No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it. 1 Corinthians 10:13.

Every Christian is tempted to do wrong. Sometimes we offend God and hurt ourselves by succumbing.

Who puts these thoughts, these desires into our minds? God? Satan? Our own sinning nature? When they become really oppressive, is there a way out, or a way through?

'Temptation' comes from a Greek word meaning 'experiment.' Temptation is not, basically, a direct incitement to evil. It means a testing, a trial. It's a crisis out of which either good or evil may come.

Nobody escapes temptation, not even Jesus. Jesus' temptations, like ours, offered a short cut to what is important in life. Jesus' temptations were real: he wasn't play-acting.

And he understands your struggles. That is most comforting!

It's hard Lord. Help me to 'stay awake', to be alert and ready when temptation comes. Amen.

JESUS KNOWS WHAT IT'S LIKE!

Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Matthew 4:1.

Jesus faced every temptation you and I are likely to face, yet remained sinless. But his freedom to say 'yes' to God meant nothing if he wasn't free to say 'no.'

Temptations come to all of us, all our lives. The devil didn't finish with Jesus when he was tempted in the desert, but merely left him 'for a while.' We might talk about the 'hot temptations of youth' but similar temptations will come to us later as well: they pass into the subtle temptations of maturity, and the cynical temptations of old age.

The worst temptations are religious ones: thinking we're noble or godly for doing 'good.' That's why religious pride is so deadly. T S Eliot (Murder in the Cathedral) wrote: 'The last temptation is the greatest treason/ To do the right thing for the wrong reason.'

As Jesus urged his disciples, may I `Rise and pray, that I may be spared the test.' Amen.

HELP IN TIME OF TEMPTATION.

We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. Hebrews 4:15.

C S Lewis's Screwtape Letters suggests the devil doesn't waste time tempting us over things that repel us: the real choice is not between the obvious extremes of right and wrong, but the more subtle distinctions of what we want to do and what we ought to do.

William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, knew the peril of temptation. Wisely he said: 'Even now after forty years of faithful service for God, by one act I could ruin it all.' Life is strewn with banana skins: even you could be on your back any minute!

Too much even of a good thing becomes a bad thing: eat one food item too much and it becomes a poison. Sin is using a good thing in a bad way. Just as 'dirt' is misplaced matter, sin is misplaced good. Adultery is sex, misused; pride is a distortion of self-respect; selfishness is self-love when it is chronic.

Because you yourself were tested by what you suffered, Lord, you are able to help those who are being tested (Hebrews 2:18). Please help me in my hour of temptation. Amen.