Month: February 2023

For forty days He was tempted by the devil. Luke 4:2

This week we begin the forty day journey known to Christians as Lent. The condensed version of the history of this event began around 230 AD when a group of Christians started fasting for the 40 hours leading up to Easter in order to prepare their hearts for this special day. Years later seven days of fasting were added, and it was called Holy Week. Around 325 AD the church officially made Lent forty days representing Jesus’ forty days of testing in the wilderness.

The Lenten journey begins with Ash Wednesday and ends in triumph on Easter Sunday. We take these forty days for self reflection, cathartic thinking, repentance, and confession. Although Ash Wednesday is never directly mentioned in the Bible, it is a celebrated event in church history.

During these forty days many people deny themselves or “give up” something that is important or meaningful to them. For example, every year I try to give up sweets for the forty days excluding Sundays, but inevitably I yield to temptation because the more I deny myself sweets, the more tempting they become!

Temptation is defined as the desire to do something, especially something wrong or unwise. It is also defined as the act of enticement to do wrong by the promise of pleasure or gain. Oscar Wilde said two things about temptation: First, “I can resist anything but temptation,” and secondly, “The best way to deal with temptation is to yield to it.” It’s much easier for me to just yield and be done with it, but that’s the easy way.

The Bible tells us in Luke chapter four, that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert where Satan tempted him “in every way” for forty days. Jesus countered every device Satan threw at him and replied to each of Satan’s temptations saying, “It is written man shall not live by bread alone”, “worship your God and serve Him only”, and “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” He never yielded to the temptations put before Him.

The devil works in such devious ways. He persuades us to do something wrong by promising us something good. He puts dessert on the restaurant menu, he makes the grass look greener on the other side of the fence, and he encourages us that we hurt no one when we lie, cheat, or steal. There’s not a day that goes by in any of our lives when we aren’t tempted in some way. Temptation comes in all kinds of packages which seem innocent enough, but sometimes have lasting consequences. We all struggle with our temptation to gossip, lie, cheat, overeat, hold grudges, be unforgiving, even steal.

So how do we deal with temptation in our lives? Obviously, I have lost many battles with this, but first, it seems to me that temptation is inevitable. No matter who we are, there isn’t a place on earth that’s free from them. Everyday presents a constant battle to avoid temptation.

Secondly, we should remember that temptation is not sent from God. The responsibility for yielding to temptation rests with each of us. Sadly, there is an epidemic in our world of not taking responsibility for our own actions or blaming others for our mistakes. Just like kindergarten kids who fight and when the teacher asks, “Who started it?” the answer from both is always, “not me!”

Next, temptation is a personal matter. Adam and Eve gave into temptation in the garden of Eden and when God confronted Eve, she was the first person to ever say, “The Devil made me do it.” The devil tempted her, but did not force her. When we yield to temptation, it’s our fault!

Lastly, temptation always seems to follow a pattern. Just like a fish, who, when a worm is dropped into the water near him can either take the bait and be caught or swim past and live to be tempted another day. That’s how temptation works with us, we have to make a choice. Satan is the best fisherman in the world because he knows our weaknesses and tempts us with things that will most likely cause us to bite!

It’s easy to make excuses for yielding to temptations and assume that no one else knows how we feel, but we need to remember that Jesus has been there. He has felt the urge to yield, and understands our weakness. Most of the things that tempt us seem harmless at the time, but the ramifications can be never ending!

Remember, the temptations that come into our life are no different from what others experience. God is faithful. He will keep the temptation from becoming so strong that we can’t stand up against it. When we are tempted, He will show us a way out so that we won’t give into it.

Maybe for Lent this year, we should “give up” temptation!

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 1 Corinthians 13:8

The holiday that emphasizes love is upon us, and everywhere we see the evidence of it with hearts, chocolates, and flowers enticing us to show our love by giving these gifts to special people in our lives!! One of the values of this time of year is that it reminds us how important it is to focus on and invest in the people we love! Relationships fade and falter when those involved don’t do that!!

The responsibility of showing love during this season seems to fall more on males than females. They are charged with remembering their loved ones with extravagant gifts, dozens of flowers, or expensive romantic dinners! It reminds me of the story that is told of a brother and sister who found a box of love notes their parents had written early in their married life. The boy said to his sister, “These are surely not the names they call each other now!”

Love changes over the years. It can take on many different forms and expand to include many different aspects of our lives. In 1973, Randy and I lived in Snellville, Georgia where he was the youth minister and I was a teacher in the county school system. We lived in a house that the church owned and allowed us to occupy. Randy attended school at Emory during the week and worked at the church all weekend. I taught all week, tutored after school, and helped him during the weekend. That year a gift for Valentine’s Day was the last thing on my mind, but when I came home after school, Randy had left me a gift, but not anything traditional. It was a bouquet of roses he had drawn on a piece of white paper with the words, “Love never fails.” It was the most special gift to me, and it remains to this day my all time favorite gift!!

