Every year, I give something up on January 1 for the duration of the year. In an effort to not be mastered by anything, I have found it is a helpful practice to go a year without something. Over the years, I have given up sodas, buying things for myself, coffee, and dessert. Now, it’s important for you to know that I love desserts. I always have since I was little, and I don’t discriminate. I know some of you are thinking, Oh yeah, I love sweets, I can’t turn down cookies. That’s kind of my thing. But we are not the same.

Cookies are my thing, cake is my thing, pie is my thing, doughnuts are my thing, and candy is my thing. If it has sugar, I’m way into it. I love all kinds of candy: hard candy, soft candy, and candy that has stuff inside of it. Any kind of candy, unless it has coconut (because then it is basically a chocolate-covered salad).

[One day] my friend Scott and I agreed on a challenge. We said, “We’re going to do one year with no desserts.” For added accountability, we added in a financial component. The bet was if I ate a dessert, I had to give him one hundred dollars, and the same went for Scott.

We had to have some skin in the game. We shook on it like men and began our quest.

As soon as I shook his hand on this deal and said, “Okay, I’m in, no desserts for one year,” desserts started showing up out of nowhere. I mean, sweets just magically appeared. People were dropping off brownies, bringing by bowls of candy, like “Hey, my wife just made these cookies. You’re going to hurt her feelings if you don’t eat one.” Everywhere I turned, somebody was offering me some kind of free dessert. Everybody was in on this temptation game.

Sometimes when I speak somewhere, the organizers might give me a gift card as a thank-you once it’s over. With one speaking engagement, I got a gift card to a nice restaurant, and Monica and I saved it to celebrate our anniversary. We went and had an amazing meal. Great conversation, great food, great time together. The perfect night.

After we finished eating and were ready for the bill, I got my gift card out. The server came by and said some kind things. He said, “Hey, we have never met, but I have been impacted by your ministry. God has done a work in my life. I would love to do something special for you as a small way to thank you.” He then set in front of me a giant piece of chocolate cake. Not a small slice. This cake had many, many layers. There I was just staring at it, conflicted about what I should do.

As he walked away and I just sat there staring at the cake, Monica said, “What are you going to do?” I said, “Well I guess I am going to pay Scott a hundred dollars.” And let me tell you, it was worth every dollar.

This example is a picture of how temptation works. We resolve to abstain from something—to say “no more!”—and try and move in a different direction. As soon as we make that decision, what- ever we just gave up starts to present itself out of nowhere. The villain loves to tempt us.

Here’s a helpful, simple working definition of temptation: a proposition to not trust God. Anytime you’re given choices and one of those choices is to not trust God—that is temptation. Whenever you can choose between a set of options and one of those options is to trust your feelings, your thoughts, your desires, your logic, or whatever else the Enemy wants to use to tempt you— that is temptation.

People fall all across the spectrum when it comes to fighting the temptations of the villain. Some of you are walking by the Holy Spirit, resisting temptation, and you are finding victory. Praise God for that! In James 4:7, the Bible says that if we stand firm and resist the Enemy, the Enemy will flee from us. Some of you are actively resisting temptation, even when it appears on a (metaphorical) plate right in front of you. A villain is actively trying to get you to sin. He’s serving up cake when you’re trying to go without. Some of you are in the fight. You are aware of the temptations in front of you and sometimes you resist them, but other times you give yourself over to them. You have periods of resistance and victory, followed by seasons of succumbing to the Enemy’s wishes. How do I know this? Because this is me.

Some of you may even be starting to feel like victory is impossible and you are wearing your sin as if it is some kind of modern-day scarlet letter. You think, I guess I’ll just always struggle with porn, or Alcohol will just always be my ditch, and you have accepted defeat. But I am here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that way.

It’s important to remember that temptation itself is not sinful. The temptation is not what drives a wedge between you and God—sin is. Too often we find ourselves tempted in a situation and we go down a mental rabbit hole where we beat ourselves up for being tempted, when it is completely normal and a tactic the Enemy uses to pull us toward sin. The skill we need to develop as we grow in maturity in our relationship with Jesus is the ability to resist temptation. There is no better playbook for us to follow when fighting temptation than the one given to us by Jesus Himself.