| The Best Things in Life |
Chapter 13 |
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Thus we are helped to understand the meaning of temptation from the divine side. When Jesus was led, driven, by the Holy Spirit, into the waste places to be tempted of the devil, God’s thought was not to cause him to sin; rather, it was to give him the opportunity to be tested and proved, that he might come again with the light of victory on his face, ready to be the Friend, Helper, and Deliverer of countless other men. So when God brings us into a place in which we must meet temptation, it is never his purpose to lead us to sin. That is Satan’s purpose, but God’s is that we may meet the temptation and be victorious in it. Temptations, therefore, are opportunities that God puts within our reach by which we are to become strong and rich in experience.
We are not, therefore, to pray that we shall never have any temptations. Imagine a soldier praying that he may never have to fight any battles. What is the business of a soldier but to fight? Only on battlefields can he learn courage or train himself to be a soldier. What battles are to a soldier, temptations are to a Christian. He never can become of much worth as a man if he never faces struggles and learns to overcome. Browning puts it thus:
“When the fight begins within himself
A man’s worth something. God stoops o’er his head,
Satan looks up between his feet–both tug–
…The soul waits and grows.”
Soldiers are made on battlefields, character is grown, and men are made, in trial. Browning says again:
“Why comes temptation but for man to meet
And master and make crouch beneath his feet,
And so be pedestalled in triumph? Pray
‘Lead us into no such temptations, Lord.’
Yea, but, O thou whose servants are the bold,
Lead such temptations by the hand and hair,
Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight,
That so he may do battle and have praise.”
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