Temptation and Testing

 

One of the great promises of the Bible is one I have drawn on many times. Perhaps you have too. The passage, however, offers us even greater hope than many of us have drawn from it. Let me explain.

1 Corinthians 10:12-13 gives us this great promise: “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” The promise is given after Paul references a series of failures by Israel to trust God during their wanderings in the wilderness. He says that their failures were meant as examples to us.

We need to take heed so that we do not fall as the Israelites did. We can do so because God will not let us be tempted beyond our ability, but will always provide a way of escape. We have taken Paul’s description of temptation as a temptation to sin. It is that, but what we have missed in the passage is that it is much more.

The word temptation that Paul uses, has no negative connotation. It simply means to test or prove. Whether it becomes a proof of righteousness, of trusting God, or an inducement to sin and evil depends on our response;.

Satan, you see, will use inducements to sin to draw us away from God, but he will also try to draw us away from God when we face the hard things in life. These things are also tests for us, tests of whether we will be faithful to God.

Now let me be clear. I am not talking about tests that God sends us. The hard things in life come from Satan and are the result of the presence of sin in the world. So hard things do come to us just as temptations to sin come to us, and Satan tries to use them all to draw us away from God.

The promise of God, however, is that God will provide us a way of escape no matter how difficult the test is, no matter how great the temptation. The question for us is always whether we will remain faithful to God when the test comes.

Since Christine’s accident on December 8 and death on December 10, I have been experiencing the kind of test that comes to us. As I told my daughter on the phone one night about two months after Christine’s death, Satan would like nothing better than to lure us away from faith in Christ as a result of what happened. He would like us to give up on the ministries God has called us to. We have determined that we will not let him do so, but that struggle is certainly hard. How, then, does God provide a way of escape?

Let me illustrate with the experience of a minister I met at at conference last month. As we talked, he told me that his wife had died five years earlier in the midst of what would become a thirty-seven year ministry. When I shared with him about Christine’s death, we discussed our two experiences and he prayed for me. In the midst of our discussion, he told me how God had opened up an entirely new ministry to him that led him to Florida.

God provides a path to a new adventure. I do not know what God will open up to you or me when we face temptation and trials, but he does promise he will provide us a way of escape. My “way of escape” may be different than my new friend’s and yours may be different than mine, but whether it is temptation or testing, God will show us the way out.

We are engaged in a great spiritual battle — we have been ever since the sin of Adam and Eve. Satan wants us to walk away from God. God will, however, always provide us a way out if we trust him. The way out may not be easy, but the promise is still true. Trust God when life becomes hard.