The gospel is a unique solution in a sin-filled world to a problem that is as old as time. Ever since Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, humanity has been caught in a struggle between good and evil. Unfortunately, choosing Christ isn’t quite as simple as we would like it to be. Each of us come to Jesus with unhelpful habits that we’ve cultivated and minds that have a bent towards sin. Perhaps you’ve been wondering: what are the nuts and bolts of overcoming temptation? Is it possible? Does God want us to be perfect? In this episode of the GYC Beyond Podcast Esther Louw discusses these questions with Andy Im. Andy is currently the Communications Director at Michigan Conference and is on the board of directors for GYC.

<p>The gospel is a unique solution in a sin-filled world to a problem that is as old as time. Ever since Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, humanity has been caught in a struggle between good and evil. Unfortunately, choosing Christ isn’t quite as simple as we would like it to be. Each of us come to Jesus with unhelpful habits that we’ve cultivated and minds that have a bent towards sin. Perhaps you’ve been wondering: what are the nuts and bolts of overcoming temptation? Is it possible? Does God want us to be perfect? In this episode of the GYC Beyond Podcast Esther Louw discusses these questions with Andy Im. Andy is currently the Communications Director at Michigan Conference and is on the board of directors for GYC.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Shauna Chung

Lisa Topete

GYC Beyond

01- Incorporating Evangelism into Your Life

Mark Finley

02- How to Live a Consecrated Life

Sebastien Braxton

03- How to Navigate Past Brick Walls

Amy Sheppard

04- Leadership and Time Management

Gem Castor

05 - How to Have a Powerful Life of Prayer

Natasha Dysinger

Esther Louw

06 - How to Have a Vibrant Devotional Life

Justin Kim

07- How to Teach an Interesting Sabbath School Lesson

Adam Ramdin

08 - Discovering Our Christian Heritage

Anthony Bosman

09 - Why Christianity?

Moise Ratsara

10- Why You Should Be Involved in Your Local Church

Janet Page

Jerry Page

11- How to Experience Revival and Reformation

David Skau

12- How to Reach Out to Refugees and Immigrants

Neale Schofield

13- How to Use Media and Art for God

Tara Vang

14 - The Power of Sharing Your Faith

Lela Lewis

15 - How to Get Involved in Medical Missionary Work

Carl Brugger

16 - Why You Should Volunteer for GYC

Andy Im

17 - How to Overcome Temptation

Michelle Doucoumes

18 - The Heart of Ministry

Doug Batchelor

19 - How to Overcome an Ice Cream Addiction

Kyle Allen

20 - How to be a Part of Total Member Involvement

Nathaniel Justin Khoe

21 - How to Create a Social Media Ministry

Wayne Blakely

Michael Carducci

Danielle Harrison

Ronald Woolsey

22 - Coming Out Ministries: Sexual Identity & Adventism

Gary Blanchard

23 - How to Live Dangerously for God


The Gospel is a unique solution in a sin-filled world to a problem that is as old as time. Ever since Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, humanity has been caught in a struggle between good and evil. Unfortunately, choosing Christ isn't quite as simple as we would like it to be. Each of us come to Jesus with unhelpful habits that we've cultivated and minds that have a bent towards sin. Perhaps you've been wondering, what are the nuts and bolts of overcoming temptation?

Is it possible? Does God want us to be perfect? Hi, this is Esther Lo. In this episode of the GYC Beyond podcast, I discuss these questions with Andy Im. Andy is currently the communications director at Michigan Conference and is on the board of directors for GYC.

Thank you for coming here and joining with us on the GYC Beyond podcast Andy. It's great to have you here. We wanted to just to open it up today and ask you a little bit about who you are and how you became a Christian. Sure. My name is Andy M.

I work in the Michigan Conference in Communications. How I became a Christian, I mean it's really it's really a long story. At the short end of it, I went to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, I'm at Tar Heel. And by the time I had gone there and decided to go there, I was gonna go to law school and was majoring in political science. And at that point, I was done with God.

I was done with religion. And I just wanted to live it up. I still believed in the existence of God. I still believe in Adventism. But I was just done.

It was just too much. So you had an Adventist background, but you just decided to move on from that. Yes. Okay. And the simple answer is, Whenever I decided to become a Christian, I felt more guilt than freedom and liberation.

It was either go crazy from the guilt or just give it up. That's where I was. Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about, you mentioned guilt. This concept of guilt and particularly sin and how we can overcome or handle the temptations that all of us experience in daily life so you mentioned that because of guilt in your life you wanted to just give up at 1 point how did that change for you and what kind of answers did you begin to experience in your life? So, I go to the University of North Carolina and I just want to party.

