Sights and Insights
Devotion for Aug. 30, 2022
No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it. – 1 Corinthians 10:13 (NRSV)
What do you think when you hear someone talking about a temptation? It seems to me that people tend to use it to mean something that they know they are going to do, but they feel bad about it. It might be eating that large slice of cake even though you know it’s empty calories. It could be binge-watching a show and staying up too late rather than getting enough rest. It is generally used to mean short-term pleasure rather than a healthier long-term choice. I don’t think that gets at the depth of the challenge that a temptation presents, though. A temptation is more than a minor short-sighted choice. Temptation is about recognizing our own fragility and our inability to recognize and remain focused on God at work in our lives.
When we talk about temptation, we are talking about things that lead us away from God. The best way to define temptation is that it is a false promise. That is, it is something that promises to make our life better, but it cannot actually deliver on that promise. Most advertizing is based in temptation, because it promises that we will feel better by buying some product. “Retail therapy” might work for a day, but it does not actually improve our lives. Rather, it leaves us wanting more rather than being satisfied by what we have. Addiction also plays into the temptation cycle. A person addicted to something looks to the feeling that substance gives, but that substance cannot attend to the deeper issues of life. It promises to make you feel better, but in the long run leaves you feeling worse. More than that, with addiction – whether to purchasing or to substances – more and more we give in to thinking that wholeness and happiness come from that activity. True healing, wholeness, and meaningful life come through being in tune with God and the life God wants for us. These temptations rob us of life because they cause us to trust in those false promises rather than in God’s grace. Only God’s promises are promises that we can trust to always be fulfilled. Any promise other than God’s can be a temptation.
Temptations lead to a cycle of despair. After the high of the short-term pleasure in the false promise comes the let-down. In that let-down, we risk falling into despair that our lives are unfulfilling. We can fall into despair, too, that we lack the true happiness we expect, because we were looking for it in something other than God. Despair is a temptation that can ruin us, because it can cause us to shut down and shut out the Holy Spirit. If we fail to trust the Holy Spirit to give us belief and instead trust ourselves, we will find ourselves lost. In the same way, if we despair that God could ever be gracious to us, the Holy Spirit cannot work in us. The remedy to despair is faith; faith is trusting in God rather than ourselves. It is turning ourselves over to God’s promises rather than the false ones that we are surrounded by. In Christ, God promises us healing, purpose, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit to live the richly meaningful life of love that God created for us.
In asking God to not lead us into temptation, we are calling out to God to give us faith. We are pleading with God to allow us to discern which promises are real and which ones are false. We ask God to help us believe that the grace we encounter in Christ is real. We pray that God dwell in us, making God’s name be holy to us, God’s kingdom real to us, and God’s will fulfilled in us. When those things are real in our lives, we have the real promises of God alive in us rather than being overwhelmed by false promises. The fact that we can ask God to give us this faith shows that we have already put our trust in Christ. Thus if the Holy Spirit moves us to pray these words, we already have assurance that God is already protecting us the power of temptations.