Overcome Sin’s Deceitfulness

I recently decided to do a spiritual experiment (I hope that’s an acceptable thing to do) with the purpose of learning to overcome the temptation of sin.

But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. – Hebrews 3:13

When I read this verse, I always assumed that this applied only to the person receiving the encouragement, but I had this thought, “what if that also applies to the person giving the encouragement?” It’s kinda a crazy thought and doesn’t really make sense, but what if? So I decided to give it a try. I took a week and tried to intentionally encourage people every day that I encountered as well as asking God for one person to send an encouragement to.

What I soon realized is that once I had encouraged someone, sin seemed less tempting. I was still tempted by the same things, but I had way less of a desire to do them. They didn’t seem worth it (they’re not!!!). It was easier to say no so sin. And the reason is that the deceitfulness of sin was weakened.

See how sin and temptation works is the devil tries to make us believe a lie. He wants us to believe a lie that this thing is better and worth it. He promises joy, pleasure, fun, and no kick-back, but he never keeps his promise. It’s all deceit. Deceit is defined as the concealment or distortion of the truth for the purpose of misleading. You wouldn’t do it if you knew what sin really was! That’s why it’s so tricky and tempting.

But the beauty is, we not only can refuse to sin for righteousness’ sake, we can break it’s deceitfulness. By encouraging people daily, we begin to somehow see the truth about sin. I’m not exactly sure how it all works, but I know it’s from God and it does work. We are aligning ourselves with God and thus bringing light to everything around us. Sin can’t handle light.

One of the key things that I think prevents Christians from keeping from sin is recognition that we still need God. It can be easy to say, “Jesus broke my chains, so I can hold off this sin”, but the reality is that we don’t have to do it on our own. Jesus did break our chains, and He is still here with us to keep away from sin. I don’t have to do it on my own. In addition to that, we’re not simply choosing not sin or sin, but rather we are choosing Jesus or Satan. You can’t not choose sin without choosing Jesus.

Like I just stated, the reality of overcoming sin is to choose Jesus, and in addition to encouraging one another daily (yes, daily), I want to give some other revelations I’ve recently had that have helped me choose Jesus.

Pray. The line lead me not into temptation but deliver me from the evil one from the Lord’s Prayer is there for a reason.

Spend time with Jesus daily (do all of these things daily). You simply can’t make it without spending time with Him EVERY SINGLE DAY. If I miss a day, even a morning, sin is knocking on my door.

Pray in the Spirit when tempted. Yes, it sounds crazy (read Chasing the Dragon and you’ll understand), but when you pray in the Spirit, you allow the Holy Spirit to speak for you and make your decisions, and He will always choose Jesus over sin.

Don’t be idle. If you find yourself constantly bored spend lots of extra time with Jesus and simple find things to do if you need. When you sit around alone and bored, sin wants to creep up.

Realize it’s not your life anymore. When you said, “yes” to Jesus, you handed your life over to Him. Let Him have it and have the say in what it does.

And again, encourage one another daily. It’s so simple, so good, and does so much for you and others. You overcome sin’s deceitfulness. Your friend’s overcome sin’s deceitfulness. Everyone feels empowered and loved. Encourage one another daily.

If you don’t believe it’ll work, just give it a try.

Y’all are awesome! Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. You are a child of God and an overcomer! Also, read my old post called Sin’s Scale.