The author of this book, Dr. Ray Pritchard, is President of Keep Believing Ministries and host of the blog which lives at Keep Believing Ministries’ home page.
The subtitle of this book is “Protecting yourself against Satan’s plan to destroy your life”.
In my words, the point of the book is to help Christians lessen the gap between how they believe God wants them to behave and how they do behave.
I think it will be very helpful in that regard: it’s full of insightful observations about what facilitates that gap and specific strategies for overcoming it.
Since there’s a gap in my own life between how I’d like to behave and how I do behave, I was curious to read this book and see whether it had any helpful warnings and advice for me.
I found that it did. Here are some of the warnings Ray Pritchard gives which are helpful reminders to me:
- No-one will know whether you exercised or not
- You won’t be warned in advance that you’re about to be tempted to do what’s wrong
- It may happen at your weakest moments
- On the other hand, when life is going well you might be particularly off your guard and so, not handle it well
- You’ll make excuses to do what’s wrong like “Go ahead, you deserve this”
- Things which seem to promise ‘freedom’ often result in you being bound with the chains of addiction
- If you’re convinced you can get away with it, sooner or later you’ll do it.
- Small wrong choices can set you on a path with serious consequences; the direction you’re going usually comes from many small choices rather than one big one
- A careless word hurts three human beings – you, the person you tell and the person you said it about
Since this is a book for Bible believing Christians, the author makes or illustrates points like the above ones by looking at choices people made in the Bible. He discusses the specific choices Eve made which resulted in her eating the fruit and which Peter made which resulted in him denying Jesus three times. We often face similar choices in our own lives.
In addition to the warnings, the book gives specific strategy for resisting the temptation to do wrong such as:
- Don’t stop to think it over or discuss it (i.e. “just say no” as soon as you encounter the choice); leave the scene if you need to
- Be intentional in replacing unkind words with kind ones
- Use structure and ‘train’ yourself into habits of right choices
- Tell a few trusted friends where you get tripped up and ask for their help
One important goal of the book is to encourage Christians. The author points out how powerful discouragement can be and gives specific reasons for Christians not to be discouraged. He gives reasons based on the Bible why Christians need not fear Satan. He points out that the Bible never says it’s a ‘sin’ to be tempted. The issue is how you respond to the temptation.
Some of the author’s key strategies are inherently Christian such as: pray to God for help; sing worship songs which will lift your spirits and remind you that God is more powerful than Satan. I liked the chapter about prayer even though I don’t pray according to the usual Christian definition of prayer. I loved where Ray Pritchard said we should pray for undiscouraged love and cheerful perseverance. I definitely would like those to characterize my own life. And I also loved later where he said that what matters (to God) about prayer is not the words, form or length but whether people pray with faith, sincerety, honesty and humility. I would like my life to be one of sincerety, honesty and humility.
The author makes the very important point that what happens to us is not as important as what happens in us and through us when we’re tempted to do what’s wrong. What happens to us is largely out of our control, anyway – what we can control is our response. People facing temptations of their own are watching how we handle difficulty. When we respond well they are encouraged by that and learn from our example.
As well as being helpful I found this to be a very readable book. Ray Pritchard uses stories throughout the book (from the Bible, his life or the lives of others) to illustrate the points he makes. And he is wonderful at telling those stories with descriptive details that bring them to life and make them fun to read.
The one chapter I went through rather quickly was the final one: “cataclysmic times: spiritual warfare in the last days”.
If you don’t base your life on the Bible I think you would find helpful advice in this book for overcoming self-defeating behavior which subverts your own goals. However, you would need to decide whether you’re comfortable seeking that advice from a book written for people who base their lives on the Bible. And you might strongly disagree with a number of things in the final chapter .
If you do base your life on the Bible, this book was written for you and I highly recommend it as an interesting and enjoyable read and a valuable resource on how to respond to temptation more effectively. I think it would be a great book to read and discuss in a small group setting. Then you could talk with your friends about what particularly trips you up, and share how the advice in the book is helping you respond better. You would probably get the most out of it that way.