Not Good!

After God created man He said, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him." (Gen. 2:18) I agree with this wholeheartedly. It is not good for me to be alone, separated from my wife. I did not decide that I wanted to be separated from her, nor did she want separation from me. In this instance, it was God who made the call. Both of us have been learning lessons we could not have learned together. Though it was God's plan, it has not been easy. The narrow path can be filled with obstacles and temptations, luring us from focusing on Christ. Today it was like a Gethsemane experience, just laying on the ground before the LORD. I did not sweat blood, but I took shelter in His!

I'm putting together a message concerning Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane before His arrest. Here is an excerpt from it:

No man can write on the subject of temptation without a real sense of unworthiness and failure. I feel I am the least likely candidate to hold forth God’s Word when it comes to temptation. Who has not or does not fall into temptation? How many of us have willfully entered into temptation? Our flesh cannot get enough of it, and our hearts do not loathe it enough. Jesus is the only man in the history of the world who has resisted and denied every sinful temptation. Believers know what temptation is, and it is often what the world calls “opportunity.” Temptation is the appetizer to a sinful main course. But we always walk away from the table empty, and wonder what we were thinking. When we succumb to temptation, we always get stuck with a costly bill: shame, guilt, anger, depression, feelings of worthlessness, and separation from God.  It is a vicious cycle only Jesus Christ can break.

The strongest human cannot handle the weakest temptation. The Bible says that we are born into sin, and we have a huge appetite for it! Our body wants nothing more than to satisfy itself with the unholy trinity of wickedness:   the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Job 15:14-16 says, "What is man, that he could be pure? And he who is born of a woman, that he could be righteous? [15] If God puts no trust in His saints, and the heavens are not pure in His sight, [16] how much less man, who is abominable and filthy, who drinks iniquity like water!" We live in times where many people refuse to accept that man’s nature is evil. The scripture is clear that man is steeped in wickedness, and is guilty of breaking God’s Law. His Law is a schoolmaster who leads us to Christ, the only means of salvation from sin and the penalty thereof:  death.

I praise God that I need not be a slave to sin no longer.  I need not be driven by Satan the cruel master of fleshly desires and led from sin to sin like a chained beast.  I serve the God who has claimed the victory over sin, a God who withstood every temptation without fault.  If I am obedient the path of victory has been blazed and illuminated for me by Jesus.  Like in warfare, we do not win every skirmish.  It may seem that we lose more than we win!  But let me encourage you to not allow the enemy to convince you that you are defeated, for the blood of Christ is able to cleanse you from all sin.  His strength is available, and our histories of failure and weakness need not dictate our future.  Romans 12:3 says, "For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith."  When are lifted up in pride, we think the strength to resist temptation rests in us.  God will allow us to fail and fall that we might highly regard Him and become our all in all!

It is not good for man to be alone.  We need to be united with Christ, abiding in Him.  It is He who gave us breath and redeemed our souls.  When a man is separated from God by His sin, that  man is truly alone in the world, though he may have a wife at his side.  We are not good, but we serve a God who is!  As David concludes Psalm 23:6 followers of Christ can say:  "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."