The Folly Of Temptation

And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
1 John 3:3

Last night, my roommate and I were discussing how we should go about fighting temptation to sin. He made mention to me of a book that he is reading about sin being a wisdom/foolishness issue. In the book, an illustration was used (I can't remember specifically) about temptation always looking attractive but having this bitterness and pain always associated that we cannot see. And the author explained that he goes about fighting temptation by reminding himself that it's always unwise to go where danger is certain.

Now I agree with this. And maybe I'm just wired differently than others, but I have never had great effectiveness in fighting temptation to sin that way. When it comes down to it, my heart often will usually bypass my mind. And thinking about what's wise becomes irrelevant when I feel so strongly about what I want in the moment of temptation. This caused me to go back to find this excerpt from a book I read about a year ago in which I highlighted almost the entire section (does this defeat the point of using a highlighter?). It's from a book called Hope, a meditation on 1 John 3:3, written by a Puritan named Jeremiah Burroughs:

PARTICULAR 3. The greatness of their hopes fills their hearts with so much comfort and satisfaction, their souls are so satisfied with the good that they hope for, that they account they have enough and need not look to any other thing for comfort and contentment. They have enough in their own hearts; their hope fills their souls with joy unspeakable and glorious. What is the reason why carnal hearts seek up and down for comfort in this and the other lust? It is because they do not have enough in God. But the saints have the spring of consolation within through these hopes; these hopes fill them with so much comfort that the temptation that would draw them to sin has no power to prevail against them; for where lies the power of a temptation to sin but in that it offers some contentment that the heart did not have before? And therefore people who are discontent are subject to temptation. You do not know how liable you make yourselves to temptations when you are discontent and lack comfort within. When the devil sees such a one, he says, "Here is an object fit for me; he lacks comfort. Now I will go and present some comfort to him, for he is vexed and troubled. And I may draw him to such and such an evil way."

No people are more in danger of temptations than melancholy and discontented persons, for the strength of a temptation lies in offering some contentment that we lack. Now if the heart is filled with comfort, and spiritual and heavenly things, so that I find my soul fully satisfied and quieted, I can say, "Return unto your rest, O my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with me. Whatsoever I lack in the creature, I have the light of the face of God; and I know I have enough laid up in God, Christ, heaven, the covenant, and the promises."

Now the devil sees that there is little hope of prevailing with such a soul to draw it to sin. He thinks with himself, "How can I offer contentment to them? Their hearts are satisfied with better contentment than I can offer to them!" The reason a temptation prevails is because the devil thinks that he has better comforts and contentment than you have in your own hearts; but the devil, the world, and the flesh (put them all together) cannot offer better and sweeter comforts than this hope in the hearts of the saints fills them with. Hence it is that the greatness of the hopes of the saints helps to purge and keep the heart from sin, because they fill the heart with so much joy and comfort.

If a man should have his body filled with sweet wines, if you should come now to offer him a small beer, do you think you could prevail with him to drink it? The saints have the rich wine of heavenly consolation, and they fill themselves through the hopes that they have in those great things of the gospel. They fill their hearts with the rich wine of the consolation of the Spirit of God, and that which the devil, the world, or the flesh offer is but a little sapless stuff, dead beer, after they are so filled with other comforts.

-Jeremiah Burroughs, Hope, p.62-64

This is the most effective way I have ever been able to fight the temptation to sin in my life. The folly of temptation for me isn't so much the folly of walking into certain danger (though that is always very much the case), but rather the folly of trading an infinitely greater experience of pleasure and joy (in God)--even if I must wait for it--for the short-lived pleasure and joy offered by the sin that tempts me. I don't know why, but by God's grace the latter is much harder for my heart to bypass than the first.