CHAPTER 3
Confronting Temptations
Be thoroughly acquainted with your temptations
and the things that may corrupt you, especially
those temptations that either your company or
your business will lay before you.
RICHARD BAXTERToday temptations massage our every move. Whether on televi-
sion or movies, magazines or websites, the messages invite us to
spend and indulge. Stated or suggestive, the essential lure is clear:
Do what you want to do. You deserve it. Indulge the fantasy.
Compelling images, voices, and opportunities tempt us to
open our wallets, minds, and bodies to what seem like natural
desires but which could destroy our ability to lead. We’re well
aware of leaders who lost it all by giving in to the appeal of greed,
sex, ego, or success shortcuts. Yet still, temptations beckon us....
When Billy Graham was shaping his leadership principles and
commitments, many of the temptations were, perhaps, less overt,
less “in-your-face” than they are today. Yet the power of the
temptations was not any less, and they were in essence the same
ones we face now.
Billy had to resist the enticements that confront the traveling
man. He knew of many who did not. Billy saw how spiritual
enthusiasm did not make you immune to greed, pride, lust, and
ambition. Indeed spiritual passion and more earthly passions often
possess the same soul. During his years as a field representative for
Youth for Christ in the mid-1940s, Billy traveled constantly,