Lifetime Guarantee (15 page)

But wait a minute. We’ve also got to consider your “stuck feeler.” Your emotions were so intensely programmed by feeling threatened in your masculinity during your years under your dad’s domination that they are stuck at level 8. So let’s draw your stuck feeler as an eight-lane, green highway in the diagram. You feel the need to prove yourself male at level 8 constantly. But to you this is normal, as you have long since renumbered your emotional Richter scale and you call an 8 a 1.

The curvy lady is not the temptation. She’s the
object
of the temptation.
The temptation is going to come from (the power of) sin,
Satan’s agent through which he seeks to control. You are a saint being tempted to get your human needs met through fleshly techniques, acting like someone you are not (a sinner). You are not a sorry sinner just doing what comes naturally.
What you believe about your identity is what is going to make the difference. You will live out whatever you believe to be your true self, your true identity.

Now, for the record, it’s not a sin to be tempted. Jesus Himself “has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). It is very normal for a Christian to be tempted. I have seen many Christians who spend a great deal of time begging God for forgiveness simply because they are
tempted
to do evil. That’s error! Just being tempted doesn’t make you guilty any more than it made Jesus guilty.

Sin simply waits until the printout of the curvy lady appears on the brain’s visual screen (see Figure 6.2). Then as your mind considers this stimulus, sin, using the old, eight-lane, green highway in your brain, says to your mind, “Man, oh man, how
I’d
like to take her to bed.” Wake up! Look at that pronoun,
I.
You see, it is actually the Evil One’s agent sin, attempting to get you, a godly saint, to “do the very thing you hate.” Notice that I have drawn a line from Satan through sin through the brain, traveling your flesh pattern for sexual lust and into the mind. You are being
presented
this idea for consideration.
You,
saint,
did not originate
this idea; he did. But if you buy it, you are sinning in your thought life. You will be totally guilty of sinning against God. You’ll be acting like something you’re
not,
a sinner. The Bible says we are now “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). As such, you do not want to rebel against God.

But let’s say for illustration’s sake that you do receive the thought from sin. When you buy into this thought, the rattlesnake illustration I used previously is activated. Feeler begins to respond to the stimuli of both curvy lady
and
sin’s lustful thought. Remember, however, that you’re not playing with a full deck in this battle. Your feeler is already sitting on an 8 (or probably higher because of your wife’s disobedience to the Lord’s authority over her). So once your feeler starts to escalate, how long will it take it to get to 10? It’ll hit 10 before she passes the hood ornament on your car!

Now you’ve got sin hammering your mind with all sorts of creative ideas about how you can get your needs met,
and
you’ve got feeler slamming into chooser, demanding satisfaction. “I
feel
I have to! I
feel
I can’t refuse this! I
feel
I’m powerless!” Sit there and swallow this garbage for just a few, fleeting moments and you’ve lost the battle. You are playing with dynamite! Swallow the first thought and sin will follow that up with another: “
I
think
I’ll
just get out and follow her into the post office. Man, what a walk!” Look at that pronoun again:
I.
It will seem as if the old man is alive and well. But if he is, God’s Word is not true. Do you see it? The Evil One’s strategy is to
disguise himself in your thought life as your old man
resurrected from the dead. But the old man has no resurrection capability.
He cannot resurrect. God
did not raise him up. Satan
can’t
do it. But sin surely
can deceive
you by impersonating the old man in your thought life. And that is exactly how sin is controlling Christians.

Your victory lies in appropriating your true identity as the saint you are in Christ. You must counter the temptation along these lines: “No! I’m dead to that! That is not my thought. I recognize that strategy. It’s true that I would like to get my sexual need satisfied, but my deep desire is to trust You to take care of that for me, Lord. That’s Your problem, not mine.” Then,
act
as though you’re dead to sin’s thoughts coming to you. How does a dead man respond when you try to stimulate him? He doesn’t! He just sits there!

You, on the other hand, are alive! You are
dead
to the power of sin and
alive
to God in Christ Jesus. “Do not go on presenting the members of your body to [the power of] sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God” (Romans 6:13). Note in Figure 6.3 that I have placed the words “Dead to Sin” in the mind.

This is a faith (belief) position taken by the mind and will. God said that I am dead to sin but alive to God in Christ (see Romans 6:11-13), so I will
choose
to
act
as if I’m dead to sin by
acting as though Christ is living through me
in this situation. I “set my mind” that Christ is expressing His life of victory over temptation through me, and I act as though it’s true. I pray, “Well, Jesus, it sure is good to know that I am dead to this situation and You’re living in it through me.” And then I “flee from evil” (see 2 Timothy 2:22). “Gee, Lord, those are interesting bricks on the post office. I wonder how many there are under each window? Yes, there are seven. Isn’t that interesting.”

If I were standing behind a curvy lady in the grocery checkout lane, and her perfume were wafting its way to my nostrils, I wouldn’t stand there claiming who I am in Christ! I’d act like Christ through me was backing my cart out of the line. Then we’d move over a couple of aisles and pull in behind the guy wearing a cowboy hat and overalls. Friend, He will deliver you, but you must obey quickly. Stay there and sniff that good perfume of hers like a big Delbert Dumb and you’re in deep trouble. Remember, you’re playing with double dynamite due to your stuck feeler. Don’t give your flesh even the smallest opening.

