Last week, I wrote about the Spiral of Defeat, which my pastor has taught. I examined seven steps of how an external trigger will activate through our bodily senses to create a thought. Thoughts lead to temptations, temptations to sin, sin to habits, habits to strongholds, and strongholds to demons. This cycle can go through multiple iterations and the ultimate result is death. But this cycle can be broken, and we can begin a new cycle: a Spiral of Victory.
My pastor broke it down into seven steps that match the seven steps of the Spiral of Defeat. These steps are: internal trigger, revelation, escape, victory, habit, deliverance, and freedom. While the Spiral of Defeat acts upon the lusts and desires of the flesh, the Spiral of Victory acts upon the yearnings and teachings of the Holy Spirit. While the Spiral of Defeat is initiated from outside of us, the Spiral of Victory initiates from within. Here are the sermon and notes for reference. Let’s dig in.
The first step is not an external trigger appealing to our senses, but an internal trigger noted by our spirit. One of the functions of the spirit in a human being is intuition. It’s the ability to know something you normally would not know. Women are well attuned to this part of them. Our conscious is another function of the spirit. While an external trigger can initiate the process towards sin, our conscious is an internal trigger that warns us against it. If we listen to the external trigger, we reap a thought that can lead to sin. If we listen to the internal trigger, we will receive a revelation.
When David was being chased by Saul, he started down the Spiral of Defeat, but he beat it and climbed the Spiral of Victory. The Spiral of Defeat started when he found Saul in the cave where he was hiding. That was the external trigger. It came with a thought: “I could kill him now.” That became a temptation, and while he did not kill Saul, he cut off a piece of Saul’s garment. Immediately, David was cut to the heart. This was an internal trigger which led to a revelation.
Now, when I say “revelation” here, I am not talking about a private message from God on the same level as Scripture. What I am talking about is typically a Scripture verse that has already been put in our spirit will come out to address the external trigger. That’s how Jesus beat Satan in the wilderness. He received an internal trigger alerting Him that His hunger was from His body and it needed to be subjected to the control of the Holy Spirit. And when He noted that, a verse came to mind, one He has memorized since He was a boy. When He stood upon that Scripture, He gained an escape. David also had a revelation. Saul was God’s anointed. It was not his job to solve his problems. Let God take care of it.
Temptation is the desire to take something God has given us and use it in the wrong way or the wrong time. Yet with every temptation, there is always an escape. God never promised we can beat it by force or will power; He promised we can escape from under it. Temptation actually has no power over us. But temptations are tempting simply because we want and like what it offers, that’s why it’s a temptation. But if we can escape from under it, it can do no more than try again later, and what we get is not a sin but victory. David escaped not just Saul but also the temptation to take care of business his own way in his own timing. As a result, he did not merely escape, he got a victory.
Victories are one-time events. Many nations will lose a battle but win the war. It takes multiple battles and multiple victories to win a war. The temptations will keep coming back because as God told Cain, sin is at the door and its desire is to have us, to devour us. It keeps knocking and if we beat it back 19 times and lose it on the 20th time, that singular victory is like it won all 20. But the reverse is also true. If sin has beaten you 999 times, and you beat it on the 1000th time, that one victory counts as if you won all 1000 times. David got a victory over Saul, by choosing not to take Saul’s life and showing he truly had no intent of taking the throne from him. Both winning and losing have something else in common: they are habit-forming.
Ask any sports team about this. When you start losing, you get that losing mindset going and it becomes a habit. But when you start winning, winning starts becoming a habit, too. Yes, there will be setbacks, but one of the reasons the New England Patriots and the San Antonio Spurs have had such great runs for the last 20 years is because they’ve established a culture of winning. It became a habit. When we escape from temptation and continue escaping, it becomes a habit. The temptations slow down and they stop becoming temptations. John Bevere battled pornography as a church leader. His testimony on how he was delivered and got out is incredible, but one thing I noted was that over time after his initial deliverance, the temptation to look got weaker and weaker. For David, when he came across Saul a second time, he wasn’t even tempted to take Saul’s life, though his general, Abishai, was tempted. David beat the temptation, got a victory, and that victory became a habit. Then as the habit of beating the temptation grows, we can truly experienced deliverance.
Deliverance is when a particular desire or lust no longer has any control over you and you no longer have any desire to have it. Josh McDowell’s father experienced this. He was the town drunk, and as the drunk, he ruined Josh’ life. He was too drunk to even recognize that his farm hand was molesting and raping his son for a span of seven years. Yet he came to Christ and the temptation came again. He found one of his bottles and took a swig. The moment the alcohol touched his mouth, he spewed it out like it was poison. He never touched the drink again. He was delivered. For any person to have been in the gutter, to have gone through the Spiral of Defeat, and to reach the point of Deliverance, it is truly life changing. That’s what happened with John Bevere. God had to break him free of the stronghold of pornography and then he started on the Spiral of Victory. Now he has been delivered. David never would have to fear Saul again because of a war with the Philistines. After that second encounter, David never saw Saul again, because Saul was slain in battle. There is one more step to the Spiral of Victory: freedom.
Deliverance is the total recuse from sin and its reach. Freedom is the ability to go back into the darkness, not be affected by its pull, and recuse others. Steve Lillis is a famous pool player whose lust for fame and fortune led him into a Spiral of Defeat. He was a pool shark for a while, gambling on pool games, losing on purpose to raise the stakes, and then would walk home with a wad of cash. But his life was threatened, and there are pool halls he knows if he walks in there again, his life is not promised. Yet today, he is totally delivered and walks in freedom. Nine years ago, he did a trick shot show with me here in El Paso in the middle of the coldest storm we had on record in a pool bar addressing the very culture he was delivered from (read more of that story here). He had freedom. David finally achieved freedom when he became king. He took the Spiral of Victory and achieved it. Paul frequently wrote about the freedom that a Christian is supposed to have. That’s what Romans 8 is all about: freedom. A conqueror gets victory, but we are more than conquerors. Sin has no power over us. Death has no sting. The plague may hit and even strike our body, but we will not fear because Christ has won it all for us. THAT is the Spiral of Victory!
Which spiral are you walking in? Are you in a Spiral of Defeat where sin continually beats you down into submission? Most of us walk in this spiral. We may be saved, we may be born again, but we are in the Spiral of Defeat and cannot get out. We may need God to supernaturally break the cycle for us. But then we may have to walk each step of the Spiral of Defeat backwards before we can start walking in the Spiral of Victory. If you are doing that, treat each step up as a victory. As you climb out of defeat, you may be climbing the Spiral of Victory at the same time.
Walk the Spiral of Victory, but take note that you can never do it in your own strength. You will fail. You can only do it walking alongside the One who succeeded: Jesus Christ. Let Him fight your battles. Let Him answer the door when temptation knocks. Let Him respond to those external triggers. When that happens, you will experience true freedom, and the life of the Christian is meant to walk in that freedom.
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