Standing Strong In Time Of Testing
Bible Study
The Key to Life
Reflections on the Lord's Prayer
Object:
Jesus prayed, "Lead us not into temptation." "Let us not fall in time of testing." All of us are tested again and again in life situations. The presence of Christ enables us to win and not to be crushed.
In the play Desire Under The Elms by Eugene O'Neill, Peter and Simeon, two sons of the old New England farmer, coveted the farm and were wishing that the old man would die. Eben, the half brother, coveted the farm and was scheming to take over the inheritance from the brothers. The old man married a young bride. Eben coveted his father's bride. Avie, the bride, coveted Eben. A baby was born. In the conflict arising out of this confusion of desire, Avie killed her child, and as she and Eben were being led away by the sheriff, the sheriff remarked: "What a beautiful farm; I wish I owned it."
This play frightened me: I could see how wrong desire could lead anybody into ultimate destruction. All of us walk near the edge of darkness. Temptation is desire -- desire of that which is basically undesirable. All of life is a testing process. God does not tempt us; we are tempted by the devil. God allows us to be tempted in our growth process. Jesus was led into the wilderness by the Spirit; he was tempted by Satan. He responded to the spirit of God in his choices. The devil left him; the angels ministered unto him. And so with us, if we have faith.
Eugene O'Neill speaks to us in the play Long Day's Journey Into Night. One of his characters expresses this sense of helplessness as he faces life:
None of us can help the things that life has done to us. They're done before you realize it, and once they are done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you'd like to be, and you've lost your true self forever.
I don't believe this. Christians do not buy this. Jesus was suggesting that a fall before wrong desire is not inevitable when he asked his disciples to pray, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
Yet the problem is perplexing. "Why doesn't the Lord do away with the devil?" asked a high school student. "And why are we plagued by temptation and sin and destruction generation after generation?" The answers are not easy but we do get glimpses of insight. All of life is testing, a preparation, for the next step in life, and a final testing for the eternal. In life God is preparing us for the eternal. We have to make choices and God helps us if we are open to His help. Christ is seeking to lift us up, not drag us down.
God, Himself, never tempts us. He never draws toward the evil; He never pulls us away from Himself. But God allows temptation. He created us to be free persons; therefore He has to allow us to make free choices. In every choice there is a built-in temptation: a temptation to take the short-cut; the easy way; the quick way; the lesser good; the way of selfishness, of greed; the temptation to dodge the choice. This is the way life is. And here God discovers those worthy to be His children. "God is there all the time." He forgives us; He pulls for us; He saves us. This is the proving ground of character and soul.
I had an unusual experience one morning when I was only half awake. I began to see and understand a spiritual reality. God loves me and forgives me. I am a new person by His gift. Christ said, "Come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). I began to feel that rest. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him might not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). Jesus died for my sins. The cross guarantees my forgiveness. But I have to accept it.
I remember the first night that I realized that "if I die tonight I will be with God." All fear was gone. There was no dread anywhere. I was free. Nothing could hurt me. I felt all this. I knew all this. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (Romans 8:1). I was forgiven now and for eternity. The burden was gone. I wasn't scared anymore. I began to feel the love of God.
I wasn't saved by faith; I was saved by grace -- saved by the love and mercy of God in Christ. Saved by grace as I began to trust Christ, his cross, and his resurrection. The faith, the trust opened the doors of grace and the gift of peace was given. I was a new person. Now I began to grow by the power of this love and grace. I was pulled toward Christ; I began to want what he wanted for me. He began to indwell me. I could hardly believe it. He gave me power to love and to serve. Whatever Christ is doing for me and in me, he can do for you. Christ said: "And he that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out" (John 6:37). Christ loves me; he loves you. Trust him. Let the miracle happen. He gives it to us. After the resurrection he said to his disciples and to all of us: "Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid" (John 14:27). By faith accept this. Realizing all this, let us be alert. The testing is real: we can fall, but we do not have to fall. Anatole France once wrote about the conversation between God and Satan in which God was reprimanding Satan for destroying a lovely girl. God asked Satan: "How could you destroy someone so lovely?" And Satan responded: "She came onto my grounds." We should not tempt temptation. Let us be alert to the traps of evil. (Sustain us in the time of temptation, O God.)
