The Christian's Secret to a Happy Life

THE CHRISTIAN SECRET OF A HAPPY LIFE by Hannah Whittall Smith CHAPTER X. DIFFICULTIES CONCERNING TEMPTATIONS Certain very great mistakes are made concerning this matter of temptation, in the practical working out of the life of faith. First of all, people seem to expect that, after the soul has entered into rest in the Lord, temptations will cease, and they think that the promised deliverance is to be not only from yielding to temptation, but even also from being tempted. Consequently, when they find that Canaanite still in the land, and see the cities great and walled up to heaven, they are utterly discouraged, and think they must have gone wrong in some way, and that this cannot be the true land, after all. Then next, they make the mistake of looking upon temptation as sin, and of blaming themselves for suggestions of evil, even while they abhor them. This brings them into condemnation and discouragement, and discouragement, if continued in, always ends at last in actual sin. Sin makes an easy prey of a discouraged soul, so that we fall often from the very fear of having fallen. To meet the first of these difficulties, it is only necessary to refer to the scripture declarations, which state that the Christian life is to be throughout a warfare, and that it is to be especially so when we are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and are called to wrestle against spiritual enemies, whose power and skill to tempt us must doubtless be far superior to any we have ever heretofore encountered. As a fact, temptations generally increase in strength tenfold, after we have entered into the interior life, rather than decrease, and no amount or sort of them must ever for a moment lead us to suppose we have not really found the true abiding place. Strong temptations are often more a sign of great grace, than of little grace. When the children of Israel had first left Egypt, the Lord did not lead them through the country of the Philistines, although that was the nearest way. For God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt. But afterwards, when they had learned how to trust Him better, He permitted their enemies to attack them. Moreover, even in their wilderness journey, they met with but few enemies, and fought but few battles, compared to those they encountered in the land of Canaan, where they found seven great nations, and thirty-one kings to be conquered, besides walled cities to be taken, and giants to be overcome. They could not have fought with the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Peretzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, until they had gone into the land where these enemies were. The very power of your temptations, dear Christian, therefore may perhaps be one of the strongest proofs that you really are in the land of promise you have been seeking to enter, because there are temptations peculiar to that land. Consequently, you must never allow them to cause you to question the fact of your having entered it. The second mistake is not quite so easy to deal with. It seems hardly worthwhile to say that temptation is not sin, and yet much distress arises from not understanding this fact. The very suggestion of wrong seems to bring pollution with it, and the poor tempted soul begins to feel as if it must be very bad indeed, and very far off from God, to have had such thoughts and suggestions. It is as though a burglar should break into a man's house to steal, and, when the master of the house begins to resist him and drive him out, should turn round and accuse the owner of being himself the thief. It is the enemy's grand ruse for entrapping us. He comes and whispers suggestions of evil to us, doubts, blasphemies, jealousies, envyings, and pride, and then turns round and says, ìOh, how wicked you must be to think such things! It is very plain that you are not trusting the Lord, for if you had been, it would be impossible for these things to have entered your heart.î This reasoning sounds so very plausible that we often accept it as true, and so come under condemnation, and are filled with discouragement, and then it is easy for temptation to develop into actual sin. One of the most fatal things in the life of faith is discouragement. One of the most helpful is confidence. A very wise man once said that in overcoming temptations, confidence was the first thing, confidence the second, and confidence the third. We must expect to conquer. That is why the Lord said so often to Joshua, ìBe strong and of a good courage. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed. Only be thou strong and very courageous.î And it is also the reason He says to us, ìLet not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.î The power of temptation is in the fainting of our own hearts. The enemy knows this well, and he always begins his assaults by discouraging us, if he can in any way accomplish it. This discouragement arises sometimes from what we think is a righteous grief and disgust at ourselves, that such things could be any temptation to us, but which is really mortification coming from the fact that we have been indulging in a secret self-congratulation that our tastes were too pure or our separation from the world was too complete for such things to tempt us. We are discouraged because we have been expected something from ourselves, and have been sorely disappointed not to find that something there. This mortification and discouragement, though they present an appearance of true humility, are really a far worse condition than the temptation itself, for they are nothing but the results of wounded self-love. True humility can bear to see its own utter weakness and foolishness revealed, because it never expected anything from itself, and knows that its only hope and expectation must be in God. Therefore, instead of discouraging the humble soul from trusting, such revelations drive it to a deeper and more utter trust. But the counterfeit humility that self-love produces plunges the soul into the depths of a faithless discouragement, and drives it into the very sin with which it is so distressed. There is an allegory that illustrates this to me wonderfully. Satan called together a council of his servants to consult how they might make a good man sin. One evil spirit started up and said, I will make him sin. How will you do it? asked Satan. I will set before him the pleasures of sin, was the reply. I will tell him of its delights and the rich rewards it brings. Ah! said Satan. That will not do. He has tried it, and knows better than that. Then another imp started up and said, I will make him sin. What will you do? asked Satan. I will tell him of the pains and sorrows of virtue. I will show him that virtue has no delights, and brings no rewards. Ah! no! exclaimed Satan. That will not do at all. For he has tried it, and knows that wisdom's ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. Well! said another imp, starting up. I will undertake to make him sin. And what will you do? asked Satan again. I will discourage his soul, was the short reply. Ah! that will do! cried Satan. That will do. We shall conquer him now. An old writer says, all discouragement is from the devil. And I wish every Christian would take this as a motto, and would realize that he must fly from discouragement as he would from sin. But if we fail to recognize the truth about temptation, this is impossible. For if the temptations are our own fault, we cannot help being discouraged. But they are not. The Bible says, Blessed is the man that endureth temptation, and we are exhorted