Wednesday, June 07, 2006
I've always thought of grace as an act of God after we sin. The antibiotic. I hope I can fix this view. I fear it's terribly incomplete. Is it not by God's grace that we deprive our temptation, overcome our sin, or desire a better self? Is it not by God's grace that we are kept from sinning in the first place? Perhaps if I understood better the part grace plays before sin, I would, with grace, better overcome sin.
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Word.
Here are some selections from a good sermon on the Our Father:
Lead us not into temptation
"Temptation is both testing and seduction. It is the devil’s seduction to taste of forbidden fruit, to reach over the limit of God’s Word and to be “like God” experiencing good and evil apart from God. Yet the same temptation is also testing. God takes the devil’s attempt to seduce us and uses it to exercise and strengthen our faith in Christ. Just as a muscle needs to be stretched and strained in order to become hard and strong, so faith in Christ needs to be exercised in the daily temptations of this life, as we are continually tested to see whether we will act like the baptismally reborn children of God that we are, or go back to the way of our natural birth as children of Adam."
and
"We are praying that God would block every path and destroy every idol that leads to unbelief, shame, despair, and death. We are praying that God would give us the will and the strength to flee every temptation with the same terror as Joseph fleeing Potiphar’s seductive wife. We are praying that God would teach us to use His Word against temptation, as Jesus did in His one on one encounter with the devil in the wilderness. We are praying that God would keep us alert in prayer by His Holy Spirit, so that we would not succumb to the drowsiness of the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane."
link:
http://blog.higherthings.org/wcwirla/The%20Sermonator/Our%20Father%202.html
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