There are so many different ways of showing our love in this world of today, and the word love is used for everything from a movie that we enjoy to a food that we eat, even to a team that we support and to whom we pledge allegiance. So, how do we define love and what it really means in our own lives? How do we show to the world the distinctiveness of Christian love? Burt Bacharach said it best when he wrote, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love, It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.”

Jesus is the ultimate example of love, so how can we reflect this? First, I think love has to be a priority in our lives. Love isn’t a so called “grey area” in the Bible because Jesus gave it priority of all the other words when he said, “Love the Lord you God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Every thought, response, and action needs to pass through the fine line of love or it means nothing at all.

Secondly, we must understand the importance of love! God established love as the impetus for obedience. Love fulfills the law because if we truly love every person because he or she is a person, we will not desire to hurt or violate them, thus we will never break the law. Love never fails.

Finally, we need to embody the nature of love. When we demonstrate Christian love as Jesus teaches, the world distinguishes us from the rest of the world. Jesus said “the world will know us by our love for each other” not by our agenda. It’s as though Jesus has given the world the right to judge whether or not we are His follower simply based on our love for others. The virtue of love distinguishes us as Christians.

Love values the other person, it entails the opening of one’s heart to another, and love comes at a cost. The story is told of a minister who officiated at many weddings. The nervous grooms would always ask, “How much do I owe you for doing this?” The reply was always said with a smile, “Aw, just pay me what she is worth!” The minister made a lot of money because to each man his bride was of extravagant value.

From the very beginning, God’s plan was to develop a people that reflected His character. God never loved us not because we had something to offer him, but rather because He had something to offer us. This character, this gift is love, and love never fails!

Keep you zeal, don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and inflamed. Be alert servants of the Master. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Romans 12:11-12 from The Message

It’s hard to admit, but sometimes I tend to want others to make decisions that affect me, either because I don’t care or I’m uninformed. For example, when we are going out to dinner with others and they ask where we would like to go, I most often reply, “It really doesn’t matter to me” or in other words, “I don’t care.” I have never thought of that reply as being apathetic because most of the time I really don’t care, but in reality, I guess it is a pretty lame response.

Apathy is defined as “a lack of interest, enthusiasm or concern,” or in my case, a feeling of “I don’t care.” An anonymous source is quoted as saying, “Apathy is the glove in which evil slips its hard.” Elie Wiesel says of it, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference, and the opposite of life is not death, It’s indifference.”

The sad thing about apathy is that it doesn’t just affect the apathetic person, but it can affect all those around as well. The story is told of a little mouse who peeked out of his hole one day only to see a farmer and his wife taking a mouse trap out of a bag. He ran to the chicken, the lamb, and the cow to warn them of his impending danger, but each one responded apathetically since it did not directly affect them. That night a great noise revealed that a poisonous snake had been caught in the mousetrap! The wife tried to catch it, but the snake bit the wife, and she came down with a high fever. In order to comfort her, the farmer made a delicious soup, but he needed chicken to add to the recipe, so he took his knife and killed the chicken. Neighbors came to visit and lend support, but since there was no food to serve them, the farmer slaughtered the lamb to feed them. The wife died, and the husband had to sell the cow to cover expenses. The moral here is “the next time someone tells you about a problem and you don’t think it concerns you, think twice. He who doesn’t live to serve doesn’t serve to live.”

That story brought to mind the many times we as Christians pass by an opportunity to change the world because we are apathetic. We see people in this country pulling us further and further away from its roots and heritage, but it doesn’t affect us at the moment, so we don’t speak out. The country isn’t going bad because of the wickedness of the bad, but rather because of the apathy of the good.

Most of us are guilty of depending on others to provide a blessing to those around us who could really use it! Just like forty year old Isaac who let his father send out someone else to arrange for Rebekah to be his wife, we sometimes leave it to others to arrange and provide what we should be doing ourselves! We just don’t seem to want to be bothered! We don’t care!

Spiritual apathy can be seen in churches everywhere these days! People have begun to resort to acting like “grown children” who never have reached maturity in their relationship with God. They wait for someone else to do the things they should be doing for themselves. It seems to be a problem that doesn’t concern the masses.

The worst kind of apathy is that of discernment. These are those who accept whatever gossip they might hear in the grocery store, on the news, or in a community, and rather than seeking the truth, take the words as the truth or “drink the Kool-Aid”. First Thessalonians 5:21 commands us to “prove all things” which means we are to carefully examine the words we hear and its interaction in our lives. We all need a high level of discernment as to what we read, to whom we listen, what we watch, and with whom we associate. If we think something just couldn’t be true, we should be faithful to find out the truth!

There are apathetic people all around us who have caused casualties because of their “I don’t care attitude!” It might help us all to ask ourselves, “When was the last time I was involved in letting something wrong happen because I was apathetic?” “When did I accept something as truth without proving it?” “When did I let someone else do the work I should be doing?”

The will of God isn’t for us to develop an apathetic attitude but rather to make a daily commitment for that unto which God has called us!