I was in my 20s, I just want to live it all up. So I got involved in substances, you know, party drugs, got addicted to or started smoking. And it doesn't take very long for those things to overwhelm you and to control you and to bring you to very dark places. So from rejecting God to adopting the world, I went to a dark place probably after several years. And it was at that point where I was like, man, like these things are, they're making me feel, you know, even worse about myself.

And I'm in a pit and I do not know how to extricate myself from this. And it was at that point where I realized I needed I needed out and and and the decision to come out of these things it's it's not so simple because they control you and so that's when I realized I needed, it was really the impetus for me wanting to escape this was it wasn't the sins per se, but it was the feeling of despair, bleakness, you know, things were just not positive. Uh-huh. It's almost like what drove you out of the church drove you back in? I wasn't feeling guilt though with the drugs and that thing.

It was more just, I don't want to say depression because that sounds like it's clinical it's just I just felt hopeless and and the drugs just made me feel worthless and nothing seemed happy about life right it was it was just a depressing outlook and and I wanted out. So how did you get to that point once you found out okay I want to get out of it what happened next what got you past wanting to get out and actually got you out. So 1 night I was doing, I was medicated on something, on a substance where it, when you come down off it, the levels of anxiety that you feel is off the hook. It's, imagine, you know, you're taking this huge, the feelings you get before a huge exam that determine your future career in life. And multiply that anxiety like A billion times.

That's what I felt I was feeling. And so I did not know what to do with this feeling. It was just so intense. It was 3 o'clock in the morning. That's another thing that substance did is you can't sleep.

3 o'clock in the morning and I'm in despair. I feel this anxiety and my mom always sent a Bible with me wherever I went and I looked at the Bible and I opened it and I began to read the book of Psalms And the most amazing thing started happening. As I was reading the book of Psalms, this anxiety just started dissipating. It started evaporating. And while I'm doing that, I'm thinking in my head, I'm self-reflecting, like, I can't believe this anxiety is going away while I'm reading this.

And so I'm just like, this is like a miracle, right? Like God in the midst of me doing drugs is at the same time coming to help me or there's power in this word. And that's when I began to think, man, maybe God does love me. Maybe he cares for me and he can help me get out of this. It's a really beautiful thought.

I hear this word power in contrast to helplessness. I really like the play between that. What in your mind is the definition of sin? What is sin made up of? Is it things that I do, things that I don't do, or is it something deeper?

Yeah, no, it's certainly things that we do, but I think where it comes from is is our heart. We're depraved, we're by nature, we're bent towards evil, and so for me to stop my actions I need to go to the root problem which is ultimately the core of my being as a sinful human being. That's where the problem lies. And so yeah. Do you have an example in your life where you had to deal with an action or a sin and you had to kind of work with God to get through that?

Yeah, so that's a really good question. So there were a few things I was struggling with. And you know, drugs was kind of easy to give up in that you know you can't find drugs at the convenience store it's not so accessible but I just struggle with that but and also cigarettes So there's 2 separate narratives that I can provide. I really believe that when you're overcoming, you know, you're striving or deciding to better your life and to discard some things, there's certainly some things you wanna think about that I've learned from experience. And for example, when I gave up drugs and I started reading the Bible.

So obviously now I'm studying the Bible, I've seen the power that it can have on the life, even supernatural power, if we want to call it that. And so I remember this 1 period in life or in my past where I think I quit doing the drugs for like 3 weeks. And I'm thinking, man, this is really awesome. Like I'm doing well. And so then I'm thinking, you know, I'm now I can, I need to go witness to my friend?

So I go to back to my friend's house and you know, he's he's a pot smoker. And I go there and after 3 weeks of victory, next thing you know, there I am doing drugs again. And I learned a valuable lesson that we need to cooperate with God, that God can supply us the power, but we also need to, there's a Bible verse that comes to my mind, take heed lest you fall. We should never be at a place where we're so confident that we begin to think I can do this, because as soon as we think that, Satan's ready to bring us back. And then what he does with that is he works on the head on your mind like, see you can't really do it.

And so you go through all that mental battle and struggling and he's a master at doing that. And so that's 1 thing I learned very early on is I need, it's a very practical thing, and that is I need to stay as far away from the temptation as I can. And that's not saying God doesn't have the power, but it's recognizing our weakness and being practical and really common sense about it. So it's not like you saying, oh, I need to remove myself from all the temptations and go into a monastery. Yeah, absolutely not, no.

As a practical guidelines or maybe boundaries in your life so that you can still be a witness to your friends, but not be pulled down by them. That's right. And I think the other thing we need to think about is time. You know, there's a place and a time for everything. It wasn't the place and time for me to visit my friend 3 weeks after I had quit, right?

