If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall. The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure. [1 Corinthians 10:13 (NLT)]
Inspired by Lynn Johnston’s comic strip For Better or for Worse, I’ve been writing about temptation. Yesterday, we left John sadly driving away from the car dealership after test driving his dream sport car. Seeing John’s “lip prints on the hood,” the salesman knew his customer would return and he was right. In the next day’s comic, John has an appointment with the bank and is justifying his decision to buy the car. “If I trade in my sedan,” he rationalizes, “I won’t need a big loan.” Like Satan, the salesman helps John further justify his purchase by assuring him it’s no big deal. In fact, he asserts it’s really no different from when John’s wife goes out and buys herself something at the mall.
In another strip, we find John purchasing a tweed cap, red cashmere scarf and driving gloves, announcing that, “I’m not just buying a car…I’m buying a life style!” When we sin, before we know it, Satan has sold us a new lifestyle. Sooner or later, we discover that new way of life is nowhere near as nice as we thought it would be. In fact, in another comic, we see John starting to have buyer’s remorse when his wife points out that, without his sedan, he’ll have to drive his sporty new convertible all winter long. As Adam and Eve and the Israelites quickly discovered, sinner’s remorse can be much worse than a cold car with no traction in a Canadian snow storm. The first family’s fleeting pleasure from that bite of sweet apple certainly wasn’t worth eviction from Paradise nor were the years of slavery in Babylon what the Israelites envisioned when they worshipped idols.
The story is told of a teacher who asks her Sunday school class what must be done for forgiveness. Little Billy immediately yells out, “First, we gotta sin!” Indeed, the temptation to sin is where our troubles begin and that temptation, like a sports car or flirtation, usually starts out looking like a whole lot of fun. The lesson learned from Lynn Johnston’s series isn’t to stay away from used car lots; it’s to be alert and stay away from Satan’s salesmen! They’re even more aggressive than the top salesperson at the local dealership.
Living in a nation where we worship freely and can both possess and read the Bible, we can easily get complacent and forget that Satan is trying to defeat the spread of the gospel message. According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, those Gideon Bibles we find in our hotel rooms are becoming an endangered species. In this era of political correctness and inclusiveness, hotels want to avoid offending people of other faiths or no faith at all. Two years ago, for example, citing “diversity” reasons, the Travelodge chain in the United Kingdom removed Bibles from all of its rooms. Last year, the Freedom from Religion Foundation asked fifteen major hotel companies to keep Bibles out of hotel rooms. With threats of lawsuits, they succeeded in convincing hotels operated by some state universities in Arizona, Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa to do just that. The FFRF has also printed a sticker reading, “Warning: Literal belief in this book may endanger your health and life.” They encourage their supporters to place the stickers on any hotel room Bible they find.
Filled with law, wisdom, history, prophecy, poetry, gospel, and letters, the Bible is the basis of our faith. None of us, however, were alive in 1400 BC when Genesis was written or at the end of the 1st Century when Revelation was penned. We’re neither Jews in Judah, Egypt, Israel, or Babylon nor 1st Century Jewish or Gentile converts in Rome or Greece and we have little in common with the Bible’s original audience. Although Scripture is timeless, that difference in time and culture makes us think of Scripture as impersonal and its words as general instructions dedicated to the community of faith at large. There is, however, nothing impersonal about God’s message to us and we are not faceless nameless members of His family. Scripture penned thousands of years ago was written specifically for you and me today. There is a personal relevant message for each one of us every time we read its words.
A severely ill 12-year old girl’s wish was to be a singing star and, thanks to the Make-a-Wish Foundation, last Sunday her dream came true. Over a year’s worth of planning went into creating a full concert experience for her. The flashing lights of a police car announced her arrival and, when the professionally made-up, coifed, and gowned star exited her limo, we joined hundreds of others and screamed like adoring fans. While her security team (complete with dark glasses and earpieces) cleared the way, she and her entourage walked down the red carpet to the theater. The crowd cheered, took photos, waved banners and begged for autographs. Once in the theater, backed up by the choir from her school, she sang to an auditorium filled with 300 admiring fans.
