How to Overcome Sexual Temptation: Christian Servanthood
The Bible has recorded some super servants. They are godly, competent, loyal, and resourceful. The masters they’d served enjoyed blessing from God and prosperity.
And these super servants had no records of sexual immoralities in their lifetime. This is noteworthy, because we know that even sweethearts of God like king David and his son King Solomon had serious issues with sexual temptations.
One of the super servants was Joseph. When he was little God revealed to him in a dream that his family will bow down before him (Genesis 37:5-11). He told his brothers that and it instigated their jealousy.
One time, Joseph and the brothers were in the field while they were gazing sheep, and his brothers plotted to have Joseph killed while no one see. But one of the brothers were merciful and suggested to sell Joseph off to travel merchants. They did and the merchants brought Joseph to Egypt.
They sold Joseph to the captain of Pharaoh’s guard. While Joseph was serving the captain, God was with Joseph and everything he did prospered. Soon Joseph became the chief servant in his master’s household and was put in charge of everything.
God blessed every single item of that household, so the master was happy to just chill out and leave everything to Joseph.
Soon Joseph grew into a young adult. He was well-built and handsome, uh oh…
One of the most famous cases of sexual harassment in history took place in that setting! Let see how Joseph exactly overcame that:
Now Joseph was well-built and handsome, 7 and after a while his master’s wife took notice of Joseph and said, “Come to bed with me!”8 But he refused. “With me in charge,” he told her, “my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. 9 No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” 10 And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her.
11 One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside. 12 She caught him by his cloak and said, “Come to bed with me!” But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house. Genesis 39: 6-12
Servanthood kept Joseph from sexual temptation.
If one is a loyal servant, duties occupy his or her mind all the time. There is always a sense of urgency that keep this servant going.
King David sinned because he was too good at delegation. He forgot his duty and took nap in his palace while his servants fought his battles for him. When he woke up he took a walk on the top of the palace, and with the good view there he saw a beauty woman who was taking a bath.
The palace was the highest building then, and its top was the only place where you can see the whole city.
It was like the Internet. The Internet gave us more power than the king, who might see a woman in bath if he was lucky… or unlucky, but for us, a few clicks and we can summon anything.
It posed a temptation to the king, and he fell for it, big time!
He summoned the woman into the palace and had sex with her. After he learned that she was pregnant he derived a scheme to cheat her husband into thinking that the baby was his, but it failed because her husband was a loyal warrior, who refused to sleep with his wife until the battles were over.
He was the exact opposite of King David.
King David was at his wits’ end, so he plotted to have the warrior killed in battles, and the warrior died because of it.
King David forgot that he didn’t own the nation. Although he was the king, he had no authority over that woman’s body. The people of Israel belong to God. The army of Israel is the army of God.
If David had been diligent and fought with his army on the battle fields, he would have bypassed the temptations. He would have remembered he was merely a servant himself, and his duties would have occupied his mind so that he had no time to entertain lust.
A servant understands that he or her doesn’t own anything, because of this a true servant is always humble and sober, so that he or she can serve the master well.
My story…
I am 27 and I am still a virgin. In my Christian circle, this is not uncommon.
During my University years, it might have been easy to sleep with someone. I am not sure. I had never tried. The thoughts of that never entered my mind.
Looking back, I think I saw hints of indecencies. When I was the vice president of the student union, I heard things. For example, one time there was a drunk party in the bar that we owned, the students had been drinking all night, and toward the end they engaged in random sex with one another right there and then.
As a vice president, I had some priviledges, such as going to bar nights for free. I could have gone to the bar twice every week and exposed myself to easy temptations.
In student union, there were many opportunities to meet attractive girls. But I never formed any real plan to meet someone. It wasn’t difficult to bypass any possible temptation. ( However, at the time I had a problem with porn, which I mentioned in Part 1. It might be due to curiosity. )
One time, we had a hypnotist as a guest performer for our bar —our bar was the largest student-owned bar in North America, and we had not one, but two bars! — I was too innocent to understand what the “XXX rated” sign on the poster meant, and it was free for the executives, so I went to the show.
