Holy Spirit Archives - Make No Provision

101 Biblical Ways to Resist Sexual Temptation

by Alan Sharpe October 13, 2022 Leave a Comment

If you want to resist unwanted sexual urges and overcome sexual temptation, here are 101 ways from the Bible (including the Bible) to overcome sexual temptation.

by Alan Sharpe October 13, 2022 Leave a Comment

If you are a Christian and if you are even remotely healthy, you face sexual temptation on occasion. If you want to resist these urges so that you do not fall into sin, here are some biblical ways to overcome sexual temptation (including the Bible).

1. Count the Cost
Sexual sin comes at a price, in this life and in the next. For one thing, adulterers and the sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom (Galatians 5:19-21). That’s the eternal cost—your soul, punished forever, in the lake of fire. But there’s also a price to pay in this life if you give in to sexual temptation. Think sexually transmitted diseases. Unwanted pregnancy. Divorce. Loss of custody of your kids. Getting fired. Scandal. Loss of your testimony. Jail time. Your name on the Sexual Offender Registry.

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Sanctification

Who Will Deliver You? | Romans 7:24-25

by Alan Sharpe October 8, 2022 Leave a Comment

Who will deliver you from your body of death? God will. Who will deliver you from your sexual sin? God will.

by Alan Sharpe October 8, 2022 Leave a Comment

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Are you like the Apostle Paul? Do you ever cry out, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Do you find that the things you want to do, you don’t do? And that the things you shouldn’t do, you do? Can you say along with Paul, “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice?” (Romans 7:19). Do you wonder who will deliver you?

Then Paul has good news for you. Or, rather, God has good news for you, communicated through His servant, Paul, in the letter that Paul wrote to the church in Rome. In chapter seven you see Paul’s predicament and yours laid out. With your mind you serve the law of God, but with your flesh you serve the law of sin. You have God’s Spirit, and you want to follow His leading. But you also have your sinful flesh, and you want to follow it, too.

This is why you have such conflict with pornography as a Christian man. Men in the world who consume pornography don’t struggle. They enjoy their sin. But you, i

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Consecration

Conquering Porn Is Not Either/Or | Romans 8:13

by Alan Sharpe October 7, 2022 Leave a Comment

This is great news if all of your self effort has delivered few lasting results up to today. And it’s also good news if you have been waiting passively for God to intervene to deliver you from your sexual immorality.

by Alan Sharpe October 7, 2022 Leave a Comment

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For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
Romans 8:13

There are two mistakes you can make as a Christian man wanting to break free of pornography. There might be more than two mistakes, actually. But there are two big ones that you must avoid.

The first mistake is thinking that your sexual purity is entirely up to you. You believe you are responsible for your sin, and therefore you are responsible for forsaking it. So far, so good. But you also think your victory is up to you. You must read your Bible more. You must pray more often and more fervently. You must mortify your flesh more thoroughly. In other words, you think conquering sexual lust is all up to you. This is a mistake.

The second blunder is to think that your victory over porn is entirely up to God. You believe that you are “powerless over your addic

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Consecration

Lessons Learned After 11 Months Porn-Free

by Alan Sharpe October 4, 2022 Leave a Comment

As a Christian with a Bible, I knew that watching porn was wicked. I longed to be free, but now I realize that I wanted more than that. I wanted to be holy.

by Alan Sharpe October 4, 2022 Leave a Comment

I looked at pornography for the last time on November 4, 2021. That was the day I purposed before God to leave my sexual sin behind me and to pursue holiness. That’s also the day I started writing these daily devotionals. My goal was to chronicle my journey, to discover what God’s word has to say about sexual sin, how to avoid it, and how to live a victorious life in Christ Jesus.

The primary lesson I have learned, and it’s taken me 11 months to get here, is that freedom from pornography and masturbation is really just the start of the change I am looking for in my life. As a Christian with a Bible, I knew that watching pornography was wicked. I longed to be free of its grip, free of the temptation to seek it out and to watch it. But now I realize that I wanted more than that. I wanted to be holy.

I don’t mean holier-than-thou holy. Or so holy that they name a seminary after me. I mean holy in the sense that I am set apart unto God. Set apart as his vessel, his instrument, to use as He pleases. I realize today that,

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Consecration

“Alive with the very life of God.” || Samuel Logan Brengle

by Alan Sharpe September 13, 2022 Leave a Comment

The transformation wrought in men by the baptism with the Holy Ghost, and the power that fills them, are amazing beyond measure.

by Alan Sharpe September 13, 2022 Leave a Comment

This was the inaugural day of the Church of God [Pentecost]: the dawn of the dispensation of the Holy Spirit; the beginning of the days of power. In the morning of that day there were only a few Christians in the world; the New Testament was not written, and it is doubtful if they had among them all a copy of the Old Testament; they had no church buildings, no colleges, no religious books and papers; they were poor and despised, unlearned and ignorant; but before night they had enrolled three thousand converts from among those who, a few weeks before, had crucified their Lord, and they had aroused and filled all Jerusalem with questionings and amazement.

What was the secret? Power. What was the secret? God the Holy Ghost. He had come, and this work was His work, and they were His instruments.

