If there is one thing I’d like to see the grim reaper take – it’d have to be my temptation.
Ugh… But I still find that temptation is very much alive in my life.
As I have grown more spiritually mature, I do find that I am quicker to recognize the temptation and flee from it early, but I still have the desire within me to flirt with temptation for too long, allowing it to lead me to sin.
My attitudes, my thought processes, my grumbling and complaining, my desire to please me.
It doesn’t take much, and that temptation grabs hold, and I enjoy the feeling for just a bit too long, and then… blammo… sin. and guilt. and shame.
But could it possibly be different?
I recently read that through the power of God in transforming us, we can actually experience the death of temptation. That the power of temptation should be fading in our lives. I have been learning that this is true in my own life. It is not that temptation has disappeared, but as I stand strong against temptation in an area of my life today, it becomes easier to stand strong again tomorrow. And after I do it two days in a row, the third day is even easier. And so on and so on.
“True salvation should always…encourage a conscious rejection of ungodliness and lead to holier living. A profession of Christ must be accompanied by a choice of godly living.”
That is the normal pattern of the Christian life. Are you normal?
“God doesn’t measure normal in relation to the world…. When God speaks of normal, He speaks along these lines: Jesus is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. He is the most normal person ever to walk on planet Earth. You are a Christian, my child. Are you walking normally like My Son, Jesus?
“…Too often we call God’s ways confining and much too hard and tight. Why not just call them what they really are — normal? We must be fervent and anxious to become normal — as defined by Jesus, not by us.”
“Wherever the Spirit points, choose change. And above all, intercede for yourself.”
Great point. Jesus, in His moments of greatest temptation in the garden, also prayed for Himself. We should pray for God to make us more normal!
And what should we be praying for ourselves?
“Do you know what my deepest cry to God has become, the cry that burns, the one that draws sobs from my heart and tears from my eyes every time? Oh God, please don’t leave me like this. I want more of You. Please don’t leave me like this.”
(quotes from Arterburn, Stoeker, and Yorkey in Every Man’s Challenge)