temptation on Despair

One common mistake is assuming that everyone else finds faith easy, while we alone struggle. Yet there is comfort in recognizing that we are not alone in our pursuit of Christ in the midst of a broken...

God delights in our temptations and yet hates them. He delights in them when they drive us to prayer; He hates them when they drive us to despair.

“No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from. ”

The following story comes from the collection of sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers in Egypt, teaching that would have first been transmitted orally (around 350-450 A.D.) and later written down...

By your helpless infant years, by your life of want and tears, by your days of deep distress in the savage wilderness, by the dread, mysterious hour of the insulting tempter’s pow’r, turn, oh, turn a ...

Almighty God, we confess our need of Your presence and Your guidance. We each have our hopes and expectations for what lies ahead, but only You can give us the strength and the wisdom we need. In life...

“But fear no more! I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my gl...

The temptation once yielded to gains power. The crack in the embankment which lets a drop or two ooze through is soon a hole which lets out a flood.

More than the arguments we can muster about the awful consequences upon us when we yield to temptation, the sight of what our sin caused our Savior to suffer should convince us to turn from sin’s path...

Many deceptions only appeal to us because there is something inside us that "wants" to believe them. They are seductive because of darkness and wrong motives in our own lives. We must search...

I sighed and you heard me. I wavered and you steadied me. I travelled along the broad way of the world, but you did not desert me.

The author John Steinbeck once wrote a letter to the diplomat Adlai Stevenson, which was later published in the Washington Post in January of 1960. In it Steinbeck said, “A strange species we are. We ...

Prayer of Adoration Great God our Father: You are good and You are strong. You are faithful and true, and You won’t tempt or lie to us. In a world that appeals to our sinful cravings and dominated b...

Nearly everybody knows of at least one sin habit in their life that they wish to leave behind them. Yet, no matter what they do, it seems impossible for them to be free of this habit, character flaw, ...

In his excellent book on the desert fathers, Where God Happens , former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams tells of an encounter between two monastic fathers. The first was Macarius, famous in...

All idols begin by offering great things for a very small price. All idols then fail, more and more consistently, to deliver on their original promises, while ratcheting up their demands, which initia...

In her thought-provoking book, Teach us to Want , Jen Pollock Michel describes the tension in listening to our deepest desires: some of them these desires are integral to our identity, but they a...

Forgive us for our many sins. Like Eve, we are easily captivated by the objects that our eyes desire. We fall so often, and when we do, we run and hide in shame instead of running to you to confess ou...

Leader: Heavenly Father, I confess that I have sinned against you. I have delighted my soul in other things more than I have in you. Why, then, is it any surprise to me that you feel far off from me? ...

If I were making a list of benefits like the one Mike McKinley imagines, only this time using the devil’s actual logic, it might look more like this: Experience the excitement of new romance. Get th...

Pastor: For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. All: For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the...

The greatest burden we have to carry in life is self. The most difficult thing we have to manage is self. Our own daily living, our frames and feelings, our especial weaknesses and temptations, and ou...

Our great Pattern hath showed us what our deportment ought to be in all suggestions and temptations. When the devil showed Him "all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them," to tempt...

Temptation may even be a blessing to a man when it reveals to him his weakness and drives him to the almighty Savior. Do not be surprised, then, dear child of God, if you are tempted at every step of ...

The Serpent held out to them the one thing they didn’t have, shouldn’t have, and could never have—God’s position. Taken from Awe: Why it Matters to Everything We Think, Say, and Do by Paul David Tripp...

We read of the temptations of Jesus, but we never hear of a confession of sin on his part. He never asked for forgiveness, though he told his followers to do so. This lack of any sense of moral failur...

In Easter Everywhere: A Memoir, Darcey Steinke recounts how she, the daughter of a Lutheran minister, left her Christian profession. Moving to New York City she entered a life of club hopping and se...

Better shun the bait, than struggle in the snare.

Lord God, you have claimed us. You have given us the perfect example of faithfulness in the face of temptation, but we fall so short of the example you have given us in Jesus. We continually try to gr...

Loving and faithful God, You are holy, righteous, and pure; You are compassionate and just; You are perfect in all of Your ways. But we have slipped away from Your will; we have been selfish and self-...