day no. 15,227: attemptation

2 Peter 2:19
They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.

Giving in to sin does not set one free from righteousness. It also does not open up freedom to sin. It often leads to more sin, but not as a result of increasing freedom, but of increasing enslavement.

"Yielding to a temptation is like yielding to a blackmailer: you pay to be free, and find yourself the more enslaved." - G.K. Chesterton

You can be freed from temporary temptation by giving in to it or by enduring it to the end. If you choose to free yourself from temptation by giving in to its demands, you find yourself free for a moment only to find yourself more bound to it and mastered by it in the end. In short, temptation resisted to the end is powerless and temptation indulged in the moment ends in powerlessness.

"Exaggerate the weariness by making him think it will soon be over; for men usually feel that a strain could have been endured no longer at the very moment when it is ending, or when they think it is ending. In this, as in the problem of cowardice, the thing to avoid is the total commitment. Whatever he says, let his inner resolution be not to bear whatever comes to him, but to bear it “for a reasonable period” — and let the reasonable period be shorter than the trial is likely to last. It need not be much shorter; in attacks on patience, chastity, and fortitude, the fun is to make the man yield just when (had he but known it) relief was almost in sight." - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

We often give in to sin moments before the temptation would have died down. We resist the temptation and tension to a particular point and then give in to it. But the climax and resolution of a story is always closest to its final page. When we give in before the climax, we make temptation the main character of our story - the bad guy wins and becomes the dominate note.

"Temptation yielded to is lust deified" - Oswald Chambers

We worship what we gladly give ourselves to. 

If you yield to temptation, you will find yourself bending the knee to lust. The moment you make, "I must have it this moment," a permissible notion, it will become the only notion by which everything else is determined. Lust demands wholehearted devotion and it is a cruel Taskmaster.