The Connection between Stress and Temptation

{sidebar id=1}My friend quit smoking. Then some tough things happened and he started again.

Why?

I asked him and he said it was because of the stress, and that smoking helped him relax. Did smoking change his situation? No.

So why did he do it? I think it’s almost like he said, “Hey, I have enough stress in my life. I’m not going to add more by fighting the temptation to smoke.”

So he didn’t. He didn’t fight the temptation. And that, my friends, tells us something about temptation. It comes when we are stressed and don’t have the will to fight it.

Think about this. How often are you tempted to hurl things across the room? Almost never, right? You can resist that temptation all day long. But throw some stress in the mix, and now you won’t even fight it. You pick up the first thing you see and say, “Don’t tempt me!” – by which you mean, “Go ahead. Tempt me!”

There is something about stress that opens us up wide for temptation. We practically invite it in. I think it’s because we only have a certain amount of energy. Fighting temptation takes a lot of energy, and stress saps our energy. It’s like we can’t do both. We can’t seem to be stressed, and fight temptation at the same time.

I see it in my own life. For me, paying bills is stressful. If you want to tempt me, do it while I’m paying bills. You want to tempt me to say something critical? You want to tempt me to doubt God? Do it while I’m paying bills. Then do you want to tempt me to “tune out” reality for a while, to “escape”? Do it when I’m done paying the bills.

For me, paying bills is like getting caught in a rip tide. It takes a while to float back to the surface. So if I know this, what have I done about it?

I’ll tell you in a moment, but first let’s talk about being shaken. Hebrews 12:27 says that “created things” can be shaken. I don’t like feeling shaken in life. It’s like riding out an earthquake. It’s unnerving.

So if I don’t want to be shaken, what should I do? I must build my life on something solid.

How can I do that? Jesus made it clear in Matthew 7. If I hear His words and put them into practice, I will build my life on solid rock – which can’t be shaken.

God’s Word is the stability I desperately need. When everything else is shaken, God’s Word stands firm.

My friend should not have gone back to smoking. Instead, when life got shaky, he should have stood on God’s unshakable Word.

And what did I do to overcome my stress in bill paying? I’ll tell you. I found these little cards with Bible verses on them, Scriptures dealing with money and God’s provision. Then when I felt tempted to doubt God or to give in to stress, I would read those cards. They would remind me of what was really true. Then I put my faith in that instead of anything in this world.

So do you see the connection between stress and temptation?

Stress sets us up to fall for temptation. So one “back door” way to fight temptation is to cut down our stress, and the way to do that is to build our lives on the Word of God.

Comments?

E-mail me: dougapple@wave94.com.

May God bless you today! With Apples of Gold…I’m Doug Apple.

This article originally published on August 14, 2007.

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