Food For Thought Fridays

I have been pondering this question:

Do I have enough faith to fail?

In this life, people are evaluated on their ability to accomplish great things. Some fail and some succeed, but even those that have great accomplishments are not satisfied for long. There is always a thirst for even more.

Our desire to fulfill the purpose of our lives IS a gift from God, but sin has twisted us so dramatically that we put ourselves on the pedestal and our desire for purpose is really a self centered lust for a trophy in our honor.

But when we come to Christ, all of that should change. We should embrace a spiritual philosophy that sits counter to the ways of the world. Contrary to the prosperity gospel, success for the believer, should be opposite of that of the world.

Luke 9:24 says, "For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it."

When Jesus died, it seemed He was a discredited, rejected failure while the wealthy and successful ordered Him to the cross. It took three days to show them that the magnificent Creator was the victorious one and the governor had utterly failed.

Have we still not learned any lessons? Does the "church" measure success according to man or God?

It has been said that no man is worthy to succeed until he is willing to fail.

Our exceeding joy is to be found in being just like Jesus was and is.

One day Jesus will show all who won and who lost.

Food For Thought Fridays

Matthew 4:1 says, "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.”

Lately, I've been thinking about temptation.

Isn't it amazing that the Son of God was tempted? The one through whom all things were created. The one whose very food was to do the will of the Father. God in the flesh. The Father's spittin' image as we say in the south.

He was taken to the wilderness and tempted like us. We may not be as strong as Jesus, but, should we expect less temptation than what He faced?

Many of us believe that the answer is yes, but I am not so sure. Temptation is all around us and we act as if we are invincible or worse act as if temptation doesn't exist.

At this moment, you may feel like you have the glow of the Holy Spirit on your face, but the minute you let your guard down. . . the lion starts to roar and you give into temptations.

At this moment, you may feel that you are on fire with the love of Jesus, but if you don't allow God to keep putting logs on the fire. . . Satan will bring your temperature down to around lukewarm and we give into the temptation of just getting by.

As believers, we must stand and protect our hearts and minds. We need to allow God to continually fill us with the Holy Spirit and continually allow God to stoke the fire of Jesus in our lives so we don't become lazy and complacent.

Lastly, if we are to walk out of the wilderness victoriously (like Jesus) we have to be warriors and sleep with our helmets on.