Life for Christians would be so much easier without temptation.

Jesus introduced new life to us, a new way of life and a way to live life. Honestly, learning to live in the Kingdom of God would be much easier without temptations. If we are to be truthful, the problem isn’t the temptation. Sin and the sinful condition we are escaping is the real culprit.

Sin is what warped and corrupted that which was designed to be good in us and good for us. Sin left us in our own wisdom, our own understanding and our own strength to try and make a life without God. Left to ourselves, we became idiots and experts on how to make a mess of most everything. It’s interesting to me that I can make food an obsession, drink an obsession, cars an obsession, medicine an obsession, sex an obsession and the list goes on. All these things are neutral and helpful to my life; that is until my sinful condition leads me to an obsession about it. Now it seems I can’t live without the obsession. I turn the good thing into something by which my entire happiness in life pivots on having it or doing it. Welcome to the effects of sin.

The good things we have been given in life were never designed to be bad. They became bad when we developed an entire value system around such things and left God out of the little paradise we were making for ourselves. How do we know such obsessions are bad for us? Have you asked yourself how many people you have hurt or stepped on lately because you didn’t get what you wanted? We think we deserve this or that, or something wasn’t fair and we didn’t get what we wanted. We get upset when the day turns left and we expected it to go right and life “doesn’t go our way;” whatever “our way” is. When circumstances turn negative we blame others for standing in the way of the smooth day or smooth life we wanted. Sometimes we’ll take our pain or our bruised ego and use it as a club on family and friends.

God has a better design for our heart. This is why Jesus asked us to connect with Him through faith. If we would decide to make Him a daily part of our life, our decision making and our behaviors and attitudes, we would discover that God is not a harsh task-master for those he loves, but a loving counselor who seeks to guide us through a messy and unpredictable world. Often we want God to take away the broken things and then, we think to ourselves, our life would be better. However God has an even greater design than this. What if you could embrace the reality that God is willing to direct your life and in so doing, you could experience His perfect peace regardless of what was taking place at work, or at home, or with the emotional baggage you might be carrying around from days gone by? Wouldn’t that be something? (Jesus said) “I have told you these things, so that you can have peace because of me. In this world you will have trouble. But be encouraged! I have won the battle over the world.” John 16:33