Now, drugs are not a temptation for me. So I'm in a different place now. But at that time, it wasn't the right thing to do. So with drugs, it was, you obviously fell and then you had to kind of keep getting back up and go through a little bit of a cycle. Was there anything in your life that you didn't have to go through a cycle that just God took from you?

I wish things were that easy and I know God has a power to do that, you know, for me, and I think for most people, it's not a magical formula. It's not, you combine A with, you know, a lot of people say, memorize scripture and then pray. And So I think sometimes we get in our heads, if I follow this formula, then abracadabra, it'll lead to X, Y, and Z. And it's not, it is as simple as that, and it's not. In other words, we do need to memorize scripture.

1 I memorize is 1 Corinthians 10, verse 13. There's no temptation taking you that's come to man that he'll provide the power for us to overcome. Yes, but we also have to understand that it's a process, that there is a struggle. And I kind of see it more as a marathon. There's some days you're gonna be very motivated to run and exercise and preparation for that.

And there's some days you're just not gonna feel it and and and I think that's a mistake that many people make is they think that what God is gonna take away is the feeling and he doesn't always do that and And love and principle is most tested when you don't feel something and you do what's right anyway. And I learned that the hard way because I really felt that God was gonna take away the feeling for drugs, take away the feeling for smoking cigarettes. And when he didn't do that, I felt God was letting me down. And that wasn't the case at all. And it's kind of like eating your vegetables.

You don't feel like doing it, but there's a cognitive aspect of recognizing it's healthy for you, and then also depending on God to help you with your weaknesses. And he doesn't necessarily change your feelings, but he certainly gives you the strength, the motivation, in whatever form that may be. That's really powerful. As a young person myself, there's been different things that I've struggled with, and 1 of the thoughts that would sometimes come to me is, am I really a Christian if I'm having a struggle? How would you answer that question?

If someone is struggling time and time again with the same sin, and sometimes they have victory and sometimes they don't, what does that mean about their Christianity? That's a very complex question. When Satan came to Jesus and said, if you are the son of God, command and do these things and prove it. And Jesus never felt, he felt that he had to prove it humanly speaking. But what he did was he claimed the word of God as validation for his identity.

I think in the Christian experience, it's much the same way. Satan's going to say, you know, you're not really Christian because of X, Y, and Z. So there is a component of the validation comes from trusting in the Word of God alone as validating who I am in Christ. Now when we fall, sometimes that comes under question. At least Satan comes to us.

And that's part, that's a process that everybody has to go through. And we come to a place that we're overcoming, that we learn and grow to overcome our sin. And in the midst of that, as long as we're continuing to trust in God and seeking to surrender our lives to him and do everything we can within our power, that we can trust in the process that he, God who began the work, he'll be faithful to complete it. And no matter, regardless of where we're at in life. I think of my daughter, right?

She's 3 and a half years old. She bends the truth. And I don't think she quite recognizes how wrong it is when she tells a lie. Right? And so she'll say it with impunity.

And we're trying to instill in her mind that lying is horrible. You know, it's bad But it never changes our relate my relationship with her. She's my daughter I love her and I tell her this whether she is good 1 day or bad regardless of that, we're in this together, and I'm her father till death. And you know, you ask a very good question because in my experience, especially with smoking, it took a lot longer for me to overcome. I think we were sharing earlier how many times that I would throw out the cigarettes out the window and say, like, Lord help me, and I would throw out the cigarettes out of the car's littering.

I mean, it's horrible, but I would and you know, that very night I'm driving back to that same spot looking for the cigarettes, right? And, and then I, let's say I found it and then I'd smoke a cigarette and I'd feel this immense guilt and I'd feel horrible and terrible. I felt like I'm just an utter failure. And, you know, to be honest, looking back, I don't even know how it ended up that I just Overcame it, but I just know that that's been a long time since I smoked a cigarette And and that's kind of the mystery of it. Mm-hmm as well I like how you use the word process a little bit earlier almost like I got the picture of a journey, that as long as you are in it with God and you're heading somewhere, that's where it matters.

Yeah. How does perfection come into this? What is perfection according to the Bible? Because the Bible says, you know, like, be perfect as humans who make mistakes. How does, how do we achieve perfect?

Yeah, I don't, I don't think a person will ever reach a place, If he does, he's deluded, delusional, where you'll never reach a place in authentic Christianity where you say, man, I'm perfect. The only perfection we can claim is that which is imputed, that where Christ is our substitute, we claim him instead of ourselves as we stand before God. That's as perfect as we'll ever get. Having said that, there's also what Ellen White calls a fitness for heaven, where ultimately, when we get to heaven, we're gonna fit in because of who we decided to be down here. And God helps us to, in that process of becoming selfless, loving.

