No, Not One

About a year ago, one of my accountability partners gave me a slip of paper which had a verse on it. The verse was 1 Corinthians 10:13. I was familiar with it and wow, what a powerful verse that is! It says, "No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it (NASB)."

I'll say it again: WOW! That is awesome! I know we all struggle with certain things in our Christian life such as (in all seriousness) what to eat (gluttony), what to wear that isn't provocative (lust), what movies we watch (being of the world), what we say (having clean speech), and I know we all have the problem of wanting someone else's property so we sometimes go and pirate/steal it (covetousness). These are just a few of MANY examples that we as Christians struggle with. We give the excuse of, "Oh, it is a bad habit." Who cares?! It's still sin! There is no level of sin no matter if you kill, lust, lie, or cheat it is all the same in God's eyes!

Going back to the verse, 1 Cor. 10:13 CLEARLY states that there is NOT ONE temptation that we cannot escape from! God, as the verse says, has given us the ability to escape no matter what. Once again, it boils down to the cliché Christian attitude of blaming everything on Satan and saying, "He tempted me again and I messed up." Satan is not omnipresent. He cannot be here by our side tempting us all the time. Give credit where credit is due, in a sense of course. : ) We feel that we can give Satan the credit for our failures and it makes it all better. Bunch of lazy bums we are!

Yes, we all may fall short of the glory of God but God has given us a way of escape. He has given us salvation, He has given us His word to read for protection to defend ourselves against those attacks. We must equip the shield of faith and the belt of truth to stand against the Devil's lies! The Lord has allowed us to speak to Him directly through prayer! He is never far away and yet we push Him away to make it appear, in our own lives, that He is far away, just to make another excuse.

My prayer, for you as the individual reading this, is that you will put on the full armor of God. You will not allow Satan's demonic forces to get into those "loop holes" in the armor and weaken our faith. We fight because we love the Lord. The Lord allows us to go through these trials to strengthen us, to work patience in our lives as it says in James 1. No matter if the going gets tough or it is smooth sailing have that armor on to be prepared for those battles. God will see you through those temptations to get a victory once again.

BTW, I still have that slip of paper in my Bible. : )