What
are You Becoming?
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Jeff Lampl
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Jeff Lampl
“So,
if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!
No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.
And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.
But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out
so that you can stand up under it.”
I Corinthians 10: 12-13 (NIV)
No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.
And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.
But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out
so that you can stand up under it.”
I Corinthians 10: 12-13 (NIV)
The following reflection comes
to you today from the C.S. Lewis institute.
It asks the
question . . .
question . . .
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“What
is shaping you?”
The
more we ponder this question, the more we will recognize how our choices
in life are shaping us into the person we will ultimately become. “Sow a
thought and reap a deed; sow a deed and reap an action; sow an action and
reap a habit; sow a habit and reap a character; sow a character and reap a
destiny.”1 In a very real sense, we make our choices,
and then, for better or worse, our choices make us.
Nowhere
is this more important than in temptation to sin. Sin is not taken very
seriously these days, and temptation is often joked about. George Bernard
Shaw’s well-known quip, “I can resist anything but temptation,” has
become commonplace in American society. However, sin is a serious matter
to God and has profound consequences in our lives.
Every
temptation presents us with a fork in the road of life: our choice will
either bring us closer to God or farther from him. If, by the power of the
Holy Spirit, we choose to obey Him, we will be strengthened and confirmed
in the particular virtue involved and become in some degree more like
Jesus Christ our Lord. But, if we choose to disobey, even in small
matters, we will to some extent corrupt and erode our character and weaken
our ability to resist future temptation. And more importantly, we also
break our fellowship with God and can begin to gradually drift from his
presence.
C.
S. Lewis’s classic book, The Screwtape Letters, reminds us
that sometimes the devil is subtly at work in the temptations believers
face: (Here the master demon Screwtape writes to his understudy Wormwood
regarding the believer they are attempting to subvert.)
“We
know that we have introduced a change of direction in his course which is
already carrying him out of his orbit around the Enemy [God]; but he must
be made to imagine that all the choices which have effected this change of
course are trivial and revocable. He must not be allowed to suspect that
he is now, however slowly, heading right away from the sun in a line which
will carry him into the cold and dark of utmost space.”
How
are you dealing with the temptations that come your way? A periodic
self-examination is helpful, asking yourself questions such as: What is
the spiritual trajectory of my life? Where are my choices taking me
spiritually? What am I becoming? Or, to put it another way, am I closer to
God and more like Jesus than I was a year ago? If not, what temptations
have I succumbed to that have arrested or reversed my growth in grace?
For
more:
follow on Twitter @jefflampl
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