Freedom from Temptation

Toward a New Creation
A World Gone Wrong

We're All under Sin's Power

James 1:12-18  The Message

¹² Anyone who meets a testing challenge head-on and manages to stick it out is mighty fortunate. For such persons loyally in love with God, the reward is life and more life.
^13-15 Don’t let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, “God is trying to trip me up.” God is impervious to evil, and puts evil in no one’s way. The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust. Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: sin! Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer.
^16-18 So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.

For Reflection

What does Jesus teach us?

God is not the "Holy Gotch'a!"  God does not lay obstacles in your way.  On the contrary, God removes impediments to your human fulfillment.  God is not your adversary.  The human condition is one of vulnerability.  We are seduced by our worldliness and are attracted to the delusion that we can solve any problem by the latest fashionable action.  God sets us free to choose love instead of hate, to chose forgiveness rather than vengeance and to choose courage over fear.

Pray

thank God for showing us how to live and to fulfill our human potential.  Pray that we will recognize the inherent value of living in a community where each serves the other.