temptation is real. it is a part of everyone of our lives. so we need to be ready for it.
james 1:14 (nrsv), but one is tempted by one's own desire, being lured and enticed by it. desire. it's an inside job.
now most desires are ok. you couldn't live without desires: a desire to eat, drink, sleep, the sexual desire, to accomplish. GOD gives us these desires. those are good desires. they are good gifts.
but any desire out of control becomes destructive. satan loves to take routine desires and turn them into runaway desires. you are consumed, obsessed by it: food, work, having fun, sex, money. legitimate desires but when they are out of control they become a problem.
now temptation is like a steel magnet. there's an inward and outward part. there's a outward circumstance but there's an inward drive, desire. if it weren't for the inward desire you wouldn't be tempted. it starts on the inside and it's often the fulfillment of a legitimate desire in the wrong way at the wrong time. it always starts with a desire.
think about your desire for security. if this deep desire to be secure becomes an obsession out of control then it could potentially kill your faith.
now we as a family have had to deal with that in our move. if we were totally fixated on security, there is no way that margaret and i and andrew and stef would have moved from vegas to long island. i mean we gave up 4 secure jobs, we gave up a huge house, we moved from a group of people who loved us, who accepted us, who needed us to a place where only 2 of us have jobs and one isn’t full time yet, to a smaller house that costs more, to a place where nobody really knows us, to do what we believe is what GOD has led us to do, living out what GOD has built us to do.
our security said no way but our faith said, GOD has called, so let’s risk it.
we in the CHRISTian world have gotten sucked up into this consumerism world, wanting more, needing more when GOD has called us to a missional world of reaching out to hurting, lost people. and our desires for getting our needs met through stuff have taken the place of getting our needs met through the mission that GOD built us to do, which is to continue what JESUS began.
let’s not be unaware of how satan works but be ready. just some thoughts here on the front porch…
2 comments:
Temptation yes is all around us all the time. It can easily make us consumed if we are not in the word or staying connected. Any human being has an impulse control and should know right from wrong, yet wether this is the case.as humans if your not bathing yourselves in CHRIST'S word it easy to get distracted and derailed from the path we say to others we are walking. Now some trips along the was are excusable. Yet if your not fully tuned on the what is expected, simply because you choose not to read or listen and just show up on Sundays for the sermon and a sense of the right to call yourself a CHRIStian then it is enevitable satans' temptations will consume and or turn you quickly.
so true amanda.
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