After all, the mind retains everything we experience, and I had willingly put lots of garbage into my mind that could be called up at any time. Then, since no new filth was coming into my brain, the adversary of my soul started calling to my mind images I had stored in my brain over the many years I indulged in this terrible addiction. Frequently I have had to surrender a temptation several times until I succeeded in letting it go, but I have found that if I persist in giving each temptation to the Lord, over and over, for as long as it takes, I am delivered every time.Īs I continued this practice, I began to have more and more success in allowing the Lord to take from me temptations I encountered in my daily activities – such as the temptation to rent a pornographic video or get on the Internet and surf for pornography. What an amazing difference! Instead of automatically giving in each time the enticement to sin was thrown at me, I found I could surrender the temptation to the Lord and not give in. Please take it away and keep me safe from sin.” As I began asking the Lord to take each temptation away, I found to my great amazement and relief that “God could and would, if He were sought” ( Alcoholics Anonymous, 60). Each time I found myself being tempted, I began to say: “Lord, I am powerless over this temptation. My attempts were rewarded, for I found, as Alma did, that I could cry out to Jesus for mercy (Alma 36:18-19 38:8). What could it hurt to give “surrendering” a try? Could it really be that simple? It seemed too easy, but I had already tried all the hard ways, and they didn’t work. Instead of automatically surrendering to temptation, as I had done for years, I needed to surrender the temptation to the Lord and ask Him to take it away. The Amazing Power of Surrendering to ChristĪ marvelously liberating principle fell into place when reading in the SA White Book. It took time to develop trust in Him, and time to develop the habit of relying on Him, but the more often I tried, the easier it became. Even so, I didn’t automatically start turning to the Savior every time I was tempted. In addition, I must not only “think of Jesus” but also let Him become the center of my life, of my very thoughts, if I am to become free from the ravages of entrapment in sensuality.Įven when I was still slipping back into acting out, I found that the more I turned to Christ, even while I still felt I was a mess, the more He blessed me and comforted me. I spend time every day in sincere, heartfelt prayer, and regularly ponder the scriptures. I have learned I can begin by doing things that bring Christ into my mind. The Lord has told us that we are to first “come unto Christ, and be perfected in Him” ( Moroni 10:32 ). This doesn’t mean we must first “have the mind of Christ” before we can give up “the things of the flesh,” nor does it mean we must be clean before we can approach the Lord. Our thoughts and desires must be centered in Christ if we are to escape enslavement by our appetites. 22:42) would be answered, “I really don’t think of Him at all!” (Neal A. For many moderns, sad to say, the query “What think ye of Christ?” (Matt. To the extent that we are not willing to be led by the Lord, we will be driven by our appetites, or we will be greatly preoccupied with the lesser things of the day. The sovereignty of these other masters is real, even if it sometimes is subtle. Ironically, if the Master is a stranger to us, then we will merely end up serving other masters.
2:16 ) because his thought patterns are “far from” Jesus, as are the desires or the “intents of his heart” (Mosiah 5:13). 8:5), he cannot “have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. If one “mind the things of the flesh” ( Rom. How, then, do we begin to turn back to the Lord and surrender our addiction to Him? We have talked about the importance of turning our desires over to Him. (2 Nephi 10:24 Omni 1:26 Mosiah 3:19 2 Nephi 4:34) (Heart t’ Heart scriptural version) Made the decision to reconcile ourselves to the will of God, offer our whole souls as an offering unto Him, and trust Him in all things forever.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.