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When Relief Looks Better Than Righteousness

Watch out! Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. Gen. 4:7 (NLT)

Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weakMatt. 26:41 (NIV)

I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”  Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Psalm 42:9-11 (ESV)

Dear Lord Jesus, there are times when the emptiness feels like the Grand Canyon; when the pain feels like it had no beginning and will have no end; when loneliness is magnified to the point we’re dangerously vulnerable. Those are the hours, days, and weeks you better be enough for us, Jesus. Otherwise, we’re capable of almost anything.

Sin isn’t just “crouching at our doors” to control us; it’s also whispering inside of our hearts to destroy us. We need, you Lord, and we need good friends. We don’t need clichés, maxims, or sayings; we need a living Christ for the deadly perils. Like Cain angry able Abel (Gen. 4), David sighting a Bathsheba (2 Sam. 11), Esau irrepressibly hungry (Gen. 25:29-34), and Asaph envious of the prosperous (Psalm 73)—we also experience seasons of profound temptation.

You saved us from hell, now save us from ourselves, Jesus. Don’t let us have to learn, yet again, sin only gives pleasure for a season—a very brief season. Don’t let us settle for oatmeal (like Esau) when you offer us a banquet from heaven; don’t let us drink from mud puddles, when you freely give us living water; don’t let us look to people for what you alone can give us.

We make David’s cry our own: “O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” So very Amen, we pray, Jesus, in your powerful and grace-full name.

 

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