Recently there was a person in my study who had suffered a great tragedy which almost unseated her life. She was asking: "What is meaning? Is there any meaning? Does life make sense?" Looking at her particular moment of life and tragedy out of context, nothing makes sense. But then you begin to see it in larger context, out of the wholeness of life, and you catch a glimpse of what is going on. God is building people, people who are free to choose, free to become great people. But you cannot be free to become great unless you are also free to become small. God cannot make you a great person -- you would only be a robot. You must become great through your choices, by His help. The greatness is in your responses to the conflicts and responsibilities of life. God is shaping us through internal and external encounter. This is tough. But God is there all the time -- helping us, guiding us, if we are open to His Presence.
Stanley Jones tells the story of a young man who announced to his father and mother that he was leaving home: "I can't stand any longer Mother's piety and Father's strictness." The next morning before daylight, the father heard his son's footsteps on the stairs. He met the boy at the foot of the stairs and said: "Son, your mother and I haven't slept any last night. We have been thinking it over and we have concluded that there must be something wrong with us to make you want to leave home. I came to ask your forgiveness." The boy broke down and said: "Dad, it's not in you and Mother -- it's in me. I'm all wrong. Forgive me." In this encounter which could have ended in tragedy, the father opened a door, the boy responded and entered, and both of them became great. This is the terrible, risky way in which life fashions persons. It happens in encounter and response.
If the devil came at you with a pitchfork, you would run. He has better sense. He comes at you offering something you want -- but it has a hook in it. And he traps you. There are a lot of places you cannot go into and come out the same. It's like the high school group which was being led down into a coal mine. One of the girls had on a beautiful white dress. She asked the old miner who guided them: "Can I wear this white dress down into the mine?" He answered, "Yes, you can wear a white frock down into the mine. But there will be considerable to keep you from wearing one back." Going willfully into evil situations has a way of robbing all of us. Help us to stand strong in times of testing.
Anything can break down an uncommitted mind. Robert Frost writes: "Three foggy mornings and one rainy day will rot the best birch fence a man can build." No matter how good the fence, birch cannot withstand the weather. Without commitment anything can rot you, and it will.
Dag Hammarskjold was a dedicated man, and his dedication sustained him: "For all that has been -- thanks! To all that shall be -- yes!" Again he writes: "Those I do not know but whose I am." This unique spiritual strength sustained him for great, unique world leadership. To move in this direction we might pray: "Sustain us in temptation. Let us not fall under pressure."
There are terrific pressures today on all of us and especially on youth. This demands a dedication that some of us do not have. As Mason Williams puts it: "Some people already think like New York City looks"; or, in other words, this is a day that is "dynamiting brain cells... putting through changes!" It is a day of sponsored temptation. Lust is constantly promoted through multimedia. Alcoholism is one of our greatest problems, and yet, it is promoted night and day by the most powerful communications media. As someone put it: "Nothing is worse than the devil except an educated devil." This is the kind of encounter that humanity is engaged in. The running battle goes on and on. Much of contemporary advertising is sophisticated temptation. It is effective in dragging us down. We are so blind that we cannot see the wolf under the sheep's clothing.
Discerning persons ought to be able to tell the difference between "the changing times" and moral breakdown. When a twelve-year-old boy holds a loaded pistol to the head of a school buddy, and a fourteen-year-old boy rapes a baby girl he is supposed to be caring for, we ought to be shocked awake to what is going on. Are we on the side of evil supporting temptation? Our own children are being destroyed. Many seeds of evil are floated premeditatively on the stream of so-called progress.
The fact that many fine youth are being "hooked" on drugs is a frightening thing. It scares us when we realize that a young person can sell his or her highest dreams for a few moments of wild excitement. "A cracked conscience opens the path to death." Out of necessity parents and youth must open a new dialogue and uncover life as it really is. Parents and youth must think together, working squarely with each other on the drug problem, agonizing together for life's sake. Is this what they really want? This could bring parents and youth close together once more -- or we are dead!
Bishop Hazen Werner tells of a hurricane that swept New England in which trees that had stood for generations against all storms toppled before the wind. He discovered the reason: it had rained solidly for fifty hours before the winds came. The water infiltrated the soil deeply. There was no firm anchorage left, and the great trees fell. Is that what we have done to our youth in our contemporary careless living? Through multimedia, night and day without ceasing, the moral anchorage has been infiltrated. The moral rootage does not exist any longer. We are at sea in a great storm. This is the way the devil likes it. According to C.S. Lewis' Screwtape: "The safest road to hell is the gentle slope, the gradual one -- soft under foot, without sudden turns, without sign posts, without milestones." This is where we are. God help us.
The forces of evil would like to possess you without your knowing that you are possessed. Evil never gives you a fair break. It talks of "tolerance." It suggests that you are "only human." It whispers that you cannot expect to be "perfect." Finally you are maneuvered into changing your convictions, so that "the bad tastes good," and you are hooked.
