prayer 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

You Need a Willing Spirit Plus a Subdued Body | Matthew 26:41

by Alan Sharpe October 5, 2022 Leave a Comment

When your spirit is willing and your body is under your control, you win. And you please your Lord.

by Alan Sharpe October 5, 2022 Leave a Comment

Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
Matthew 26:41

Victory over sexual sin doesn’t come just spiritually, and it doesn’t come with human effort alone. Your victory isn’t all up to God, and it isn’t all up to you, either. To forsake pornography and any other sexual sin, you require a willing spirit and a subdued body.

When the disciples fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus rebuked them for having willing spirits but unwilling bodies. Jesus asked the disciples to stay awake and to watch with Him as he prayed. But they fell asleep. Their spirits wanted to stay awake, but their bodies wanted to sleep. Their bodies won the battle, they fell asleep, and they disobeyed their Lord.

The lesson for you and me is that we must bring our bodies into subjection if we are to obey our Lord. We must subdue them, discipline them, make t

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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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Prevention

“Use prayer as your first line of defense.” || Oswald Chambers

by Alan Sharpe September 17, 2022 Leave a Comment

We pray when there’s nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all.

by Alan Sharpe September 17, 2022 Leave a Comment

solitary man walking in the dark night toward light

We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there’s nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all. Most of us would prefer, however, to spend our time doing something that will get immediate results. We don’t want to wait for God to resolve matters in His good time because His idea of ‘good time’ is seldom in sync with ours.

Excerpted from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers.

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Prevention

“Lead us not into temptation.” || John Calvin

by Alan Sharpe July 26, 2022 Leave a Comment

Whoever implores the assistance of God to overcome temptations, acknowledges that, unless God deliver him, he will be constantly falling.

by Alan Sharpe July 26, 2022 Leave a Comment

And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
Matthew 6:13

Some people have split this petition into two. This is wrong: for the nature of the subject makes it manifest, that it is one and the same petition. The connection of the words also shows it: for the word but, which is placed between, connects the two clauses together, as Augustine judiciously explains. The sentence ought to be resolved thus, That we may not be led into temptation, deliver us from evil.

The meaning is: “We are conscious of our own weakness, and desire to enjoy the protection of God, that we may remain impregnable against all the assaults of Satan.” We showed from the former petition, that no man can be reckoned a Christian, who does not acknowledge himself to be a sinner; and in the same manner, we conclude from this petition, that we have no strength for living a holy life, except so far as we obtain it from God. Whoever implores the assistan

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Consecration

“Effects require causes.” || Henry Drummond

by Alan Sharpe July 10, 2022 Leave a Comment

Christian experiences are governed by law. Men, forgetting this, expect Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith to drop into their souls from the air like snow or rain.

by Alan Sharpe July 10, 2022 Leave a Comment

Nothing that happens in the world happens by chance. God is a God of order. Everything is arranged upon definite principles, and never at random. The world, even the religious world, is governed by law. Character is governed by law. Happiness is governed by law. The Christian experiences are governed by law. Men, forgetting this, expect Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith to drop into their souls from the air like snow or rain. But in point of fact they do not do so; and if they did they would no less have their origin in previous activities and be controlled by natural laws. Rain and snow do drop from the air, but not without a long previous history. They are the mature effects of former causes. Equally so are Rest, and Peace, and Joy. They, too, have each a previous history. Storms and winds and calms are not accidents, but are brought about by antecedent circumstances. Rest and Peace are but calms in man’s inward nature, and arise through causes as definite and as inevitable.

Realize it thoroughly: it is a methodical not an accidental world. If a housewife turns out a

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Consecration

“Let prayer keep you in God’s presence.” || Francois Fénelon

by Alan Sharpe June 25, 2022 Leave a Comment

Let your fixed seasons of prayer keep you in God’s presence through the day, and His presence frequently remembered through it be an ever-fresh spring of prayer.

by Alan Sharpe June 25, 2022 Leave a Comment

man of the top of the mountain in the fog

In God’s name I beseech you let prayer nourish your soul as your meals nourish your body. Let your fixed seasons of prayer keep you in God’s presence through the day, and His presence frequently remembered through it be an ever-fresh spring of prayer. Such a brief, loving recollection of God renews a man’s whole being, quiets his passions, supplies light and counsel in difficulty, gradually subdues the temper, and causes him to possess his soul in patience, or rather gives it up to the possession of God.
Francois Fénelon

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Prevention

Don’t Ask God for What He Has Already Given | 2 Peter 1:3

by Alan Sharpe June 23, 2022 Leave a Comment

God promises that the divine power you need to resist porn and masturbation is already yours for the taking. You just have to take it.

by Alan Sharpe June 23, 2022 Leave a Comment

Don't Ask God for What He Has Already Given | 2 Peter 1:3

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 masturbat

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Consecration

“The goal of prayer is the ear of God.” || Charles Spurgeon

by Alan Sharpe June 17, 2022 Leave a Comment

If your prayer has not gained the heart of God, it has failed in its essential purpose.

by Alan Sharpe June 17, 2022 Leave a Comment

Sad business man with umbrella looking at the horizon

We must remember that the goal of prayer is the ear of God. Unless that is gained the prayer has utterly failed. The uttering of it may have kindled devotional feeling in our minds, the hearing of it may have comforted and strengthened the hearts of those with whom we have prayed, but if the prayer has not gained the heart of God, it has failed in its essential purpose.

