No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because he was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means--the only complete realist.
O God, our Father, help us to resist the temptations which continually attack us.
Help us to resist the temptations which come from within and from our own natures:
The temptation to laziness and to too much love of ease and comfort;
The temptation to pride and self-conceit and to think of ourselves more highly than we ought;The temptation to put things off until it is too late ever to do them, and to refuse to face the unpleasant things, until it is too late to do anything about them:Help us to resist these, O God.The temptation to despair, and to lose heart and hope;
The temptation to lower our standards and to accept things as they are;The temptation to be resignedly content with life as it is and ourselves as we are:Help us to resist these, O God.The temptation to let passion and desire have their way;
The temptation to trade eternal happiness for the fleeting thrill of moodiness, to irritability, to bad temper;The temptation to criticism, to fault-finding, to thinking the worst of others:Help us to resist these, O God.Help us to resist the temptations which come to us from outside.
Help us to say No to every voice which invites us to leave your way.
Help us to resist every seduction which makes sin more attractive.Help us to walk through the world, and yet to keep our garments unspotted from the world.Help us to be wise enough never to play with fire; never to flirt with temptation; never recklessly to put ourselves into a situation in which it is easy to go wrong; never unthinkingly to develop habits which provide an opportunity for sin.
Grant unto us that grace which will give us the strength and the purity ever to overcome evil and to do the right; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
William Barclay
(http://daletedder.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/prayer-for-resisting-temptation/)
 | Bruce MacPherson |
