Last night before I went to sleep I read this devotional by John Eldredge:
”You will be tested. Like Jesus’ desert trial, the enemy comes, probing the perimeter. He knows your story, knows where the weak spots are. But this is our training. This is the spiritual equivalent of, “Take a high guard, like this. Strike from high. Like this. Do it. Blade straighter. Leg back. Bend your knees. Sword straighter. Defend yourself.” This is how we develop a resolute heart. We make no agreements with whatever the temptation or accusation is. We repent the moment we do stumble, repent quickly, so that we don’t get hammered. We pray for strength from the Spirit of God in us. We directly—and this is the one thing so many fail to do—we directly resist the enemy, out loud, as Jesus did in the desert. We quote Scripture against him. We command him to flee.”
Here Eldredge compares the word “trials” to “temptations”.
When Jesus was in the wilderness being tempted by the enemy it was a time of trial. Trials are temptations, temptations to turn our heart from God and to believe the lies of Satan, and to make an agreement with those lies.
And so, when we are in a time of trial we must speak out loud, perhaps cry out loud, what is ACTUALLY true, the Truth of the Scripture.
I woke up this morning from a dream, no, a nightmare, of someone I loved being kidnapped and I fighting for them and weeping for them. I woke, literally out of breath from crying in my dream, and the enemy was right there saying that it wasn’t just a dream, that it is actually all true, this devastation is happening all around the world, and in a way it is happening now in the life of someone I love dearly.
I felt his mockery as I tries to shake it off as just a dream, because…it WAS true.
Thankfully I remembered the words from the night before. We are given the example by Jesus Himself to fight this enemy of our soul with the Word of God, with what IS actually Truth.
I began, breathlessly at first, to speak out anything in the Word that I’ve ever memorized.
The Lord’s Prayer
Psalm 23
Philippians 4
James 1
And it was there, in James 1: 2-4, that I took my stance, and my crying became a war cry:
“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of our faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
I spoke it out loud over and over: “Let your endurance have is perfect result.
Let your endurance have its perfect result.Let your endurance have its perfect result.”
The truth IS that we will come under temptation and trial, and that we can, by the power of the Spirit who raised Jesus from the grave, stand and endure and continue to turn our hearts towards and have faith in the steadfast love of our Father.
I began to think of the many loved ones I know who are standing strong in endurance.
Another version translates this word as “steadfastness”.
Steadfastness has become important to me, something that I pray for in my life.
And here it was, revealed in James 1, that steadfastness comes as a result of pressing through a trial, pressing through the temptation to turn my eyes away from my Beloved.
Psalm 119: 11 “Your word have I hidden in my heart that I may not sin against You.”
Lamentations 3:22 “The steadfast love of the Lord NEVER ceases…”
I see this morning that the temptation and the greatest sin against my Father is to allow my heart to be turned away from believing His steadfast love.
And so, I pray for you this morning my dear friends, that you would hide His word in your heart and cry it out when the fiery trials are sweeping through your life.
And remember that at the end of our Lord’s temptation and trial, there were Angels that came to minister to Him.
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