Never Overwhelmed In Trials

"Have I not commanded you?  Be strong and courageous.  Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go," (cf. Joshua 1:9). 

 King David in Psalm 23:4 had prayed that he would "fear no evil."  This is the right mindset for all believers and not to get infatuated or fixated on the devil and certainly not engrossed in the devil's agenda and seeing devils everywhere. Two errors common are giving him too much credit and denying he exists at all. Remember that the devil cannot touch or harm us (cf. 1 John 5:18) and must ask permission to sift us as wheat as he did to Peter (cf. Luke 22:31) and even to Job, God's servant who even Satan had noticed.  Paul had said in 1 Cor. 10:13 that we cannot be tempted above which we can handle.  God knows our breaking point and spares us when necessary.  

We must realize we are called "out of this world" and are not to be "of it." (cf. John 15:19).  Satan knows our vulnerabilities and appeals to our weakest point and lower natures (cf. 1 John 2:16): "For everything in the world: the craving of sinful man, the lust of the eyes and the boasting of whats and does--come not from the father but the world."  We are not to love the world nor anything in it (cf. 1 John 2:15).   Lust is a key sin because it's desire perverted or carried out to an extreme or excess.  Knowing our heavenly Father is guiding us in righteousness for His name's sake is comforting and that He has written out our lives beforehand with this in mind--what's best for us (cf. Psalm 139:16).  "He controls my destiny," (cf. Job 23:14). "My times are in His hands," (cf. Psalm 31:15).    But this is why we pray in the Lord's prayer that the Father "deliver us from the evil one." (cf. Matt. 6:13). Even when we pass through the waters, we shall not be overwhelmed! (cf. Isaiah 43:2). 

The LORD is with us wherever we go and will never forsake us (cf. Heb. 13:5; Matt, 28:20).  But we must learn to walk with God and learn to lean not unto our own understanding (cf. Prov. 3:5). For we walk by faith and not by sight! (cf. 2 Cor. 5:7). We have no excuse because we have the residing Spirit within (cf. 1 Cor. 3:16).   

Note: We all have a dark side and feet of clay!   We must beware of evil for we are not ignorant of his schemes (cf. 2 Cor. 2:11). 

Mark Twain said that we "are all like a moon that has a dark side no one sees." This is true. We all have "feet of clay" and are vulnerable to sin because of our very nature. We cannot clean up our act before we can come to Jesus; we must come as we are, but we cannot stay that way.

It's not how bad we are, but how bad off we are. It is like the distance of a deaf man to a symphony or a blind man to the Mona Lisa. We cannot bridge the gap. Jesus sees through the veneer and we cannot fool him. Humanists think mankind is basically good, but we an inherently bad. You must realize that we are not sinners because we sin, rather we sin because we are sinners. It is our constituted nature to sin. We can deal with sins in the plural, but our problem is sin in the singular--our old sin nature inherited from Adam. This is God's estimation of man, not man's estimation of man.

The totality of our nature is permeated with sin and our image of God is marred and defaced morally. "No one knows how bad he is until he has tried to be good," says C. S. Lewis as in a catch-22. The paradox is that we must see our bankruptcy--the truly bad person thinks he is all right! And Lewis adds, "We must realize how bad we are before we can be good." The way up, by paradox, is down.

We are sinful in toto and in solidarity with Adam completely. Someone has said, "We cannot escape our birthright." We cannot ingratiate ourselves with God, because we "have feet of clay." That means we have hidden vulnerabilities. We are permeated with sin through and through--there is no vestige of righteousness.

R. C. Sproul writes of a man who never lost his faith in the basic goodness of man despite being held captive in Iraq--this is sheer ignorance! Compared to Saddam Hussein the run-of-the-mill sinner looks like a saint; however, he is just as bad off from God's viewpoint and they both must come to Jesus the same way in childlike repentance and faith. We are capable of any sin if God withdraws His grace. "I am what I am by the grace of God," (cf. 1 Cor. 15:10). "There but for the grace of God go I," (George Whitefield). Soli Deo Gloria!