9 to 11
Then he brought Him to Jerusalem, set Him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here.
For it is written "He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you," and "In their hands they shall bear you up, lest You dash your foot against a stone."

The devils attack is a three pronged attack where he will attack :-
1) Who you are - appeal to your pride.
2) Offer you riches and power.
3) Hit you with misquoted scriptures.

Through the studying of the methods that the devil used to tempt Jesus and by seeing how Jesus resisted and rejected the devil, we will learn how we can overcome the devil and cause him to flee from before us.
James 4:7 says resist the devil and he will flee.

Luke 4 shows us that Jesus had been in the wilderness for forty days, without food, and that he was hungry. He was in weakness.  The devil will come to you at your weakest moments!

The devil will attack your posistion and appeal to your pride to challenge your authority.

In using this attack, the devil is expecting you to either rise to his challenge, in which case you would be stepping straight into sin by taking the glory onto yourself, or that you would back down and shrink away, realising that you are in fact not what you had claimed to be.

However, Jesus retaliated with a simple statement

The devil will promise you riches and power in his attempt to lead you astray. He will appeal to your senses and promise to make you great. This is a lie from him as all he is interested in is to break you away from the Lord.

Again Jesus replied

The devil will come against you and tempt you using scriptures quoted from the bible. He will throw scriptures at you in his last attempt to tempt you.

Again Jesus hit back with a scripture.

Summary

Your defence in all the attacks will be "It is Written".

This is the importance of reading the bible and having the word of God stored inside of you. If you do not have the word of God inside of you, you are already defeated. When he comes to you, you need to be ready to hit out at him with the word straight away. You can not say to him, "Just hold on a second, I want to quickly find my bible and read up what I need to reply to you."

James 4:7 says " Resist the devil and he will flee". Resist him with the sword of the word and he has no defence, but without the sword of the word, you have no defence against him.

Train yourself in swordmanship by taking time each day to read the bible and depositing the word into your spirit.

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