If you can wait 10 minutes, and not eat your cookie for 10 minutes, then we're going to take your one cookie away - and we're going to give you three cookies! So if you can just wait 10 minutes, we're going to give you three cookies; but if you can't wait 10 minutes, you can eat your one - but that's all you'll get.
So they left the room, and then they go behind one of those like mirror things and film them. They watch the behavior of these kids sitting around, and you can see that their willpower starts to break down. One kid leans over and starts smelling his cookie. One kid actually took his plate and licked his cookie - because they didn't say you couldn't lick it; they just said you couldn't eat it!
Finally, there's this moment of break-down. The one kid, the kid that's going to break first, somebody's going to break first. The kid that's going to break first picks up his cookie, and there's this collective: NOOOOO!
It's kind of like in Star Wars III, remember when Anakin becomes Darth Vader? Remember that? He becomes Darth Vader, and he's Luke's father; and Anakin is like Luke. You kind of put it together; so in Star Wars III you're going into the movie theatre, knowing that he's going to become Darth Vader. But you're sitting there, and the whole way you're like: NOOO! If you could only know how this is going to turn out, this is going to be really bad for everybody!
How many of you know decisions like this are really easy to see in other people, but very difficult to see in us? It's very easy to do! So the kid picks up his cookie and eats it; and once one kid ate his cookie, then there was a chain reaction… Other kids started eating their cookie - but some kids held on; and so at exactly the 10 minute mark, the people in charge of the study came in, and they took everybody's plate away. The plate that still had one cookie on it, they replaced it with three cookies; and the plates that had nothing on it - they got nothing.
The next day, they came in again. You would think that the kids who could not wait the first day, when they saw the three cookies come out, you would think the second day that they would wait - because they know three cookies are coming out. They can trust who's in charge, to do, what they say they were going to do; but what they actually found is: over the course of 21 days, that the kids who ate the cookie on day #1, kept eating the cookie every subsequent day.
Every subsequent day, they ate it quicker, to the point that by day #21, the kids who ate the cookie on day #1, actually as soon as the cookie went down, they just ate it. They didn't even give it a go; and the kids who waited on day #1, actually by day #21 found it very easy to not eat their cookie - found it very easy!
What the psychological study found, over 30 years was this: that a 6-year-olds ability to delay gratification was directly correlated to that same 6-year-olds ability to delay gratification at 36.
Now before you panic - I guess there's always Jesus! How many of you realise that a 6-year-old not being able to delay gratification, is one cookie instead of three; but a 36-year-old not being able to delay gratification - that's lost employment; that's buying huge items that you can't afford, with money you don't have, to impress people you don't like. That's huge ramifications! That's broken relationships. That's a spoiled brat, who just, if he can't get his way, runs every time.
How many of you realise that sin/temptation - there's just always more than meets the eye? It's just always bigger than what it looks.
I want to talk to you the rest of the session about Temptation and Trust; because temptation is one of those topics that leaders have to deal with; and it's also one of those topics that, if you're here tonight, and you've been saved for 40 years - you deal with temptation.
If I took a group of people, and I put someone who's been saved 40 years; someone who's been saved 30; someone who's been saved 20; someone who's been saved 10; someone who's been saved 10 minutes; and someone who doesn't even know who God is; if I put them in a study group, and I said: your topic for tonight is temptation - everybody would have a story to tell. It's not something that's limited to just a few people. It brings us all into one boat.