Now let’s shift to another Christian who happens to be sitting in the car next to yours. This is a woman. She is a very committed, witnessing Christian leader. She, too, has her unique version of the flesh that she battles against. She has an eight-lane, green highway for hostility against females. Why would she have this sort of problem? Again, it could have resulted from various circumstances. In her case, she was rejected by her mom. Her mother was a Victorian sort of woman, very cold toward her daughter. When the child attempted to get involved in the cooking or baking at home, her mom would typically respond by telling her that things would go much faster and more efficiently if she would just leave the kitchen. “Get out of here,” she would snap. “You’re in my way.” (In other words, “I find you a most undesirable person. I am happier when you’re not around me. You’re too dumb to learn how to cook anyway.”)

This carried over into many of the typically feminine activities in the home. Mom never taught her anything—how to sew, how to line her eyes, how to hem a dress, how to shop. At the onset of menstruation, Mom tossed a pamphlet through the bathroom door to her. Who was this girl learning about all these years, Mom or herself? Herself! She learned,
I’m not feminine. I can’t do anything right with regard to being feminine. I’m worthless!
Then her feeler got stuck. She feels unfeminine at level 8 and has for years. She’s playing the game with only the top two points on her feeler scale.

Along about age nine or ten, this little girl began to fight back at all this rejection. Now that she had learned to reject herself as a female, she was getting more and more frustrated at her inability to satisfy her need for love. This generated hostility that she directs mainly at herself for being such a loser as a female. But she scatterguns her hostility toward females in general because
they all represent rejection to her.
She has been trained to relate to women by rejecting them first. She anticipates their rejection of her. It seems
normal
to her! If they won’t reject her, she will try to
make
them do so. This is the turf on which she is most comfortable (a very miserable comfortable).

Then she got saved. Her old identity died in Christ, and she was born a new woman in Him. But her brain still has all that software in it for feeling hostile toward females. The curvy lady represents the epitome of femininity to her—everything she feels she is not. Curvy ladies are a painful reminder of her own failure. She is tempted to react to this stimulus with rejection and hostility.

When the curvy lady passes into her view, the brain yields a printout. Sin says, “Look at that!
I’ll
bet she’s wearing more pads than the Chicago Bears!” This is not
her
thought. As the new woman she
now is,
she loves women. God did not spawn a new woman who hates other women. He has written His laws of love “on her heart” (see Hebrews 10:16). He has given her a new heart (see Ezekiel 36:26). These prophecies have already been fulfilled in born-again people. If she doesn’t know this, however, if she believes that God left her a hopeless house divided against herself, spiritual Siamese twins who battle each other constantly, she will likely accept this thought from sin. And once she does that, its thought becomes hers. She is deceived, and she’s now sinning in her thought life.

The next step is the rattlesnake routine. Feeler begins to climb. But wait! Remember that her elevator never starts from the lobby. She feels hostile toward women at level 8 on her
best
days. With this advantage, sin instantly socks it to her mind again: “Look at that bleached hair! I’d like to jerk it out by its black roots! Women like that make me sick! Worthless little pet house dog!” The power of sin will keep pouring it on her mind as long as she will be sucker enough to sit there and drink it in.

Now, this woman is not being driven by a biological need the way the macho flesh man was. Whereas he may well leave his car at the Evil One’s insistence to try to make friends with the curvy lady, our lady is not apt to chase her down and start a street fight. No, she will just sit in her car and fume until her feeler gets to 10.

About this time, the woman’s seven-year-old daughter returns to the car from the errand she had run. She has great difficulty closing her car door. Slam, rattle, rattle, rattle. Open up again…slam, rattle, rattle. Open up again. Now we have a new printout in mama’s brain: young female (
an extension of mama’s own self-image,
and she hates herself) can’t even close a door right.

If you were sin, what would you say to mama now? It will travel up yet another green highway and trigger the thought,
You idiot! Can’t you do anything right? Do I have to do everything?
This anger is not directed against the curvy lady, though. There is no danger of damaging mom’s Christian witness with “real” people here. This is only a kid! Much of the restraint is gone. She bellows it out, reaches roughly across her daughter’s lap, and slams the door with all the hostility she can release. Wham! Then she starts the car and aims it toward the house. Her jaw is set. Her knuckles are white as she grips the wheel. She tells her daughter to shut up when she meekly tries to apologize. She snaps off the radio that had been playing. They speed toward the house in deathly silence.

Who is this little girl learning about? Is she learning,
Boy, mom, you are really a hard case!
No, you realize by now that she’s learning,
Ugh. I just can’t do anything right. I always mess up. I
always
cause mom to be upset. And I don’t blame her. She has every right to be upset. I’m such a klutz! I hate myself! I wish I were gone! She’d be so much happier if I were just gone. I wish I were dead.
And the sins of the parents are visited “on the children to the third and fourth generations” (Exodus 34:7).