Bible Study Post #1 Intro
The past year and a half or so, I've made the choice to embrace and cherish my Christian roots and most importantly, to have faith in God and Christ. Most of my life, I had quarreled with God and rejected Him and now in hindsight, I see the consequences of those decisions.
In light of that, I want to make series of Bible study posts reflecting on scripture and trying to apply it to life, generally and personally. I have not read the Bible cover to cover and I feel I need to for many reasons. I want to experience the Bible directly, without having other's sermons or interpretations steering my thoughts, to become closer to God. Also, if I want to have credibility when speaking in regards to spirituality, I should know thoroughly what I claim to be of utmost importance, Christ.
Verse Analysis
When I first read this verse, I was filled with hope, so much so I was taken aback. Most my adult life I had no will to fight my temptations. Being very atheistic from a young age, I indulged my desires freely and turned from responsibility at almost every chance I had.
Though I was raised in a Catholic household, I did not confide or seek God, I deliberately turned away from Him. I ridiculed and insulted His existence. Leaving the opportunity for music, television, other children to substitute as my shepherd... And though I was committed to my atheism, I was not able to disbelieve good and evil and so I became the arbiter of what is good and evil. These attitudes and influences fueled my indulgent habits ingrained a lazy nature of weakness and pettiness into my soul, so that now I struggle with temptation and sin everyday and do not always triumph... And so, let us try to break it down, see why I might view this verse as being so powerful..
"There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man" — Especially today, society and the media would like you to believe that you're special and your struggles unique. This inclines one to feel as an exception or an outlier. "If no one has faced the struggles that I have, then who can blame for being defeated by them?" But that could not further than the truth. All people, regardless of sex or race or when they lived, experience the same type of temptations and any person can fall to them. The only difference is the path we choose, to fight our temptation or to give in.
"but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." — I feel this verse confronted a dark train of thought I've held on to. A flawed reasoning I used to justify my giving into temptation, maybe some of you can relate to. The idea being that God would tempt me beyond my will, stirred an anger within me against God. Foolishly I thought, "There must be no God, for why would he tempt me, knowing I would fail? Why would he make a failure of me just to punish me? So if there is a God, he is a sick puppy, and if he's a sick puppy etc"... Again, this thinking separates ourselves from the rest of humanity, as if we are somehow special or an exception.
We must understand that God does not give us our hardships as punishments but as lessons, as tests to grow our strength of will. This portion of the verse, for me, emphasizes the fault in thinking it is impossible to overcome your temptations because if you do truly think that, I don't see how you can overcome. If we successfully convince ourselves there is no escape from our temptations, we are trapped in a cage devised by our own minds in which we embrace our sins. Yet, if you hold close to your heart that there is always provided by God a path out of all temptations and into salvation, then one can have hope and then triumph.
Happy Thanksgiving to all, I hope you leave your thoughts below, I really want to hear what you think no matter what you have to say... and God bless!
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