April 26 – Anatomy of a Temptation (Genesis 3:1-7; Proverbs 16:25)

“Did God really say . . . ?” (Genesis 3:1)

IN WORD:
We don’t need the serpent to speak these words to us anymore. We speak them to ourselves. That’s where all temptations begin: questions and confusion over what God really said. Sometimes it’s a legitimate confusion, but frequently it’s not. Somewhere deep inside us, we want a reason to go ahead and disobey. We want to “unintentionally” miss the will of God because we have our own will to appease, and it’s far more appealing. So we question the clear wisdom of our Creator and muddy the waters, trying to arrive at a point where we can say, “I just didn’t know. The right thing to do wasn’t clear to me. It was a complex issue.”
You know the routine. Every human being has practiced it. The gymnastics that the human heart will go through to justify our wants is impressive. It takes considerable training and remarkable flexibility. But it is a tragic exercise with tragic consequences.
Psychologists call our thought processes “rationalizing,” but the biblical word for it — or at least what precedes it — is temptation. The cravings of our flesh, the lust of our eyes, the pride of the self — these are the drives that compete with the holiness offered by our God. The enemy has done a masterful job of coloring those impulses brightly and painting holiness blandly. He doesn’t want the latter to have any appeal because it would result in a glory that he can’t stand. It would honor God and. It would fulfill the image of God in us. To him, that would be an ugly, ugly scene.

IN DEED:
Are you skilled in the art of rationalizing? If you are a human being, you must answer yes. The clever serpent got the ball rolling in the Garden, but it has rolled freely ever since. There are depths to this art form of talking ourselves into disobedience that’s we are often not aware of. Ask God to reveal them to you. He wants you to have discernment.
Can you pray that today? Ask God to give you clear insight into the mind games we play. Let His Word hold full sway over your thinking. Learn to recognize temptation.

“Temptation has its source not in the outer lure but in the inner lust.” -D. Edmund Hiebert-