Temptation of Jesus

PRAYER PRACTICE

Spoken Prayer – Out loud, pray for God to speak to you through your reading. Praise God for giving us His word. Ask the Spirit to help you read with faith, and to live out what you hear from God through the passage.

Daily Reading  

 Luke 4:1-13

Devotional

Truth- God's Word Sets us Free

by Nancy Gleeson

Imagine Jesus being tempted all forty days in the desert, never giving in to Satan. The pressure of temptation only relents when we give in and Jesus never did! It’s similar to what we may be feeling after spending most of 2020 in a pandemic denying ourselves what we really want.  

The mind desperately wants to end suffering and finds it hard to resist illegitimate ways to fulfill real desires. Satan takes advantage of such circumstances! If Jesus is hungry, Satan says He should turn a stone into bread. Jesus responds with scripture that conveys the truth that every word of God is more important than the bread we eat.  (Notice that Jesus did not draw on divine resources that are unavailable to us.)  

The question put to Jesus was, “If you are the Messiah, why are You so deprived?” Likewise, we may be asked, “if you are a child of God, why are things so tough?” Why not go ahead and do a little something for yourself? Satan, being a Bible expert, can twist Bible passages out of context to lure us out of suffering and into sin. We must know what the truth of God’s word is.

God never allows us to be tempted beyond our ability to resist. Jesus was hungry but full of the Spirit. We are sometimes the opposite, full stomachs but empty in Spirit. Like Jesus, we need to walk in the Word and in the Spirit. Therein lies our power over sin!

Consider: There, in the power of the Holy Spirit, armed with knowledge of scripture, we can withstand temptation and conquer the evil one. Give it a try this week and see if God's Word doesn't help us overcome temptations.