What's the good of temptation?

1 Cor 10:13 No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

So today we talk about temptation (hence the picture of one of mine).

Something Chambers wrote made me stop and go, "huh?" I am finding that is pretty a common reaction. I think he had a much higher way of thinking than me...making me wonder about how God has an even higher way of thinking than Chambers ever had. A lot of times I think, "Wow, I never would have thought of that." So bring it, God!

Many of us, however, suffer from temptations from which we have no business to suffer, simply because we have refused to let God lift us to a higher plane where we could suffer temptations of another order.

What in the world? You mean, I should be striving to get to a place where the temptations are totally different-like more academically challenging (in a Christian sense of course)-than the "lowly" ones I suffer from now? Yep! According to Chambers: each person's temptations fit their particular disposition. Temptations come from the inside of a person. What a person possesses in his/her personality, determines what he/she is tempted by on the outside. This totally makes sense.

I see it in the small children I work with. At school, we make the children line up to check out their books and then line up to go back to their classrooms. At this age (grades k-2), temptation abounds to be first. Budging in line is very prevalent. We are constantly telling the children that they need to go to the end of the line. As adults, most of us are not really tempted by that. Although standing in line and waiting our turn can be an inconvenience, most of us get at the end of the line without too much of a problem. We have matured!

So what about in other areas of our lives? Shouldn't we be letting go of some of the petty temptations that throng us daily? How does this come about? By being changed on the inside!

Also, we should remember that temptation is common to man. It's normal. Never think that you are being tempted more than another. We will never escape from it. The enemy knows who we are and exactly which buttons to push. He will keep trying it...every day!

God does not save us from temptations; he succours us in the midst of them.

From Dictionary.com
succour (British spelling)
succor (American spelling): to help or relieve

photo by paco.esteban, creative commons flickr