Winning in the Wilderness - Our Common Problem
Some things are common to everyone, birth and death, pleasure and pain, love and loss, to mention a few. One thing stands out though as a problem common to us all and that’s temptation. For some, it’s alcohol or drugs or pornography. For others, it’s food or the desire for control. Regardless, because we have a common enemy in the devil coupled with the problem of consistently being our own worst enemy, those battles with temptation can sometimes seem unwinnable. Yes, what the great philosopher Barney Fife called the “compelsion complex” is true for many of us and the compulsions we have towards the very things that aren’t good for us are usually centered around what is in front of me at the moment and what I want in that moment.
That was also true for Jesus and not with just the three temptations that Satan presented in the wilderness. Hebrews 4.15 says that He was tempted in every way that we are, yet never folded in the face of it, not even once. You say, “Yeah but He was God.” That’s true, but He was a man too with human struggles and weaknesses and vulnerabilities just like us. So if He faced our Common Problem in temptation and came out on the other side of it unscathed, does that mean it’s possible for us to do the same thing? Believe it or not, Yes. So are the possibilities of our winning every battle we’ll ever face with temptation pretty slim? Sure they are, but the odds go way up with the right tools in the tool pouch and the right timing of how and when to put them into play. So how can I know that? How can I win when I’m in the wilderness myself with what seems like no way out? Cash in your chips on the fact that you can’t but your God can and then start pulling the tools out of the pouch.