By the way, when it talks about being, be there for perfect in the book of Matthew, that's in the context of selfless love, unconditional love to those that are the hardest to love. Because even the Gentiles can love their friends. Right. We've talked a lot about how you've overcome different things that were hard and challenging for you, and then we've just been talking about that journey and the ultimate goal is trusting in Jesus for him to make us what he wants us to be. Could you walk us through what it looks like practically?

If I've got a temptation, what would, if you were facing 1 right now, what would you do? Walk us through that mental process and that prayer life. First and foremost, it helps to be very prepared to be intentional and have a game plan. And so I think steps that I would already want to have in place would be, especially if it's something I know I'm struggling with, is to have an accountability partner, someone that I know I can talk to, call. And, and, and cause sometimes when you get steeped into the, the train of sin and your mind is just going down there, you need something to kind of help break that.

And by the way, this is in addition to, you know, sometimes it just takes, you know, you drop everything you're doing and you just flat out begin praying and just crying out to God. And I know that can sound cliche, but just falling on the ground and just praying to God and wrestling with God like Jacob did, Lord, I need your help and rescue me. And or another example would be Peter, Lord save me. And I believe that God will enter that prayer. But the other thing is, as I mentioned earlier, is having an accountability partner or someone, you know, you can call a trusted friend is very important.

And of course, just like Christ did, I guess this, I know this is cliche, but he answered everything with it is written. And so going to the word of God and trusting in the word of God, and God will come to the rescue. Just clarifying there, I think, and sometimes you said earlier, we think of it as like a abracadabra, like I follow this little, and I quote a scripture verse, and whatever, I should be okay. But what I hear is it's your faith in that Bible verse, that promise. That's right.

That's transformative. Yeah. And what I meant by the abracadabra component is sometimes, because you hear testimonies up front, you know, I just prayed to God And all of a sudden the feeling was gone and I never felt it ever again for the rest of my life. And that's true for that person, maybe true. And I don't doubt that, because God can do that.

But that's not the way it was for me. And in that sense, it's not a magical formula. For me, it was, I had to wrestle, I had to struggle, sometimes I fell and it was getting back up and going back into the ditches and wrestling with God and over time God took me out. And it's not that God lacks power. You know, there's a, it's very complex.

Sin is very complex. The reasons why we fall back into sin is very complex. Satan also brings these mind games into it and says, you're already a sinner anyway. Just what will it hurt if you do it again? So what went on in my mind in just a very practical real way was I would always just fall into sin because Satan's lie to me was, well, you can just start tomorrow.

You can just start tomorrow. And I would be like, you know what, I can just start tomorrow. I can start my Christian walk tomorrow. And I found out that that was an old record that I was playing every single week. And then I was like, you know what?

You know, it starts today, like right now. And what I found was when I wrestled and struggled and sometimes it just without a sheer, seemingly even human determination, where I just said no, as I was claiming God's promises. Well, the next day, that overcoming, you know, that having done that once, It gave me the strength to overcome it easier the second day, and then the third day, and then the fifth day. That's how I got to the 3 weeks. So then you can, he has other pitfalls, but it is a day by day process for most people.

That's a really beautiful place I think to end that day by day, moment by moment, walking with Jesus and making him the center of our lives so that instead of as constantly struggling over the same things every single moment, we can have His strength transforming our lives. Thank you for coming with us and sharing about overcoming sin. We really appreciate it. It was wonderful to be here and thanks for having me on here. We are grateful for Andy M's contribution to this episode.

It is our desire that you experience the freedom of a life lived in Christ.

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GYC Beyond

17 - How to Overcome Temptation

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Parent Series

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Other Teachings in Series

01- Incorporating Evangelism into Your Life

02- How to Live a Consecrated Life

03- How to Navigate Past Brick Walls

04- Leadership and Time Management

05 - How to Have a Powerful Life of Prayer

06 - How to Have a Vibrant Devotional Life

1 more

07- How to Teach an Interesting Sabbath School Lesson

1 more

08 - Discovering Our Christian Heritage

09 - Why Christianity?

10- Why You Should Be Involved in Your Local Church

11- How to Experience Revival and Reformation

12- How to Reach Out to Refugees and Immigrants

13- How to Use Media and Art for God

14 - The Power of Sharing Your Faith

15 - How to Get Involved in Medical Missionary Work

16 - Why You Should Volunteer for GYC

17 - How to Overcome Temptation

18 - The Heart of Ministry

19 - How to Overcome an Ice Cream Addiction

20 - How to be a Part of Total Member Involvement

21 - How to Create a Social Media Ministry

22 - Coming Out Ministries: Sexual Identity & Adventism

3 more

23 - How to Live Dangerously for God

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