I regreted being there. This was the first time I saw people get manipulated like that. I think the hypnotized students could have licked his toes if the hypnotist demanded it. Out of a room of 400+ audiences, 20 students were hypnotized.
He ordered them to do all kind of indecent acts, and they did. One of them was ordered to show his butt upon signal. He had given him 5+ signals throughout the night…
He also manipulated their emotions, for example, he gave each of them an “invisible poppy” and they all thought the poppy on their hand was real. He took one of the poppy and kicked it like a soccer. He made the sound effect too.
The girl who had the poppy taken from her wept. The butt guy, in the hypnotized state, made a dash for the hypnotist in anger, but quickly backed off upon the hypnotist’s order.
How did I bypass the temptations?
Through the years, it was the desire to serve God that empowered me to focus on the godly things, and therefore automatically ignored many temptations. In some critical, tempting moments, I didn’t even know how I managed to move on, but I just did.
Servanthood and The Butterfly Effect
As a Christian, I have had a perpetual sense of urgency. I saw hidden connections that connect everything I did and every decision I made to eternity.
For example, if I skipped a devotion for one day, I would forever miss the spiritual guidance for that day, and thus postponed God’s plan by at least one day, and the beneficiaries that my services would have touched had I received that piece of spiritual guidance would miss the blessings my service would bring, forever, and in turn, the beneficiaries will not be able to multiply that blessing from my services to others, and the supposed beneficiaries of my supposed beneficiaries would miss the blessing too, forever and so on.
By elaborate calculation, someone who would have became a spiritual giant directly or indirectly because of my words might remain unchanged because of I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to do as a servant of God.
This is called the Butterfly Effect, to learn more about the Butterfly Effect click here.
Suppose God’s ideal plan is to use you to bring 1000,000 people to Christ in your lifetime, if you dozed off for a while, you might have forever reduced that number to 999,999 souls.
One soul will go to hell because you slacked off!
And suppose that the number doesn’t follow a uniform pattern, but is an exponential growth, meaning: the older you get, the more people God will save through you! If you postponed God’s plan in your life by a year, but still live the same number of days in your lifetime, you would have reduced the number of saved souls from 1000,000 to maybe 8xx,xxx souls!
That’s 10,000+ souls you leave to hell if you chose to slack off from your duty!
Urgency and Godly Fear will Push You Through
Because of the urgency and godly fears I mentioned above, I was in constant motion during my university years. There were schoolwork, fellowship, ministries, and spiritual disciplines. Although I had regularly slacked off and sinned, I always went back to God and repented quickly, with sincere pains.
The burning desires to obey God’s plan had almost pushed me over the edge! To have a fire within you isn’t an easy thing.
But because of that fire, when God called me to run for the vice president position in the student union, I didn’t procrastinate, though the perceived challenges were huge! That fire pushed me through the fears of public speaking and debates, and I simply went out and spoke to classes, using my broken English at the time, and faced all odds.
I graduated from the University without falling into sexual temptations.
The Prostitutes and Me
I came back to Hong Kong from Canada in Nov 08, and a few months later I found that in my town there was a street where prostitutes congregated during midnight. I never spotted a single prostitute in Hong Kong during my 18 years of growing up there, ever. So it was my first experience.
I always thought of it as a miracle -must be some kind of divine protective shield from prostitutes. My younger brother, on the other hand, would point out one or two prostitutes every time while we were in our family car, but by the time I tried to look at where my brother pointed out at, it was usually too late already because our car just made a turn while my brother was doing that.
I was like, “Heh? where? where? How do you know she is a prostitude?”
The first time I spotted one on that street, it wasn’t midnight yet. It was around 5pm I think. There were at least three of them. All in minimal clothing. I admitted that I was always curious about a girl’s face. This time I saw a pair of long legs, so I was curious how she looked, and looked up. Then, one of them looked at me and winked.
