day no. 16,444: we serve that to which we surrender

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.” — Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde’a godless take on temptation testifies to the tyranny of self assessment. Let's look to another Oscar for a more godly take...

“A man’s disposition on the inside, i.e., what he possesses in his personality, determines what he is tempted by on the outside. The temptation fits the nature of the one tempted, and reveals the possibilities of the nature. Every man has the setting of his own temptation, and the temptation will come along the line of the ruling disposition. Temptation is a suggested short cut to the realization of the highest at which I aim – not towards what I understand as evil, but towards what I understand as good. Temptation is something that completely baffles me for a while, I do not know whether the thing is right or wrong. Temptation yielded to is lust deified, and is a proof that it was timidity that prevented the sin before.” — Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

We are mastered by what we yield ourselves to.

2 Peter 2:19

While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.

We serve that to which we surrender. Sin sets the hook of slavery with the bait of freedom.