Tempting...

Last week, my two oldest children ran into a problem that is fairly common.  They felt as if no one was listening to them.  Wow.  Have I ever been there, myself.  Being young teenagers, they probably didn't handle this is as well as, say, adults might.  Actually, I'm not sure they even handled it as well as they ordinarily might.  There has been a lot of stress and pressure lately, and let's face it, anybody can have a bad day.

But here's the thing.  I tend to think it's pretty important to listen to my kids, so when they came to me, in tears, I did.  The topic was temptation.  They weren't satisfied with the conclusion that the devil is at fault.  Hear me loud and clear here, Satan sucks!  Evil is real.  James 4:7 has been running through my mind ever since this conversation got started, "Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" (NIV).  I think it's incredibly stupid to give sin a foothold of any kind in our lives.  But therein lies the key.  We have to take responsibility.  

It took me almost four days of pouring over his words to figure out what it was that my fourteen year old son was trying to say.  And believe me, I get it.  I completely understand that no one outside of my immediate family loves him enough to think about his words for this amount of time, and that's OK.  But he was right.

In regard to Jesus' temptation in the wilderness, he said, "These were things that Jesus wanted".  I might even take this a step further and say that some of these things were things that Jesus needed.  Bread after a forty day fast?  Yes, please!

But Seth's solution is simple, too simple because it's not what anyone wants to hear.  Stop wanting what you shouldn't have.  Ouch!  Been there, too...

I will never apologize for his passion.  The fact that Seth sat there in a classroom full of girls who are often very insecure about themselves, and made the bold statement that they don't need to be, makes him about the most endearing fourteen year old kid I can imagine.  He never, ever would have put it this way, but it's almost as if he was up in their faces telling them, "Hey!  You're good enough!  Not only should you stop allowing the devil to have a foothold in your life that tempts you to be something you're not.  You should stop wanting that.  Someone will love you for who you are.  Just be who you are."  And he means it.  He lives it.  He is so comfortable in his own skin.  

Grace's solution is a little more difficult, and maybe a little more human.  Know Scripture.  It will never cease to amaze me how offensive this often is to people who claim to love Jesus.  We need to know what Scripture says.  We need to understand what it means.  And we need to live as if we care.  Jesus refutes  every one of the devil's temptations with Scripture.  Let's not lose sight of the very real struggle that is happening here.  Jesus is hungry!  Jesus is being forced to question his identity and whether or not he is really the Messiah and whether or not his Father really loves him.  Everything he wants is on the table, there for the taking.  But Jesus stops and says, "Wait.  Something about this isn't quite right.  Let me return to what I know is true".

Just think about that for a little bit...

L.