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
When you walk through the aisles of a grocery store, you are entering into a carefully planned out design to get you to buy more stuff. Have you ever noticed that things aren't put together to make it more convenient? The other night I was in Walmart looking for salad dressing, and they had placed it in an obscure location. Wouldn't it make sense for the dressing to be right next to the lettuce? Then when you get ready to walk out of the store, they have one last chance to see more merchandise in the check-out lines. It is there that you will find magazines with catchy headlines plus candy, gum, and other treats intended to squeeze one more dollar out of your wallet. They know how to tempt their customers into buying more than they planned.
Satan is no different. He knows our pressure points and often designs scenarios where we are most prone to make bad decisions. You could be hungry, tired, or unsettled, and your wife begins a conversation about finances. Real quickly the conversation moves into a shouting match and becomes ugly. It might be that you are on a business trip with no accountability, and you are lonely with an unfiltered television giving you access to inappropriate content. You believe channel surfing is innocent -- "I won't linger at those channels…" But a trap has been set. Satan knows exactly how to tempt us in our weakest moments.
It is in those situations as we are tempted that we need to remember the words of the Apostle Paul. He reminded us that we aren't the first to be tempted by the evil one. Generations have endured the hardship of temptation, and even Jesus was tempted. God is always faithful when we are tempted and will provide a way out. God gives us the power to stop a heated conversation and to take a time out before we say hurtful words. God provides the escape of calling a friend that you trust to help you with the situation. And every screen can be turned off. God always has a way out. We have to be willing to see His escape hatch rather than embracing the momentary pleasure.
Satan will always hit you with areas where you are weak. He likes to get us to rush to make decisions rather than thinking about the consequences. Write out areas in your life right now where you are weak and prone to fall. Pray and ask God to give you the strength to overcome the allure of temptation.
I don’t want you to forget, dear brothers and sisters, about our ancestors in the wilderness long ago. All of them were guided by a cloud that moved ahead of them, and all of them walked through the sea on dry ground. In the cloud and in the sea, all of them were baptized as followers of Moses. All of them ate the same spiritual food, and all of them drank the same spiritual water. For they drank from the spiritual rock that traveled with them, and that rock was Christ. Yet God was not pleased with most of them, and their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.
These things happened as a warning to us, so that we would not crave evil things as they did, or worship idols as some of them did. As the Scriptures say, “The people celebrated with feasting and drinking, and they indulged in pagan revelry.” And we must not engage in sexual immorality as some of them did, causing 23,000 of them to die in one day.
Nor should we put Christ to the test, as some of them did and then died from snakebites. And don’t grumble as some of them did, and then were destroyed by the angel of death. These things happened to them as examples for us. They were written down to warn us who live at the end of the age.
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.
