I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness. Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.” We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents. And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. 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 10:1-13, NRSV)
Have you ever felt like you were i a situation where there was no way out?
Well if you actually stopped and thought through it, there was several ways out, just none of them held to the way you wanted out. They probably included someone getting emotionally hurt, or lose of some kind. Sometimes in situations there is no way around things we want to avoid. And so we think there is no way out.
We start to wonder how we got into this place in the first place. How did we wind up here? What could I have done differently that would have not led to this place?
Sometimes it seems we get into things we should have avoided. But could we have avoided them?
Maybe, and this is a just maybe, we wind up in places so we have to rely on God to be there. We have to rely on God because we don’t always have the answers.
But God would never lead us into temptation! God would never lead us to trials!
But do you remember our reading from 2 days ago? God through the Holy Spirit, thrust Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan.
And each week we pray, “And lead us not into temptation” We saw what God did to Jesus, and we ask Him, through the leading/teaching of Jesus to not lead us into temptation, but when you do, “deliver us from evil.” And in there is the promise, that God will always provide us a way out, so we may endure what we are going through. Not the easy way out, but His way out.
So remember that He is always with you, and will always give you a way out.
aSacredRebel 