to count it all joy when we fall into diverse temptations. Temptation, therefore, cannot be sin. And the truth is, it is no more a sin to hear these whispers and suggestions of evil in our souls, than it is for us to hear the wicked talk of bad men as we pass along the street. The sin comes, in either case, only by our stopping and joining in with them. If, when the wicked suggestions come, we turn from them at once, as we would from wicked talk, and pay no more attention to them than we would to the talk, we do not sin. But if we carry them on in our minds, and roll them under our tongues, and dwell on them with a half-consent of our will to them as true, then we sin. We may be enticed by temptations a thousand times a day without sin, and we cannot help these enticings, and are not to blame for them. But if we begin to think that these enticings are actual sin on our part, then the battle is half lost already, and the sin can hardly fail to gain a complete victory. A dear lady once came to me under great darkness, simply from not understanding this. She had been living very happily in the life of faith for some time, and had been so free from temptation, as almost to begin to think she would never be tempted again. But suddenly a very peculiar form of temptation had assailed her, which had horrified her. She found that the moment she began to pray, dreadful thoughts of all kinds would rush into her mind. She had lived a very sheltered, innocent life, and these thoughts seemed so awful to her, that she felt she must be one of the most wicked of sinners to be capable of having them. She began by thinking that she could not possibly have entered into the rest of faith, and ended by concluding that she had never even been born again. Her soul was in agony of distress. I told her that these dreadful thoughts were purely and simply temptations, and that she herself was not to blame for them at all, that she could not help them any more than she could help hearing if a wicked man should pour out his blasphemies in her presence. And I urged her to recognize and treat them as temptations only, and not to blame herself or be discouraged, but rather to turn at once to the Lord and commit them to Him. I showed her how great an advantage the enemy had gained by making her think these thoughts were originated by herself, and by plunging her into condemnation and discouragement on account of them. And I assured her she would find a speedy victory if she would pay no attention to them, but, ignoring their presence, would simply turn her back on them and look to the Lord. She grasped the truth, and the next time these blasphemous thoughts came, she said inwardly to the enemy, I have found you out now. It is you who are suggesting these dreadful thoughts to me, and I hate them, and will have nothing to do with them. The Lord is my helper. Take them to Him, and settle them in His presence. Immediately the baffled enemy, finding himself discovered, fled in confusion, and her soul was perfectly delivered. Another thing also, our spiritual enemies know that if a Christian recognizes a suggestion of evil as coming from them, he will recoil from it far more quickly than if it seems to be the suggestion of his own mind. If the devil prefaced each temptation with the words, I am the devil, your relentless enemy, I have come to make you sin, I suppose we would hardly feel any desire at all to yield to his suggestions. He has to hide himself in order to make his baits attractive, and our victory will be far more easily gained if we are not ignorant of his devices, but recognize them at his very first approach. We also make another great mistake about temptations, in thinking that all time spent in combating them is lost. Hours pass, and we seem to have made no progress, because we have been so beset with temptations. But it often happens that we have been serving God far more truly during these hours than in our times of comparative freedom from temptation. For we are fighting our Lord's battles when we are fighting temptation, and hours are often worth days to us under these circumstances. We read, Blessed is the man that endureth temptation, and I am sure this means enduring the continuance of it in its frequent recurrence. Nothing so cultivates the grace of patience as the endurance of temptation, and nothing so drives the soul to an utter dependence upon the Lord Jesus as its continuance. And finally, nothing brings more praise and honor and glory to our Lord himself than the trial of our faith that comes through manifold temptations. We are told that it is more precious than gold, though it be tried with fire, and that we, who patiently endure the trial, shall receive for our reward the crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. We cannot wonder, therefore, any longer at the exhortation with which the Holy Ghost opens the book of James. Count it all joy when ye fall into diverse temptations. Knowing this, the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. Temptation is plainly one of the instruments used by God to complete our perfection, and thus sin's own weapons are turned against itself. And we see how it is that all things, even temptations, can work together for good to them that love God. As to the way of victory over temptation, it seems hardly necessary to say, to those whom I am at this time especially addressing, that it is to be by faith, for this is, of course, the foundation upon which the whole interior life rests. Our one great motto is throughout, We are nothing, Christ is all. And always and everywhere we have started out to stand, and walk, and overcome, and live by faith. We have discovered our own utter helplessness, and know that we cannot do anything for ourselves. And we have learned that our only way, therefore, is to hand the temptation over to our Lord, and trust Him to conquer it for us. But when we put it into His hands, we must leave it there. The greatest difficulty of all is, I think, this leaving. It seems impossible to believe that the Lord can, or will manage our temptations without our help, especially if they do not immediately disappear. To go on patiently enduring the continuance of a temptation without yielding to it, and also without snatching ourselves out of the Lord's hands in regard to it, is a wonderful victory for our impatient natures. But it is a victory we must gain, if we would do what will please God. We must then commit ourselves as really to the Lord for victory over our temptations, as we committed ourselves at first for forgiveness. And we must leave ourselves just as utterly in His hands for one as for the other. Thousands of God's children have done this, and can testify today that marvellous victories have been gained for them over numberless temptations, and that they have in very truth been made more than conquerors through Him who loves them. But into this part of the subject I cannot go at present, as my object has been rather to present temptation in its true light, and to develop the way of victory over it. I desire greatly that conscientious, faithful souls should be delivered from the bondage into which they are sure to be brought, if they fail to understand the true nature and use of temptation, and confound it with sin. When temptation is recognized as temptation, we shall be able to say at once, Get thee behind me, and shall walk even through the midst of the fiercest assault, with unclouded and triumphant peace, knowing that, when the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him. End of Chapter 10 Recording by Greg Giordano New Port Richey, Florida