Head-dibs

Shaking hands held the envelope open before his eyes as his insides gushed with wrenching warmth making him want to vomit and crawl under the desk with shame or embarrassment; yet he sat motionless, staring, hating himself for the senseless raging fight inside his head and in his soul not wanting to do wrong but do right as his Sunday School teacher always encouraged him to do when nobody was looking because this is the moment of true integrity (who you are is who you are when no one is looking) -- to be true to his conscience or convince himself to rectify the situation with a solemn promise to pay everything back in full restitution as he had promised to do so many times in the past when faced with this very same situation as it happened every year, year after year with envelopes exactly like this on days like today; but, why should he fail if all he had to do was close the drawer, stand up, walk out of the office, turn left, go down the hall and kill temptation right t...

How do you hold up under temptation? Oh, The Temptation from Steve V on Vimeo .

Dr. Larry Dixon , resident faculty of Systematic Theology in the Seminary and School of Missions of Columbia International University , was interviewed this past weekend on Canadian television. Enjoy! Part 1: Part 2: Part 3:

"Any temptation that comes to us is not unique. Others have endured it and others have come through it. A friend tells how he was once driving Lightfoot, the great Bishop of Durham, in a horse carriage along a very narrow mountain road in Norway. It got so narrow that there were only inches between the wheels of the carriage and the cliffs on one side and the precipice on the other. He suggested in the end that Lightfoot would be safer to get out and walk. Lightfoot surveyed the situation and then said, 'other carriages must have taken this road. Drive on.'" (William Barclay, in commentary on Corinthians)

An essay against binding the conscience with regard to practices which cannot be proved from Scripture. Read it here .

How the Cross of Christ Corresponds to and Conquers Satan’s Work. by John Piper Satan’s work is not the chief peril dealt with in the death of Christ. God’s wrath is. God is opposed to us in his righteous wrath, and he is for us in his love. Therefore, in his great love, he sends his Son to endure his own wrath against us. In this way, his righteousness is upheld and his love is expressed. His wrath and curse and condemnation of our sin are endured for us by another—a substitute, Jesus Christ. Here are some of the texts that teach this: (read the rest here ).

I mentioned previously that the whole temptation in the wilderness event was not to see if Jesus could cut it as the Son of God—like if He failed here they needed to find someone else for the job—but this is exactly where we join the conversation. Look at Satan’s challenge, “If you are the Son of God . . .” The second challenge is like unto the first. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “The deceit, the lie of the devil consists of this, that he wishes to make man believe he can live without God’s Word. Thus he dangles before man’s fantasy a kingdom of faith, of power, of peace, into which only he can enter who consents to temptation; and he conceals from men that he, as the devil, is the most unfortunate and unhappy of beings, since he is finally and eternally rejected by God.” One writer called temptation, “a strong wind for a flickering flame.” Thomas A’Kempis from the 1300’s approaches temptation from another direction: “temptations are often very profitable to us, though they be troublesom...

Matthew 4 40 days is a long time on anybody’s calendar. I wonder what crossed His mind when the Holy Spirit prompted Jesus to go into the wilderness. I am sure it was not a spontaneous, “I think I’ll go to the wilderness for, I dunno, 40 days and eat nothing while there.” It’s not like it was “Survivor: The Wilderness” or an idea for a really cheap vacation. When the Holy Spirit brought this to His mind, what was His reaction. The most obvious reaction is that He went. But did He know He would be gone that long? Did He know He was not to pack a cooler? What there an overwhelming urge to go sit on some rocks and contemplate God? Was there an irresistible compulsion to go out of town for the purpose of seeing how much temptation one could endure? I cannot help but think of the level of awe and reverence some African tribes have for God. Their summations can help inform our theology: some see God as so transcendent, so far above and beyond, so “out there”, that He gave the stars just to p...