“When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone;”
James 1:13 (NIV)
Reading this first chapter of James is a great way to get in touch with reality again. We can live in the past and we can live in the future, and we seem to live sometimes in a fake little faith bubble. Do you know the bubble I am talking about? The bubble that says “Boy John if you just had more faith, you wouldn’t be going thru the hard time you are going thru.”
James pops that bubble by linking the trials, the tests and the temptations that we experience on a daily basis to the testing of our faith. At first blush we think well yeah - if I had better faith, then I wouldn’t go thru this stuff, but that is a misunderstanding of James is teaching us, for his concern is that we understand the goal. Which is that we be complete, mature and perfect, and that we can’t get there unless our faith is proved true thru trials, tests and temptations. These three words mean different things to us, but they share the same purpose, making us into the image of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, thru the testing of our faith. Now faith comes from the Word -we read and believe and line our lives up with what the Word says- so let us consider whether or not we can say when confronted with temptation (which is really a test) that God is not the One tempting us, but He is the One who can deliver us!
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