Lent starts this week, and I confess, I have never given anything up for Lent. My daughter and her colleagues decided to draw foods out of a hat, and they would give up whichever food they drew. I don't think they actually put the food in the hat, it wouldn't be big enough for a start; actually I'm not sure they even had a hat?
One year I thought I might give up bread, but I forgot and bought myself a Greggs for lunch, and it was only the first day. What sort of hopeless Christian am I? When I challenge myself to live without bread for 40 days and I can't even walk past a Greggs on day one?
I'll tell you what sort of Christian I am. One who is forgiven daily for saying the wrong things, behaving the wrong way and hurting the Lord I love. This is why I need a Saviour who can overcome temptation. If I'd been in the desert and was hungry and tired and Satan had said to me "tell these stones to become bread" If I had the power to do so, I'd have said, "don't mind if I do - in fact better than that, I've got a Greggs card, d'you fancy a Cajun chicken bap?" Thank God that Jesus went through that temptation and was able to think straight, even though He was starving, and answer the Devil by saying "Man shall not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God" He didn't need the quick fix of the 'food' the Devil was offering, He knew all He needed was provided for Him by God.
Of course there's nothing wrong with eating bread, even for Jesus I don't think it would've been wrong for him to eat, but he had gone into the desert to fast and the Devil was tempting Jesus with a short cut solution to his problem.
Often this is how temptation works, it's not something that's necessarily bad for us we end up being tempted with, perhaps just something at the wrong time for the wrong reasons.
Maybe that year I failed at giving up bread was because I hadn't really prepared myself, I hadn't set about it with the right mindset, it was just a fad thought that I'd give it a try because everyone seemed to be talking about what they were giving up, and I felt I might be missing out, so inevitably when the temptation arose, I didn't even give a seconds thought to the 'commitment' I'd made.
Do you do Lent? If I do it this year, I'm going to try to make sure I go into it with the right heartset, because I want to put more focus on God and not because I want to keep up with what others are doing, although I'm still not sure it's something I'll follow through on! Me, I'm all about the pancakes.
When coffee and cake descends into a deep
discussion on 'human nature and are we born sinful?', I know my friends are keepers!
This is what happened when our conversation about a particularly nasty crime that had happened in our town earlier in the year came up. Is the criminal demon possessed? Is he mentally insane? Is he just wicked? What goes on to make people commit the most horrific crimes?
Some thoughts raised were 'are we actually born sinful or do we become sinful?' Can we call a one day old baby a sinner? I'm the first to admit I think babies are adorable and of course all my babies were 'perfect' at birth!
In Psalm 51:5 David says "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me." David goes on to ask God to cleanse him and renew him. If sin hadn't been in David from birth he wouldn't have gone on to commit adultery and murder. If sin is something that develops within our nature then there wouldn't have been a need for Jesus to die for us, because if we are not born sinful then surely we would have the potential to remain sinless? Thus removing the need for Jesus' sacrifice?
Which led onto 'Jesus was born human, so was he born with the potential to sin?' This is where you head starts to spin a bit and your host who has provided copious amounts of cake and coffee wonders what her morning of idle chit chat is descending into and tries to distract you with the latest John Lewis catalogue, but these questions need answering so on we go.
As a human, yes, Jesus was tempted; but he was also fully God so he was not capable of sin. But if he couldn't sin, why tempt him if he can't give into it anyway?
Living as Christians we are to try to live as Jesus did, to follow his examples, although he could not and did not give in to temptation of sin, he knew how it felt as a human to suffer and be humiliated and tempted, just as we do. God being human in the form of Jesus can sympathise with us when we are tempted. We can be encouraged in our faith knowing that Jesus faced the same temptations as us but did not give into them. Hebrews 4:15 "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet was without sin."
I don't know if we really got to the bottom of what makes a man commit such bad offences but it certainly engaged the brain. We also shared our thoughts, fears, hopes and dreams of what we thought heaven may be like........but that's a whole other post. More cake anyone?
