If I were the devil I'd want you so focused, so consumed with fighting off sexual temptations, inappropriate desires and ungodly conversations. While significant, because I'm such a good liar, I would concede to you that such resistance is the real battle and highly beneficial.
But even your gains and victories in these will have only brought you to zero. That's just where I want you - all the way up to zero.

I would foster the notion within you that your resistance to, and abstention from, those temptations is the pinnacle of your success in the walk of faith.

At every turn I would reinforce your present belief that you are stuck with my nature and the new nature of life in Christ, and must duke it out until your dying breath.

The best that you can hope for, then, is to keep my dark impulses under wraps and know that when you screw up, Jesus is kind and gracious to forgive you. Again, back up to zero.

At the last, when face-to-face with the Lord, you may throw this singular trophy at His feet; that one inscribed on your tombstone: "See Lord, I never went to jail."

No advancement in God's kingdom comes without self denial and it's complementary behavior: taking up your cross.

At all cost, I must stop you from denying your coexistence with condemnation, and your refusal to embrace the glorious freedom you have as a child of God, the inexhaustible power of His presence within you, and the immeasurable authority you have to accomplish His purposes in the here and the now.

I will incessantly thwart your awareness of what Jesus meant when He said; deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me . . .

Follow Me meant, pursue the full access to all that the Father gave His beloved Son in the inexhaustible inheritance of an Almighty Father.

OK, enough of what the devil wants.

Consider my humble exhortation:

Deny every inclination of self-sabotage: 'I'm unworthy, undeserving . . . my sins and evil desires disqualify me. That what I have squandered trumps His empowering grace to elevate and restore me. Have none of it! I like what Bill Johnson frequently says, 'I cannot afford to have a thought in my head about me, that Jesus does not have in His head about me.'

Having denied self and taken up your cross in that manner, now follow Jesus as He embraced the words of our Father:

Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart,
for I am called by your name,
O Lord, God of hosts. Jer 15:16

Persist in following Jesus by taking to yourself the promise:
You are always with Me, and all I have is Yours.