That wink was too obvious to miss. She almost squeezed her eyes out! She winked with both eyes, twice! As if it wasn’t enough, she tilted her head up. The whole facial expression wasn’t pretty. I walked away quickly.
My family went to the Vietnam for vacation. I was alone for a few days.
What happened in that late afternoon disrupted my peace. And for the rest of the evening adrenaline had been flowing through my body- the forbidden fruit thrilled me.
I had to take a very long walk to release the sexual energy and the manly aggressiveness out of my body.
My rational mind was condemning the prostitutes, “Are they not shameful! Don’t they know their years are passing quickly? … Doing such things with random men are dirty!…” There were more going on in my head, but I don’t remember.
Very soon, I realized I was making a dangerous mistake. I knew that if I kept on this way, the temptations would only go stronger, by the minutes!
Righteous indignation will not deliver you from temptation!
Perhaps the same condemnations have ran through the minds of these girls before, but were not enough to keep them away from the pit.
As I was realizing this, I quickly turned my thinking into Joseph’s- I thought about God’s calling, my visions, and God’s perfect plan for my life. I felt better after shifting my mind. The adrenaline that was still flowing within seemed to turn mild.
The horror didn’t end there.
Many days later, in an afternoon, I rode a bicycle through the intersection of that street, and while I turned my head to check for incoming cars before I crossed the street, that same face emerged from the crowd, and ambushed me with a “Want to do it?”. All of this happened in less that 0.5 second!
In shock, I quickly shook my head and rode off.
In the following months, I was able to focus on this blog more. This platform allowed me to meditate on God’s word day and night. The thrill and urgency this project gave me have totally shielded me from the dark influences from that street.
Now I still walk pass that street occasionally, sometime when I remembered the prostitutes there I would walk around it, but even when I “found myself there”- because I was mesmerized in thoughts while I walked- I never looked at the girls, and bypassed them quickly.
Spiritual insights and writing ideas filled my mind, which made it easy for me to bypass temptations. I was often on the rush to write the next post, another next post, and another.
What give you thrill?
God’s calling will give you maximum thrills. You will never need to find excitement from worldly things.
“God is looking for people to use, and if you can get usable, he will wear you out, … The most dangerous prayer you can pray is this: ‘Use me.’” (Rick Warren)
Temptations, especially sexual temptation, indicate excessive energy and boredom. A healthy person needs challenges and thrills in order to stay healthy.
Fortunately, God will custom design a set of challenges for you until He uses up your last ounce of energy, if you let Him, and the adventures will seem too much for you to handle- it requires leaps of faith, and if you obey Him and persist, at the end of the day, you will find that you can the challenges after all.
Pray that God will use you and reveal His unique calling for you, now!
Coming Next
Next I am going to talk about hopes, romance, and marriage. They will form a solid defense against sexual temptations, if you know how to install them into your life. Yes, they work for single as well!
Go to Part 1 of How to overcome sexual temptation
Go to Christian Purity
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Thank you for this! it is God-breathed.
Thanks for your post. I appreciate the help. I have learned about the Jezebel spirit this week, and was saddened that it was actually me that needed to repent. I did the avoidance thing, but then I had to deal with my mind. I had to get to the root, and the root was the need for intimacy in simple friendship, which is lacking in my own marriage. I had to let this need go, and trust God, and focus on him, and stir up in myself to be PASSIONATE about Him. I’m getting better, but the effects of this spirit seemed to stop me in my tracks for almost a week. Avoidance can be difficult contact is inevitable.
On Jezebel spirit: I am a baptist so I don’t know a lot about Jezebel spirit and its function. I think some directions I may recommend for you is to 1) Check out generational curses and ancestors’ sins 2) verbal blessing: Read Derek Prince’s book on Blessing Or Curse: You can choose 3) Get a good deliverance ministry!!
Let me know how you are doing ok?
Wow man this helped me a lot, thank you for sharing I am a maturing Christian that am struggling with much of the same. You are a bright encouragement! GOD BLESS!