When Jesus came, a body was prepared for Him (Hebrews x. 5), and through that body He wrought His wondrous works; but when the other Comforter comes, He takes possession of those bodies that are freely and fully presented to Hi

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Sanctification

“When the Holy Ghost comes in, the ‘old man’ goes out.” || Samuel Brengle

by Alan Sharpe January 12, 2022 Leave a Comment

The primary, the basal work of the baptism, is that of cleansing.

by Alan Sharpe January 12, 2022 Leave a Comment

Many have looked at the promise of power when the Holy Ghost is come, the energy of Peter’s preaching on the day of Pentecost, and the marvelous results which followed, and they have hastily and erroneously jumped to the conclusion that the baptism with the Holy Ghost is for work and service only.

It does bring power—the power of God, and it does fit for service, probably the most important service to which any created beings are commissioned, the proclamation of salvation and the conditions of peace to a lost world; but not that alone, nor primarily. The primary, the basal work of the baptism, is that of cleansing.

You may turn a flood into your millrace, but until it sweeps away the logs and brushwood and dirt that obstruct the course, you cannot get power to turn the wheels of your mill. The flood first washes out the obstructions, and then you have power.

The great hindrance in the hearts of God’s children to the power of the Holy Ghost is inbred sin�

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Consecration

“‘Be filled with the Spirit’ is a command to be obeyed.” || John MacNeil

by Alan Sharpe December 18, 2021 Leave a Comment

If it is a sin for a Christian to be drunk, it is just as surely, truly, really, a sin not to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

by Alan Sharpe December 18, 2021 Leave a Comment

“Be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18) is a command to be obeyed, a duty to be done. Many of God’s people are acknowledging that they did not know that “Be filled with the Spirit” was a command; but it is, and there is no excuse for not knowing. You will notice that in Ephesians 5:18 there is a double command, a negative, “Be not drunk,” and a positive, “Be ye filled.” The positive command is as authoritative as the negative, and was binding on just as many of those Ephesian Christians as was the negative command.

Now what was true for those believers there in Ephesus in the long-ago is equally true for all believers on God’s footstool to-day. Is it a sin for a believer today to disobey the command, “Be not drunk”? and is it then a virtue to disobey the equally authoritative command, “Be ye filled”? If it is a sin for a Christian to be drunk, it is just as surely, truly, really, a sin not to be filled. We are commanded and expected to live a Spirit-filled life, to be filled, not with

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Prevention

Want to Conquer Lust? Learn to Walk. | Galatians 5:16

by Alan Sharpe December 3, 2021 Leave a Comment

When you walk alone, you go astray. You get lost. You stumble into sin. But when you walk in the Spirit, you do not fulfil the lust of the flesh.

by Alan Sharpe December 3, 2021 Leave a Comment

Masturbation Is a Sin Because it Doesn't Imitate Christ

I heard of a Christian man who was well into his 80s. A much younger brother asked him, “At what age does a man’s sexual desires diminish? When can I expect my sexual urges to disappear?” The older brother looked at him with a puzzled smile. “I don’t know,” he replied. “You will have to ask someone who is older than I am.”

If you are a Christian man, you cannot hope that your sexual lust is going to vanish with age. You cannot expect that it will atrophy without you doing something. To defeat lust, you must take the initiative. And that initiative is described for you in the New Testament book of Galatians:

“I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.”
Galatians 5:16

Walk. In. The. Spirit. Four simple words that promise a lifetime of freedom from falling to the lust of the flesh. Paul is not talking here simply about conquering lustful thoughts or desires. He is talking about

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Sanctification

“Have you received the Holy Spirit?” || R. A. Torrey

by Alan Sharpe December 2, 2021 Leave a Comment

to receive the Holy Spirit in such a sense that we are conscious of the joy with which He fills our hearts different from any joy that we have ever known in the world.

by Alan Sharpe December 2, 2021 Leave a Comment

Every one who has truly received Jesus must have the Holy Spirit dwelling in him in some sense; but in many believers, though the Holy Spirit dwells in them, He dwells way back in some hidden sanctuary of their being, back of consciousness. It is something quite different, something far better than this, to receive the Holy Spirit in the sense that Paul meant in his question (Acts 19:2).

To receive the Holy Spirit in such a sense that one knows experimentally that he has received the Holy Spirit, to receive the Holy Spirit in such a sense that we are conscious of the joy with which He fills our hearts different from any joy that we have ever known in the world; to receive the Holy Spirit in such a sense that He rules our life and produces within us in ever increasing measure the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; to receive the Holy Spirit in such a sense that we are conscious of His drawing our hearts out in prayer in a way that is not of ourselves; to receive the Holy Spirit in such a sense that

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Sanctification

“The Spirit dwelling in you is no mere influence.” || Watchman Nee

by Alan Sharpe November 14, 2021 Leave a Comment

The Spirit who dwells within me is no mere influence, but a living Person; He is very God.

by Alan Sharpe November 14, 2021 Leave a Comment

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Do you know, my friends, that the Spirit within you is very God? Oh that our eyes were opened to see the greatness of God’s gift! Oh that we might realize the vastness of the resources secreted in our own hearts! I could shout with joy as I think, “The Spirit who dwells within me is no mere influence, but a living Person; He is very God. The infinite God is within my heart!” I am at a loss to convey to you the blessedness of this discovery, that the Holy Spirit dwelling within my heart is a Person.

Excerpted from The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee. Public domain.

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