Sometimes I can get really down. I think, “No one likes me. I don’t have any real friends. I’m just too weird and talk too much and think way too highly of myself. No wonder no one wants to be my friend. I’m pathetic.”
I call it feeling lonely.
But then God talks to me. He shows me that what I’m feeling isn’t just loneliness. It’s pride. I want to be popular. I want to be well thought of. I want people to love me.
If that’s not pride, then I don’t know what is.
After He shows me my sin, God calls me to repentance. He tells me to get off my high horse and come down where I ought to be. He tells me I am forgiven. He tells me He loves me. He tells me its okay. He’s made it all okay. Jesus has paid for all my shortcomings. Even my vanity and my pride.
Then He tells me…
Then He tells me…
Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.
Worship the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
Know that the LORD is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Psalm 100: 1-3
This morning as I was praying about all these things I heard the following on my Christian Radio station. It’s pretty deep stuff, but I think I understood most of it. It’s by Oswald Chambers from this webpage:
No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man . . .
1 Corinthians 10:13
1 Corinthians 10:13
The word temptation has come to mean something bad to us today, but we tend to use the word in the wrong way. Temptation itself is not sin; it is something we are bound to face simply by virtue of being human. Not to be tempted would mean that we were already so shameful that we would be beneath contempt. Yet many of us suffer from temptations we should never have to suffer, simply because we have refused to allow God to lift us to a higher level where we would face temptations of another kind.
A person’s inner nature, what he possesses in the inner, spiritual part of his being, determines what he is tempted by on the outside. The temptation fits the true nature of the person being tempted and reveals the possibilities of his nature. Every person actually determines or sets the level of his own temptation, because temptation will come to him in accordance with the level of his controlling, inner nature.
Temptation comes to me, suggesting a possible shortcut to the realization of my highest goal— it does not direct me toward what I understand to be evil, but toward what I understand to be good. Temptation is something that confuses me for a while, and I don’t know whether something is right or wrong. When I yield to it, I have made lust a god, and the temptation itself becomes the proof that it was only my own fear that prevented me from falling into the sin earlier.
Temptation is not something we can escape; in fact, it is essential to the well-rounded life of a person. Beware of thinking that you are tempted as no one else–what you go through is the common inheritance of the human race, not something that no one has ever before endured. God does not save us from temptations–He sustains us in the midst of them.
I think what Mr. Chambers is saying is that everyone faces temptation. My temptation is pride. I’m going to want to be loved. And I’m going to get confused sometimes and think that I’ll find that love in the people around me. But when I realize that “looking for love in all the wrong places” won’t work, I’ll eventually see that God loves me, and that’s all that matters.
And this journey…
from temptation…
to repentance…
to peace…
it's a gift...
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