Once more we must recognize evil for what it is. We must accept certain guidelines for meaningful living. Elizabeth Barrett Browning confessed: "God came to me, marked the place, and said: 'Henceforth keep within this line.' " God has had to speak thus with me again and again, and I thank God for it. He is ever clearing up the blind spots; He is ever sensitizing the "numb patches on my conscience." Guidelines are important in encounter. Yielding to temptation is an emotional response to evil; yielding to righteousness is an emotional response to God.
Once life presented a simple crossroads pattern of good and evil, and you made your choice. You turned left or right on a well-marked road, and you knew where you were going. I have known men who say they are going to hell. That is now their choice. In the complex social relations of today, we are confronted with cloverleaf after cloverleaf of choices, with confused approaches and complex exits, until in desperation we cry out: "O God, I don't want to want what I want to want!" He hears us and He helps us. Where temptation abounds, "the grace of God much more abounds." He wants to help us, and He is fully able to help us.
Evil must be recognized for what it is; it must be taken seriously. Really smart people are not taken in by evil; they are alert to Satan's set-up. The encounter is eternally real, and the battle goes on within each of us. "Hell is the picture of an eternal possibility within the heart of man." But it is comforting to know that God fights harder for us than evil fights against us. Trust God; He will pull you through.
Jesus was tempted even as we are tempted. He touched all the life situations that we have to touch. He was constantly in encounter. The secret of his strength was that as one side of his life touched difficult life situations, the other side of his life touched God. That could be the secret of our victory, and the victory of our youth: one side of life touching the world, the other side of life touching Christ. Without this, we won't make it, and our youth will continue to be destroyed. It's rough out there. We parents must fight side by side with our youth, or we are lost.
"Who will deliver from the body of this death?" Evil sets up a chain reaction of destruction; God sets up a chain reaction of redemption. We yield to temptation, or we yield to Christ, and yielding to Christ in life's encounter, the angels will minister unto us. "He is able to keep us from falling."
Stanley Jones tells a simple story of a little girl describing her conversion: "I heard a knock on the door, and I opened it. Jesus was there. I said, 'Come in,' and He did. There was another knock on the door, and I asked Jesus if He would go to the door. He did. It was Satan. And Satan said: 'Excuse me, I must have the wrong house.' "
"Lead us not into temptation."
Let us not fall in life's testing!
In the play Desire Under The Elms by Eugene O'Neill, Peter and Simeon, two sons of the old New England farmer, coveted the farm and were wishing that the old man would die. Eben, the half brother, coveted the farm and was scheming to take over the inheritance from the brothers. The old man married a young bride. Eben coveted his father's bride. Avie, the bride, coveted Eben. A baby was born. In the conflict arising out of this confusion of desire, Avie killed her child, and as she and Eben were being led away by the sheriff, the sheriff remarked: "What a beautiful farm; I wish I owned it."
This play frightened me: I could see how wrong desire could lead anybody into ultimate destruction. All of us walk near the edge of darkness. Temptation is desire -- desire of that which is basically undesirable. All of life is a testing process. God does not tempt us; we are tempted by the devil. God allows us to be tempted in our growth process. Jesus was led into the wilderness by the Spirit; he was tempted by Satan. He responded to the spirit of God in his choices. The devil left him; the angels ministered unto him. And so with us, if we have faith.
Eugene O'Neill speaks to us in the play Long Day's Journey Into Night. One of his characters expresses this sense of helplessness as he faces life:
None of us can help the things that life has done to us. They're done before you realize it, and once they are done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you'd like to be, and you've lost your true self forever.
I don't believe this. Christians do not buy this. Jesus was suggesting that a fall before wrong desire is not inevitable when he asked his disciples to pray, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
Yet the problem is perplexing. "Why doesn't the Lord do away with the devil?" asked a high school student. "And why are we plagued by temptation and sin and destruction generation after generation?" The answers are not easy but we do get glimpses of insight. All of life is testing, a preparation, for the next step in life, and a final testing for the eternal. In life God is preparing us for the eternal. We have to make choices and God helps us if we are open to His help. Christ is seeking to lift us up, not drag us down.
God, Himself, never tempts us. He never draws toward the evil; He never pulls us away from Himself. But God allows temptation. He created us to be free persons; therefore He has to allow us to make free choices. In every choice there is a built-in temptation: a temptation to take the short-cut; the easy way; the quick way; the lesser good; the way of selfishness, of greed; the temptation to dodge the choice. This is the way life is. And here God discovers those worthy to be His children. "God is there all the time." He forgives us; He pulls for us; He saves us. This is the proving ground of character and soul.
