baiting your trap…

you can’t pray, “LORD lead us not into temptation” if at the same time, you’re flirting with temptation.  you’ve got to co-operate.  some of you are flirting with temptation in many different areas.  satan is baiting your trap.

what is it that you want in your life that you’re willing to compromise in order to get it?  a promotion?  a thrill?  confess it to GOD.  the time to deal with temptation is right at the start.  when it starts in the desire stage, nip it in the bud.

martin luther said, “we cannot keep the birds from flying over us, but we can keep them from making a nest in our hair.”  you cannot live in a temptation free world.  it’s all around you.  it’s  not a sin to be tempted.  so don’t be intimidated by it.  but it’s a sin when you begin to dwell on that temptation and think about it so that it eventually begins to form in your life and heart.

just a thought from the front porch…

life can really be fair…

so how do you recognize a schemer? (genesis 29-30) you learn something from jacob’s marriage and from his children and from his flocks. 

1.  schemers often fall victim to other schemers.  often.  why?  because you’re always looking for an angle and you find someone else looking for an angle and you get a wrong angle somehow.  you’re trying to take advantage of them and they take advantage of you.  it’s the trap of the con man. 

2.  they’re often trapped by their own schemes.  he had this great scheme to marry rachel and then to marry leah and all of a sudden he’s trapped in this family who’s in constant conflict.  

3.  schemers often take the credit that is the LORD’s.  he had all these great ideas and these blessings came his way but instead of giving GOD the credit he gave his scheme the credit. 

i wonder if jacob ever had a light dawn, where he could see himself and his problems.  he is tricked by a father into believing that an older daughter is actually a younger daughter. 

do you think he remembered when he tricked his father into believing that a younger son was an older son?  you remember that he stole his older brother’s blessing by fooling his old father that he was his older brother.  do you think that dawned on him?  they’re trapped by their own scams.

do you think that as he saw his wives fighting over him – and one night they were fighting so much they got some plants from the field they thought were aphrodisiacs and were fighting over these plants, which one would have the right plant to go in and entice jacob.  do you think as he saw them fighting over a plant that they could use to entice him to cause a birth, he might have thought of the day he used a bean soup to entice his brother out of a birthright?  

do you think that jacob as he looked into leah’s eyes and he saw as she must have felt because she was rejected by jacob, her own husband for the younger sister, do you think it dawned on him what it felt like for him as a child to look into his father’s eyes and to feel that rejection? 

we can all relate to this because we all know what it’s like to take the hurts that we felt in our own lives and whether we know it or not begin to inflict them on others – our husbands, our wives, our kids, our friends.  none of us want to do that but unless we let go of our schemes we’re doomed to doing that.  we’re doomed to the life of a schemer.  we’re doomed to a life of a jacob. 

just a thought from the front porch…