Today's Devotional

April 7, 2005

Subject:  Our Role In Temptation

James 1:13 - 14 "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:  But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed."

Matthew 4:2 - 3 "And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread."

A couple of definitions for this devotional:

Tempt - to entice to do wrong by promise of pleasure or gain

Lust - an intense longing : craving

Clearly be definition we can see that God is not into tempting us because that would go against His very nature.  He is not trying to "entice us to do wrong by promise of pleasure or gain."  However, that is exactly what Satan does, but let us look at how craftily he does it.

Jesus was the God-Man.  He was in fact God, but possessed all of the characteristics and natures of man.  He got hungry, tired and felt cold and heat just as we do.  So as Satan does with us, he waited on Christ's natural cravings to kick in and that's when he went to work on Him.  The verse says, "after He became hungry, the tempter came to Him."  

This is the way Satan works with us today.  We have natural longings and cravings.  The definition says when that longing is intense it's called lust and the scripture says that this lust is what draws us away and leads to the enticement.  An example is our longing to be loved .  Satan has seen it billions and trillions of times.  He saw it in David and sees it in me and you.  We all want to be loved.  That's part of our very nature.  When the craving for love and affection gets intense, we are ripe for Satan's enticement.  If children grow up without having that craving satisfied, it gets more intense and eventually, Satan comes up with the promise of something better.  If we don't recognize what's going on, and many don't, we are then lead down the path of sin and fall to Satan's temptation.  How did it happen?

Our cravings plus Satan's temptations will always become sin, unless, we have submitted our flesh to God's control.  You can put in all kinds of roadblocks and barriers to prevent the sin, but if God ain't at the end, you'll wind up in sin.  The longings are too intense and the lies of Satan are too great for any of us to handle on our own.  We need the power of Christ and His word to resist the tempter.   

Carlen