His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue.
2 Peter 1:3
You are guilty of it. I am guilty of it. In the midst of our struggle with sexual sin, we cry out to God, begging Him to give us strength to forsake our sin. We beseech God to give us power to overcome sexual temptation. We pray repeatedly, week in and week out, for God to deliver us from sexual urges. The problem is, He already has. We keep asking God to give us something that He has already given us.
This is the conclusion that you and I must draw from what Peter tells us. After all, if God “has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness,” why do we need to ask Him for anything else that pertains to life and godliness? We don’t. If God has already given to us all the divine power, all the resources, and every other thing we need to live a life that’s free of pornography and free of masturbation, why do we keep asking Him to deliver us?
I don’t know. Perhaps we lack faith. Perhaps we don’t understand this text. Perhaps we simply think the way we do because we are accustomed to asking God for things we already know He has supplied. On Sundays, for example, you will often hear a pastor pray, “God, be with us today,” even though the pastor knows that God is already with us today. God is always with us. You’ll hear a brother in a Bible study ask for Jesus to be in the midst of the group, even though Jesus has already promised that, where two or three are gathered in His name, he is already in their midst.
We ask God to join us when He is already present. We ask Him to give us a way of escape from temptation when He already has. And we ask God for divine power that He has already supplied. In our battle against sexual sin, we need less asking and more appropriating. We need to stop asking and to start receiving. We need to stop asking for help and to begin using the help that’s already at hand. God promises that the divine power that you and I need to resist porn and masturbation is already in our possession. It is already ours for the taking. We just have to take it.
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