Process to Freedom

As you hear/read these experiences, talk with Jesus through the questions. In what areas do you find yourself facing temptation? Identify the common schemes of the devil you encounter in your own life.

Talk with Jesus

• Show me why resisting temptation matters so much for my life.
• Show me how You are there for me in every time of need.
• Show me how to find my strength in You.

Prayer:

Lord, my Rock, I don’t want to settle any more for the temporary pleasures found in what the temptations offer. Instead, I choose true solace, true refuge, true comfort, true strengthening. I choose to go to You each day, in the secret place, for these things.

Truth Weapon to memorize:

Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom! 2 Corinthians 3:17

Video: Experience from Age 33

Journal Entries, Age 33

December 29
This Christmas was my first Christmas truly alone. My first two Christmases in Japan (years ago), I was living with people. For the other Christmases of my life I’ve always been with family, either immediate or extended. It was a hard Christmas season. On Christmas Eve particularly, I felt terribly lonely. I felt a strong desire to message [an ex-boyfriend from high school], for some emotional escape from loneliness, even for a short time, even though I knew it wouldn’t be sincere, but in that moment, I was okay with the notion of tricking my heart into feeling embraced. The desire built and built, but at 11:26pm I messaged one of my close girl friends instead. At 11:40pm, the ex-boyfriend I had been tempted to message, MESSAGED ME. (These times are exact, I have the proof in my Messenger chat!)

His message was just to wish me a Merry Christmas. But the timing of this was WILDLY suspect (as if there was someone roaming the earth that night tempting lonely hearts to find false and temporary solace in one another). If we had talked, we wouldn’t have talked about ‘bad’ stuff, but I knew that my heart was terribly insecure that night and was seeking some form of security. Before God set me free, I would often chat with ex-boyfriends when I was sad and essentially use them to feel better, by tricking my heart that they truly cared about me in the way my heart desired to be cared for.

I do look forward to being loved by my future husband, to meeting the one who will truly care for my heart. But in the meantime, I MUST LEARN that my heart is superbly cared for, loved and held by Jesus, and I must train my heart to recognize this as truth and as completely sufficient for all of my needs. Because even in the healthiest marriage, humans simply cannot love one another in the completely constant, fully sufficient way that our hearts yearn for. Our hearts must learn to find ever-security in Jesus alone. And we learn by turning to Him in these moments. When we short-circuit the unpleasant feelings and instead reach out for some immediate, tangible companionship, we miss learning what it is like for our hearts to truly find their fulfillment. During those unpleasant feelings, Jesus is coming, ready to meet us in that place and tend to our heart, and He is never late. But there is one who runs ahead and offers something else to us – something sooner and tempting. But what he offers is a facade. On the outside it promises to give your heart what it needs, but when you open it, you see too late that it is completely empty, and your heart is left as empty as or emptier than before. Hold out for the real thing, heart!

I ignored his message until a few days later when my heart was not feeling vulnerable, and then I in turn wished him a Merry Christmas.

September 17
Late last night I was walking home from the station, and very close to my apartment, with very few others on the street, a man in his 30s spoke to me. He said (in Japanese), “Do you speak Japanese? Sometime in the future, do you want to go out and have dinner together? You’re very pretty.” Because it was so late at night and it was near my apartment, this was a strange conversation from a stranger, I pretended to not understand and politely excused myself.

Before God set me free, sexual attention from guys was my ‘food’. I lived for it, sought after it, felt filled by it. The test in this encounter was that old temptation of feeling affirmed by this. It was a nice comment, and there is nothing wrong with receiving compliments! But in my heart, I could feel that there was a potential to twist this perhaps innocent compliment into that old habit of being filled by it. My heart must find its firm foundation in Jesus only, not to return to the old way of chasing after its security from any other source.

September 21
Over the past week or so, several things have been adding up in my heart. This week, hearing about several friends with new romantic relationships, and feeling my own ‘panic’ over approaching 34 with no man on the horizon, and approaching 10 full years of singleness in 3 months. On Saturday, I was literally knocked over by a wave of discouragement; knocked down to the floor, crying. “What are you doing with your life? God left you here and abandoned you. You’ve wasted your life.” These words came and crushed me beneath their weight.

Pretty much every temptation recorded in the Bible had the same theme: satan has whispered the same lines to humankind since the beginning. “Doubt God. Doubt His word. Doubt His love. Doubt His faithfulness. Instead, look to me. I’ll give you what you need right now.” I’ve followed God all the way out here to Japan, all the way out on a limb, out of the boat, walking on water, and what I see with my eyes is that He has indeed abandoned me and led me to only let me sink?? The thought sent me into a spiral of panic.

But I remembered that Jesus gave us a template of how to respond to the devil’s temptations. Respond with the Word of God. Respond to the lie with Truth. In that place of such weakness, I somehow mustered up the strength to write down the opposite of every panic-provoking thought. The Bible is full of statements to use against the temptation to doubt what God has said and to doubt His character.

Every time something hits your heart, feelings of envy, discontent, loneliness, panic over again and biological time clocks... go to Jesus with each item. Let’s give to Jesus each discouragement as they come, because if we don’t, and we let them add up, we can gradually find ourselves crushed beneath a mountain of discouragement, and that much more weak and vulnerable to the lies of the evil one.

Later that day, I realized that that same day exactly one year ago, I had unexpectedly ran into my ex-fiance, after exactly (to the month) 10 years since our breakup. An appointment that God had amazingly set up, in His perfect timing, to fully bring closure to a past chapter of my life. The one-year anniversary of a very vulnerable day.

“But I trust in you, Lord”;
I say, “You are my God.”
My times are in your hands;
deliver me from the hands of my enemies,
from those who pursue me. Psalm 31:14-15