“Do not be
worried about your life as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for
your body, as to what you will put on.
Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” (Matt.
6:25).
Hey Gang: Did you
ever want something? I mean really want something- something you just cannot
live without, something you would do just about anything to get? Even something that you know is wrong? On our route home from Myrtle Beach, South
Carolina, last year, we stopped at a rest area on the West Virginia turnpike. While
there a young man, I would estimate to be around thirty years of age, waddled
in and I mean waddled. I would guess
that he tipped the scales at more than the 400 pounds. He made a “B” line to the ice cream counter
and ordered a very special made-to-order Sunday of monumental proportions.
He was a captive to the simple
fact that he could not handle temptation.
I am sure, if I would have asked him why he allowed himself to get into
that condition he would have had a multitude of excuses, including I just
cannot help myself. Paul, in his first
letter to the Corinthians, broke that bubble when he wrote, “No temptation has overtaken you but such is
common to man” (1 Cor. 10:13).
But, we need to understand there
is a prerequisite to overcoming the desire to do those things that are not
pleasing to Father God and grieves the Holy Spirit. Paul, went on and gave us the key to not
giving into the whims of the evil one: “God
is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but
with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be
able to endure it” I Cor.10:13).
Notice, Paul then gives us the essential
ingredient to prevent our being led down the Prime Rose Path: “My beloved, flee from idolatry”
(v.14). You mean when I give in to that ten- pound piece of chocolate cake I am
giving in to an “idol? I would suggest
that is exactly what Paul is saying.
Anything that stands between you and your bringing honor and glory to
Father God is, in Paul’s eyes and the writer of this epistles eyes, ‘an
idol’. I talk from personal experience.
I have said it many times and
enjoy saying it again, I love the Amish (the Plain People) and have been
blessed to learn many lessons from them.
In recent years, they have opened the door for their late-teen-aged kids
to leave the Amish community, go out and check out the world and see it they
would rather live in the modern world or return to the world and faith of their
youth and parents.
Did it take courage to say, “Go
and find out which world you want to spend the rest of your life in?” Yes, but, I believe it took faith in the
seeds that had been planted in their kid’s hearts. The
results have been more than ninety percent returned to the faith and, of the
ten percent who did not, recent studies have found that most believe they made
a very bad decision.
So, my young friends, beware for
Slue Foot, the evil one. He is going to dangle an apple in front of you today
and try and convince you that -“You
surely will not die”. But “Thanks be to God, who gives us the
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my beloved brethren be steadfast, immovable, always abounding
in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord” (1
Cor. 5:57-78).
Blessings,
Gramps
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