All good boxer have a one-two punch. You guard your face to protect from the right cross or the left hook and then he jabbed you in the stomach. Your are looking for the one and are unsuspecting of the other. This is the way Satan works. When he is tempting you with sexual sins, it is all-consuming. You are in such a struggle to resist and that you are unaware that he is hitting you in another area.

While sexual temptation is very common and works a great deal of the time; there is something that has a higher success rate and it has to do with man’s understanding of ownership. Screwtape told Woodworm, “The humans are always putting up claims to ownership which sound equally funny in Heaven or hell and we must keep them doing so.” The earth is the LORD’s and everything on it and in it. Yet we do fling the possessive pronoun “My” around like it all belonged to us…My car, my house, my wife, my children, my church, my country, my time, my job and even my God.

Paul asked a thought provoking question in I Corinthians 4:7– “What do you have that you did not recieve?” I have a friend who is an unbeliever and has an anti-Christ spirit. He doesn’t like for me to talk about Jesus in his presence. One day I ask him the above question. He paused for a few seconds and then said, “Nothing, I guess preacher.” I couldn’t believe it. He got it right–everything is a gift. Your mother gave your birth and God gives you breath. How long would it take for you to lose everything? One heart beat!

It’s not your time, your money, your talent or your body. You may as well lay claim to the moon or the sun. You do not own a single thing. I thing “Human ownership” is the most productive lie in Satan’s repertoire.  Satan will wreck a lot of men with sexual temptation but he is far more productive in the area of ownership and greed. We all know men who would not think of cheating on their wife but they don’t mind robbing God. While they are feeling good about their chastity, the devil is getting a horse laugh because the poor soul, in his pride, is not aware that he has taken the bait is now claiming God’s resources as his own.

Once the devil convinces us that ownership belongs to us, we become selfish in our management and very unkind in our behavior. I can get really bent out of shape if you start taking up my time or asking for my money.