I had an unusual experience one morning when I was only half awake. I began to see and understand a spiritual reality. God loves me and forgives me. I am a new person by His gift. Christ said, "Come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). I began to feel that rest. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him might not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). Jesus died for my sins. The cross guarantees my forgiveness. But I have to accept it.
I remember the first night that I realized that "if I die tonight I will be with God." All fear was gone. There was no dread anywhere. I was free. Nothing could hurt me. I felt all this. I knew all this. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (Romans 8:1). I was forgiven now and for eternity. The burden was gone. I wasn't scared anymore. I began to feel the love of God.
I wasn't saved by faith; I was saved by grace -- saved by the love and mercy of God in Christ. Saved by grace as I began to trust Christ, his cross, and his resurrection. The faith, the trust opened the doors of grace and the gift of peace was given. I was a new person. Now I began to grow by the power of this love and grace. I was pulled toward Christ; I began to want what he wanted for me. He began to indwell me. I could hardly believe it. He gave me power to love and to serve. Whatever Christ is doing for me and in me, he can do for you. Christ said: "And he that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out" (John 6:37). Christ loves me; he loves you. Trust him. Let the miracle happen. He gives it to us. After the resurrection he said to his disciples and to all of us: "Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid" (John 14:27). By faith accept this. Realizing all this, let us be alert. The testing is real: we can fall, but we do not have to fall. Anatole France once wrote about the conversation between God and Satan in which God was reprimanding Satan for destroying a lovely girl. God asked Satan: "How could you destroy someone so lovely?" And Satan responded: "She came onto my grounds." We should not tempt temptation. Let us be alert to the traps of evil. (Sustain us in the time of temptation, O God.)
Recently there was a person in my study who had suffered a great tragedy which almost unseated her life. She was asking: "What is meaning? Is there any meaning? Does life make sense?" Looking at her particular moment of life and tragedy out of context, nothing makes sense. But then you begin to see it in larger context, out of the wholeness of life, and you catch a glimpse of what is going on. God is building people, people who are free to choose, free to become great people. But you cannot be free to become great unless you are also free to become small. God cannot make you a great person -- you would only be a robot. You must become great through your choices, by His help. The greatness is in your responses to the conflicts and responsibilities of life. God is shaping us through internal and external encounter. This is tough. But God is there all the time -- helping us, guiding us, if we are open to His Presence.
Stanley Jones tells the story of a young man who announced to his father and mother that he was leaving home: "I can't stand any longer Mother's piety and Father's strictness." The next morning before daylight, the father heard his son's footsteps on the stairs. He met the boy at the foot of the stairs and said: "Son, your mother and I haven't slept any last night. We have been thinking it over and we have concluded that there must be something wrong with us to make you want to leave home. I came to ask your forgiveness." The boy broke down and said: "Dad, it's not in you and Mother -- it's in me. I'm all wrong. Forgive me." In this encounter which could have ended in tragedy, the father opened a door, the boy responded and entered, and both of them became great. This is the terrible, risky way in which life fashions persons. It happens in encounter and response.
If the devil came at you with a pitchfork, you would run. He has better sense. He comes at you offering something you want -- but it has a hook in it. And he traps you. There are a lot of places you cannot go into and come out the same. It's like the high school group which was being led down into a coal mine. One of the girls had on a beautiful white dress. She asked the old miner who guided them: "Can I wear this white dress down into the mine?" He answered, "Yes, you can wear a white frock down into the mine. But there will be considerable to keep you from wearing one back." Going willfully into evil situations has a way of robbing all of us. Help us to stand strong in times of testing.
Anything can break down an uncommitted mind. Robert Frost writes: "Three foggy mornings and one rainy day will rot the best birch fence a man can build." No matter how good the fence, birch cannot withstand the weather. Without commitment anything can rot you, and it will.
Dag Hammarskjold was a dedicated man, and his dedication sustained him: "For all that has been -- thanks! To all that shall be -- yes!" Again he writes: "Those I do not know but whose I am." This unique spiritual strength sustained him for great, unique world leadership. To move in this direction we might pray: "Sustain us in temptation. Let us not fall under pressure."
