TEMPTATION
Quick! Where’s the Escape
Hatch?
Lee Warren
CBN.com –
No temptation has seized you except what is common
to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond
what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide
a way out so that you can stand up under it. -- 1 Corinthians
10:13
John is a thirty-eight-year-old who struggles with physical desires.
Not long ago he went on a church singles retreat during which
the group took a tour of the downtown area of the large city they
were visiting. During the tour, several provocatively dressed
women walked by and caught John’s eye.
Knowing he was surrounded by people from his church helped him
turn his head away before he began to lust for the women he’d
seen. In this particular instance, the “way of escape”
that God provided when John was tempted was John’s consciousness
of the fact that he was with people from church. He didn’t
want to lust in front of them.
If you struggle with physical desires, you may feel as if your
sex drive is abnormal and that something is wrong with you. Chances
are that you are a normal human being with a healthy sex drive.
Look back at verse 13 again. “No temptation has seized you
except what is common to man.” The temptation you are experiencing
is common to everyone. So don’t let your struggles isolate
you from the body of Christ, but rather depend on fellow believers
to help you through your struggles.
John either meets or speaks on the phone with a man from church
once a week to help build him up in Christ and keep him accountable.
It’s not a relationship of judgment when John fails but
rather one that lovingly helps keep him on track and better prepared
for the next instance when he will be tempted.
The combination of God always providing a way of escape and John
surrounding himself with Christians who love him helps him battle
his temptation to give in to physical desire.
Digging Deeper into 1 Corinthians 10:13
1. If you have a wandering eye, what are your strategies to keep
it under control?
2. What have you thought about 1 Corinthians 10:13 in the past?
3. How has God made a way of escape for you in the past as he
did for John?
4. Normally, how willing are you to look for God’s way
of escape?
5. Name one or two friends who could be built-in escape hatches
for you like John’s friends.
Excerpted from Single
Servings: 90 Devotions to Feed Your Soul by Lee Warren.
Used by permission of Fleming H. Revell, a division of Baker Publishing
Group, copyright © 2005. All rights to this material are
reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations
for retrieval, published by other media, or mirrored at other
sites without written permission from Baker Publishing Group.
Visit the publisher's Web site at www.BakerPublishingGroup.com.
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