Written by John Bloom – Desiring God

Temptation is not sin. We know this because Eve was tempted before she fell and Jesus was tempted, “yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

Temptation is a disorienting, defiling experience when evil is presented to us as good. Destruction comes dressed up to look like happiness. Sin only occurs when we believe that the destructive lie can actually grant happiness.

One key to resisting temptation is learning to recognize what I call the “mirage moment.”

The Mirage Moment

A mirage is that hallucination parched people sometimes experience in a hot desert. A real desire for water and the shimmering heat of the sand play disorienting games with the mind and emotions. A refreshing oasis seems to appear in the distance promising the happiness of a quenched desire.

A thirsty person might know that no oasis has previously existed in that location. But his desire to be happy, fuelled by the hope that this time he just might find happiness there, or at least relief from misery, tempts him to believe the vision. If he yields, he discovers his hope was hopeless and his desire dashed because the oasis was a sham.

In temptation, the mirage moment occurs as we are tempted by a vision promising happiness. Some shimmering oasis of promised joy or relief from despair appears where God said it shouldn’t be.

The mirage’s appearance taps into our real desire to be happy. Our disoriented emotions begin to respond to this desire with a feeling of hope — hope that maybe this time, even if we’ve been disappointed many times before, the oasis will quench our desire. But we know that God has told us it is a false hope.

So we are faced with a choice between temptation’s compelling appearance and God’s promise. We are tempted, but have not yet succumbed to sin.  Read More… 

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Devotion by Trevor Bradley

In Romans 8 vs 26 we read: “In the same way the Spirit also helps us with our weakness; for we don’t know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groaning too deep for words”.

I can identify, for at times I come before my Father and I don’t know how or what to say – all that comes from within is a ‘groan’, ‘cry’ or ‘a sigh’.  It is at times like these that I wonder if I am getting through to the throne and whether or not my Father sees me, let alone understands my cries.

But this verse says that one of the gifts of Holy Spirit is to take my ramblings, my groans, my sighs, my cries, and He takes that ‘chaos’ and makes sense of it before throne of God, on my behalf.  I am so thankful for His ministry in my life..

There is another aspect which daily gets underwritten in my heart and mind when it comes to praying.  The verse in 1 John 5 vs 14 & 15 says this ” This is the confidence we have in Him”.  Romans 8 vs 34 says Jesus also intercedes for us – so you have the Holy Spirit and Jesus praying for you today, and that if we ask anything in accordance with His will, He hears us.

That’s the assurance.   But is it a miss and hit thing?   No way!  For I ask in accordance with His will when I bring His promises back to Him, and in my crying out to Him.

• Do we know what He has promised us re our broken hearts?  Isaiah 61 vs 1 & 2 will tell you.
• Do we know what he has promised us when we are weighed down? Matthew 11vs 28, tells us.
• Do we know when that ‘thing’ looms large on our radar and we buy into the lie that we will never overcome?  Romans 8 vs 37 confirms our victory.

THERE IS NOT A SITUATION I AM FACING OR WILL EVER FACE,THAT A PROMISE FROM MY FATHER, DOES NOT OR WILL NOT COVER.

Search with all your heart for a promise unique to your situation and bring it Him in humble submission before His throne of grace, and know that He hears. And when you can say no more, your groaning, sighing and tears are all you have left – know that it is then that the Holy Spirit will take that and bring that to our Father on your behalf.  And he will hear and act.

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Sourced from the Desiring God Blog Site.  Written by Phillip Holmes

On the outside, Chloe appears to have it all together. She is single, has a career, and is fairly active in her local church. But she’s lonely, disenchanted by her career, and feels detached from her church. The shell that her peers admire conceals her discontentment and joyless Christianity.

Chloe had envisioned a different life for herself. By now, she thought she’d be in her prime, but she’d found herself in a pit of misery. She thought she’d be married, still connected to her college friends, raising a family, and mentoring younger Christian women. But her present reality disappointed her expectations. Her discontentment has led her down a dark path of sin, searching for relief but only finding death.

Chloe’s only hope of curing her discontentment and unhappiness is learning the art of contentment and embracing a biblical view of God. Those two things are essential for her joy.

It’s Not You, It’s Me

Chloe represents many Christians struggling to cope with the hand they’ve been dealt. Her heart condition not only applies to singles, but the married alike. Every morning, Christians across the country wake up discontent with life — singleness, marriage, career, church, or community – and wish they could trade it for a different one.

Our discontentment leads to wishful but hopeless (and sometimes suicidal) thinking. We attempt to replace and eliminate anything that we perceive is linked to our discontentment.  Read More…

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Written by Author & Blogger Tim Challies

Why do Christians suffer? Why aren’t Christians relieved from trouble, from pain, from suffering? If God is powerful and wise, why doesn’t he direct his power and wisdom toward more comfortable lives for the ones he loves and redeems? J.I. Packer helpfully addresses this in the ninth chapter of Knowing God and I have condensed the chapter down to its essence.

For us to be truly wise, in the Bible sense, our intelligence and cleverness must be harnessed to a right end. Wisdom is the power to see, and the inclination to choose, the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it. Wisdom is, in fact, the practical side of moral goodness. As such, it is found in its fullness only in God. He alone is naturally and entirely and invariably wise.

Human wisdom can be frustrated by circumstantial factors outside the wise person’s control. … But God’s wisdom cannot be frustrated. Power is as much God’s essence as wisdom is. Omniscience governing omnipotence, infinite power ruled by infinite wisdom, is a basic biblical description of the divine character.  Wisdom without power would be pathetic, a broken reed; power without wisdom would be merely frightening; but in God boundless wisdom and endless power are united, and this makes him utterly worthy of our fullest trust.

God’s wisdom is not, and never was, pledged to keep a fallen world happy, or to make ungodliness comfortable. Not even to Christians has he promised a trouble-free life; rather the reverse. He has other ends in view for life in this world than simply to make it easy for everyone.  Read more…

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