Temptations

 Greetings to you all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,

     Ephesians 4:17-18 says, “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,  Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:” 

     As a kid, I watched the “Little Rascals” a lot and so one time tried one of their stunts, of jumping off the garage room with an umbrella.  Of course, it didn’t work, except I broke the umbrella.  I did a lot of stupid things while growing up, some of which could have caused a lot of harm had t hey gone wrong, like trying to see how fast the 55 Pontiac Chieftan would go late at  night.  Bunker Hill was with me watching the speedometer and I watched the road, putting the V8 to the floor. I finally released it when we got up to 115 mph.  As I lay in bed that night, I could hear the Pontiac’s engine cracking as it  cooled off for several minutes.  I figured that temptations were common in my youth and  that when you get as old as I am now, t hey diminish.  Well, that isn’t entirely true and you all know it.

     Recently, I preached on the above passage of Scripture and spoke how it was the only “negative” walk. Don’t walk like the Gentiles walk.  I know all of those things  that are mentioned in this passage. Even at 84, I have succumbed to some temptations and have ended up sinning, plain and simple.  The three avenues ae still active today as they were in the Garden of Eden, and I knew it and I still know it and yet got caught up and fell victim to the pride of life and probably the other two, the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh.  They are all still active.  It is as though Satan found them successful in the Garden of Eden, so just kept using them.  I am reminded about Jeremiah’s statement that the heart is desperately wicked and I can’t  say that my heart is blind as in the passage above, but it does have some temptations now and then.  In  speaking  about this with my daughter recently, she reminded me that temptations are never gone unless you are dead.  We are all an open target until that time regardless of how old or how young we are.  I had a friend who was kind of a daredevil in school and he lost  in a race with the New York Central train and died shortly after high school graduation.  If we know the avenues of temptation, then we should be able to avoid even getting close to one of them.  Even if I was blind and had lost all other senses, I would still have the mind to contend with;  all of the pictures that have been embedded there for 84 years of life.  Some memories you would like to forget but cannot.  Praise God that He still provides the way of escape from all of our temptations.