But God (6)

No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but 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 (I Corinthians 10:13, NKJV).

Now doesn’t that bolster your faith? We all face temptation. Often it seems more than we can bear. But God assures us that it is not. Why? Because He is always with us. “I am with you always, even to the end of the age,” Jesus said (Matthew 28:20, NKJV). 

We also know that Jesus understands temptation. “Seeing that we have a great High Priest who has entered the inmost Heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to our faith. For we have no superhuman High Priest to whom our weaknesses are unintelligible—he himself has shared fully in all our experience of temptation, except that he never sinned” (Hebrews 4:15, J. B. Phillips).

We are weak, but God is strong. We are inconsistent, but God is consistently faithful. We do not always follow through on our promises, but God does. So gird yourself with the armor that God supplies and be strong to face the tempter. Isn’t His breastplate of righteousness, His shield of faith, His helmet of salvation, His sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:14-16) enough to equip us for victory?

It’s easy to make excuses for failure, but God isn’t satisfied with those. We really don’t have a reason to doubt His promises. When He says that He will provide a way of escape, He means it. Let’s gird our minds with Scripture. Let’s wield that sword as Jesus did when He was tempted in the wilderness by Satan (Luke 4). Only then will we be successful in resisting the attractive enticements of sin.

We may not be tempted to kill or steal or bow down to idols. But Jesus took the commandments beyond their obvious reference to outward action. He spoke about motive and heart attitude. You can hide those from people, but God sees our hearts. Let’s pray with the psalmist: “How can I ever know what sins are lurking in my heart? Cleanse me from these hidden faults. And keep me from deliberate wrongs; help me to stop doing them” (Psalm 19:12-13, The Living Bible).

Then this Psalm closes with one of my favorite Scriptural prayers: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer” (Psalm 19:14). Now doesn’t that cover all the bases? It leaves no room for hate or greed or selfishness or irreverence of any kind. How are you doing?

Other blogs in the “But God” series:
But God (1) | But God (2) | But God (3) | But God (4) | But God (5) | But God (6) | But God (7) | But God (8) | But God (9) | But God (10)