There are terrific pressures today on all of us and especially on youth. This demands a dedication that some of us do not have. As Mason Williams puts it: "Some people already think like New York City looks"; or, in other words, this is a day that is "dynamiting brain cells... putting through changes!" It is a day of sponsored temptation. Lust is constantly promoted through multimedia. Alcoholism is one of our greatest problems, and yet, it is promoted night and day by the most powerful communications media. As someone put it: "Nothing is worse than the devil except an educated devil." This is the kind of encounter that humanity is engaged in. The running battle goes on and on. Much of contemporary advertising is sophisticated temptation. It is effective in dragging us down. We are so blind that we cannot see the wolf under the sheep's clothing.
Discerning persons ought to be able to tell the difference between "the changing times" and moral breakdown. When a twelve-year-old boy holds a loaded pistol to the head of a school buddy, and a fourteen-year-old boy rapes a baby girl he is supposed to be caring for, we ought to be shocked awake to what is going on. Are we on the side of evil supporting temptation? Our own children are being destroyed. Many seeds of evil are floated premeditatively on the stream of so-called progress.
The fact that many fine youth are being "hooked" on drugs is a frightening thing. It scares us when we realize that a young person can sell his or her highest dreams for a few moments of wild excitement. "A cracked conscience opens the path to death." Out of necessity parents and youth must open a new dialogue and uncover life as it really is. Parents and youth must think together, working squarely with each other on the drug problem, agonizing together for life's sake. Is this what they really want? This could bring parents and youth close together once more -- or we are dead!
Bishop Hazen Werner tells of a hurricane that swept New England in which trees that had stood for generations against all storms toppled before the wind. He discovered the reason: it had rained solidly for fifty hours before the winds came. The water infiltrated the soil deeply. There was no firm anchorage left, and the great trees fell. Is that what we have done to our youth in our contemporary careless living? Through multimedia, night and day without ceasing, the moral anchorage has been infiltrated. The moral rootage does not exist any longer. We are at sea in a great storm. This is the way the devil likes it. According to C.S. Lewis' Screwtape: "The safest road to hell is the gentle slope, the gradual one -- soft under foot, without sudden turns, without sign posts, without milestones." This is where we are. God help us.
The forces of evil would like to possess you without your knowing that you are possessed. Evil never gives you a fair break. It talks of "tolerance." It suggests that you are "only human." It whispers that you cannot expect to be "perfect." Finally you are maneuvered into changing your convictions, so that "the bad tastes good," and you are hooked.
Once more we must recognize evil for what it is. We must accept certain guidelines for meaningful living. Elizabeth Barrett Browning confessed: "God came to me, marked the place, and said: 'Henceforth keep within this line.' " God has had to speak thus with me again and again, and I thank God for it. He is ever clearing up the blind spots; He is ever sensitizing the "numb patches on my conscience." Guidelines are important in encounter. Yielding to temptation is an emotional response to evil; yielding to righteousness is an emotional response to God.
Once life presented a simple crossroads pattern of good and evil, and you made your choice. You turned left or right on a well-marked road, and you knew where you were going. I have known men who say they are going to hell. That is now their choice. In the complex social relations of today, we are confronted with cloverleaf after cloverleaf of choices, with confused approaches and complex exits, until in desperation we cry out: "O God, I don't want to want what I want to want!" He hears us and He helps us. Where temptation abounds, "the grace of God much more abounds." He wants to help us, and He is fully able to help us.
Evil must be recognized for what it is; it must be taken seriously. Really smart people are not taken in by evil; they are alert to Satan's set-up. The encounter is eternally real, and the battle goes on within each of us. "Hell is the picture of an eternal possibility within the heart of man." But it is comforting to know that God fights harder for us than evil fights against us. Trust God; He will pull you through.
Jesus was tempted even as we are tempted. He touched all the life situations that we have to touch. He was constantly in encounter. The secret of his strength was that as one side of his life touched difficult life situations, the other side of his life touched God. That could be the secret of our victory, and the victory of our youth: one side of life touching the world, the other side of life touching Christ. Without this, we won't make it, and our youth will continue to be destroyed. It's rough out there. We parents must fight side by side with our youth, or we are lost.
"Who will deliver from the body of this death?" Evil sets up a chain reaction of destruction; God sets up a chain reaction of redemption. We yield to temptation, or we yield to Christ, and yielding to Christ in life's encounter, the angels will minister unto us. "He is able to keep us from falling."
Stanley Jones tells a simple story of a little girl describing her conversion: "I heard a knock on the door, and I opened it. Jesus was there. I said, 'Come in,' and He did. There was another knock on the door, and I asked Jesus if He would go to the door. He did. It was Satan. And Satan said: 'Excuse me, I must have the wrong house.' "
"Lead us not into temptation."
Let us not fall in life's testing!
