Drawn Away: What the Bible Says About Temptation

Maybe in the parking lot after worship. Maybe at the kitchen sink at midnight. Maybe on your knees in the dark. Never again. And by Tuesday you were back on the porch, circling the same light, wondering what is wrong with you.

There is nothing uniquely wrong with you. You have been trying to win a fight at stop four when the battle was already lost at stop two.

Drawn Away walks slowly through James 1:13-15, the three verses where the Bible lays out the actual anatomy of temptation. James does not just say don't sin. He hands you the wiring diagram. He shows you the six stops on the road that ends with a body on the boards:

• The Source. Where temptation does not come from, and why this verse has to land before any of the others can.


• The Pull. The moment your head turns. Most Christians lose the fight right here and never realize they were in one.


• The Bait. Why the hook works on you and not on the man sitting next to you in the pew.


• The Conception. The line you crossed before you ever opened the door.


• The Birth. The act itself, and what it actually costs you.


• The Death. What sin finished pays out, and how to step off the road before you arrive.

The June bug does not crash into the zapper because he is stupid. He crashes because he is wired toward bright light, and the world built him a trap that uses his own wiring against him. You are not stupid either. You have been white-knuckling your way through Sunday and crashing by Tuesday because nobody ever showed you the wiring diagram.

With the porch light humming and the June bug spinning toward the zapper, Gage Coldwater opens the text and walks you through every stop. Then he turns the corner into the practical fight: See It Coming. Decide Before You Have To. Run, Don't Negotiate.

• Recognize the pull the second it starts pulling, before it picks up speed.


• Name your own lust honestly, because you cannot fight what you will not name.


• Pre-decide before the moment, so you are not unarmed when it arrives.


• Run, instead of negotiating with a thing that has never once kept its word.


• Live in the brighter light, so the bug zapper loses most of its pull.

If you have made the same promise to God too many times to count and broken it again before the week was out, this book is for you. If you are a young man learning what it costs to walk with Christ in a fallen world, this book is for you. If you are a preacher, a father, an elder, or a friend trying to help somebody else fight, this book will hand you a map.

The June bug never looks up. The moon is enormous, and the porch light is small, but the porch light is closer, and the porch light hums, and the porch light is enough to end him.

There is a brighter light.

This book is about how to live in it.