You may be familiar with the verse in I Corinthians 10:13 that says, "God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it." That is a powerful thought, that God makes an escape route for us; that He is personally involved in our lives that much. And as great as that is, I believe there is an even more powerful opportunity for us. Here goes:
In the Lord's prayer in Matthew 6:13, Jesus taught us to pray, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one." I am convinced for two reasons that this means that God will take us away from temptation before it ever occurs, if only we ask Him to do so. The two ways are that I understand the Bible to say that, and secondly I have seen it work too many times in my life. It works! Notice this passage in Jude 24. "Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless in the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, To God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen!!!" God can keep us from stumbling. The secret is to want to be kept from stumbling and then to pray about it. That is why Jesus taught us to pray, "lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one." As I said at the beginning of this treatise, it is nice that we have a way of escape, but even better that He will "deliver us."
I will have to admit that there have been times and circumstances in my life when I didn't want the temptation to be removed before it ever appeared. But especially in the last few years I have prayed for deliverance and gotten it. If I saw a particular temptation coming, and often we can see ahead to a potential problem, I would ask God to just remove it. And amazingly, He took it away. I didn't even have to rely on my strength or on God's strength. It just disappeared.
God communicates with us through His word, the Bible, and He affects our lives in that way. But He also takes a direct role in our lives if only we will have complete faith in Him and if we will but ask Him. As Jude says, He will "keep you from stumbling, and present you faultless..." Praise be to God!
Thank you for reading. See you next week.
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Shortcuts and Fences --
ReplyDeleteAndy Stanley (son of Charles Stanley) was my pastor at 1st Baptist Church of Atlanta for years and tells the following story.
Charles Stanley's 1st pastor position was in Bartow, Florida when Andy was a kid. Andy's best friend lived right behind his house but there was a cattle pasture between the houses. In climbing over the fence and going through the pasture, Andy could get to his friend's house very quickly. Walking around the fence and not going through the pasture, would take a long time (in a kid's opinion).
When Andy's Dad told him not to jump the fence for the shortcut because of the danger of bulls, Andy was resentful of his Dad -- that his Dad was trying to "control him", tell him what to do, take away his freedom. So, Andy continued to take the shortcut -- After all, he had done this probably hundreds of times and nothing bad had happened.
One day, Andy was attacked by a bull and had to go to the E.R.
Andy's point of the story is that fences are there to protect us, not to control us or take away our freedom.
In each of our personal lives (or in so many stories in the Bible like with Jonah) we get in trouble by taking shortcuts or doing things that we know we shouldn't do -- always rationalizing our actions until the "bulls appear in our lives".
One way of dealing with this is to lead a simple life and to be to be somewhat of a hermit by rarely putting yourself at risk -- not trusting in yourself to control your flesh.
But as Mike talks about in today's lesson, the deeper way is to trust in Jesus Christ to exercise "good judgment" in our actions -- not taking shortcuts or jumping fences going places we should not go. But, this is sometimes hard to do isn't it? Not everything in our decision making is clear as either black or white -- with a lot of gray (usually caused by our emotional flesh which clouds our judgment).
Amen, and boy do I know about shortcuts and bulls (not in a farming sense)!
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