Mat 6:13 (NIV) And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

This is part of the prayer Jesus taught His disciples to pray. Why? Because only God can give us the power to turn the page or channel, look away, or change our thoughts. We just won’t do it if we don’t put our trust in Him.

Mat 6:11 (NIV) Give us today our daily bread.

From this part of the prayer we can see that this is a prayer that is prayed daily. Sometimes we get to thinking that the power God gave us previously will carry us through the rest of our lives. If we try to put our faith in the fact that we were successful yesterday, we are setting ourselves up for failure today. We need God’s help to be loving and caring of people today. The whole prayer is a “today” prayer. If a person is already addicted, it is going to take more than that. It will take all the elements of spiritual warfare that we examined in Spiritual Growth.

Many want to look at David’s situation and say he should have quickly repented rather than try to cover it up. That is true. But, that is the problem with people who get down spiritually. They should do a lot of things. The same problem that kept him from turning his eyes, kept him from repenting.

The spiritual condition that caused him to stare, caused him to try to use his own ingenuity to solve the problem.

2 Sam 11:2-3 (NIV) One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?”

First, she was bathing. That was none of David’s business. Turn your eyes. Second, he finds out she is married. Change your thoughts about her. Move on.

2 Sam 11:4-5 (NIV) Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then she went back home. The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.”

Since he didn’t turn his eyes, he had people go check to see who she was. Why? She was naked and looked very beautiful to him. What has happened to him? He is experiencing sexual desires on an intense level. Where did he go wrong? Weeks, months, maybe even years before, he stopped letting God’s power control his physical activities. In other words, he was extremely weak spiritually. He needed to do a lot of important spiritual things at that moment. But, unfortunately, they were way beyond his spiritual abilities.