A mere formalist can always pray so as to please himself. What has he to do but to open his book and read the prescribed words, or bow his knee and repeat such phrases as suggest themselves to his memory or his fancy? Like the Tartarian Praying Machine, give but the wind and the wheel, and the business is fully arranged. So much knee-bending and talking, and the prayer is done.

The formalist’s prayers are always good, or, rather, always bad, alike. But the living child of God never offers a prayer which pleases himself; his standard is above his attainments; he wonders that God listens to him, and though he knows he will be heard for Christ’s sa

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Consecration

“We are deficient in prayer more than in any other grace.” || Adoniram Judson

by Alan Sharpe June 13, 2022 Leave a Comment

God loves importunate prayer so much that He will not give us much blessing without it.

by Alan Sharpe June 13, 2022 Leave a Comment

“Nothing is impossible to industry,” said one of the seven sages of Greece. Let us change the word industry for persevering prayer, and the motto will be more Christian and more worthy of universal adoption. I am persuaded that we are all more deficient in a spirit of prayer than in any other grace. God loves importunate prayer so much that He will not give us much blessing without it. And the reason that He loves such prayer is that He loves us and knows that it is a necessary preparation for our receiving the richest blessings which He is waiting and longing to bestow. I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything but it came at some time—no matter at how distant a day, somehow, in some shape, probably the last I would have devised, it came.
Adoniram Judson

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Sanctification

“Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?” || Corrie Ten Boom

by Alan Sharpe May 24, 2022 Leave a Comment

lonely man with torch light walking illuminating his path

Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?
Corrie Ten Boom

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Consecration

“Fix your love on God, forgetting all else.” || The Cloud of Unknowing

by Alan Sharpe February 6, 2022 Leave a Comment

In the beginning it is usual to feel nothing but a kind of darkness about your mind, or as it were, a cloud of unknowing.

by Alan Sharpe February 6, 2022 Leave a Comment

This is what you are to do: lift your heart up to the Lord, with a gentle stirring of love desiring him for his own sake and not for his gifts. Center all your attention and desire on him and let this be the sole concern of your mind and heart. Do all in your power to forget everything else, keeping your thoughts and desires free from involvement with any of God’s creatures or their affairs whether in general or in particular. Perhaps this will seem like an irresponsible attitude, but I tell you, let them all be; pay no attention to them.

. . .

And so diligently persevere until you feel joy in it. For in the beginning it is usual to feel nothing but a kind of darkness about your mind, or as it were, a cloud of unknowing. You will seem to know nothing and to feel nothing except a naked intent toward God in the depths of your being. Try as you might, this darkness and this cloud will remain between you and your God. You will feel frustrated, for your mind will be unable to grasp him, and your heart will not relish the

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Lust

“I lived as if there was none but He and I in the world.” || Brother Lawrence

by Alan Sharpe January 4, 2022 Leave a Comment

Sometimes I considered myself before Him as a poor criminal at the feet of his judge; at other times I beheld Him in my heart as my FATHER, as my GOD:

by Alan Sharpe January 4, 2022 Leave a Comment

Having found in many books different methods of going to GOD, and divers practices of the spiritual life, I thought this would serve rather to puzzle me than facilitate what I sought after, which was nothing but how to become wholly GOD’S. This made me resolve to give the all for the all; so after having given myself wholly to GOD, that He might take away my sin, I renounced, for the love of Him, everything that was not He; and I began to live as if there was none but He and I in the world.

Sometimes I considered myself before Him as a poor criminal at the feet of his judge; at other times I beheld Him in my heart as my FATHER, as my GOD: I worshipped Him the oftenest that I could, keeping my mind in His holy Presence, and recalling it as often as I found it wandered from Him. I found no small pain in this exercise, and yet I continued it, notwithstanding all the difficulties that occurred, without troubling or disquieting myself when my mind had wandered involuntarily. I made this my business as much all the day long as at the app

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Consecration

“We cannot know God if we use prayer like a telephone.” || E. M. Bounds

by Alan Sharpe November 8, 2021 Leave a Comment

Intimacy requires development. We can never know God as it is our privilege to know Him, by brief and fragmentary and unconsidered repetitions of intercessions that are requests for personal favours and nothing more.

by Alan Sharpe November 8, 2021 Leave a Comment

And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.
Luke 18:1

“Men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” The words are the words of our Lord, who not only ever sought to impress upon His followers the urgency and the importance of prayer, but set them an example which they alas! have been far too slow to copy.

The always speaks for itself. Prayer is not a meaningless function or duty to be crowded into the busy or the weary ends of the day, and we are not obeying our Lord’s command when we content ourselves with a few minutes upon our knees in the morning rush or late at night when the faculties, tired with the tasks of the day, call out for rest. God is always within call, it is true; His ear is ever attentive to the cry of His child, but we can never get to know Him if we use the vehicle of prayer as we use the telephone—for a few words of hurried conversation.

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